Related papers: Extrinsic Contact Sensing with Relative-Motion Tra…
In-hand manipulation tasks, particularly in human-inspired robotic systems, must rely on distributed tactile sensing to achieve precise control across a wide variety of tasks. However, the optimal configuration of this network of sensors is…
Dexterous manipulation of objects through fine control of physical contacts is essential for many important tasks of daily living. A fundamental ability underlying fine contact control is compliant control, \textit{i.e.}, controlling the…
We develop an algorithm to explore an environment to generate a measurement model for use in future localization tasks. Ergodic exploration with respect to the likelihood of a particular class of measurement (e.g., a contact detection…
Can a robot grasp an unknown object without seeing it? In this paper, we present a tactile-sensing based approach to this challenging problem of grasping novel objects without prior knowledge of their location or physical properties. Our…
Robotic manipulators navigating cluttered shelves or cabinets may find it challenging to avoid contact with obstacles. Indeed, rearranging obstacles may be necessary to access a target. Rather than planning explicit motions that place…
Tactile perception is a crucial sensing modality in robotics, particularly in scenarios that require precise manipulation and safe interaction with other objects. Previous research in this area has focused extensively on tactile perception…
In this paper we address the challenge of exploration in deep reinforcement learning for robotic manipulation tasks. In sparse goal settings, an agent does not receive any positive feedback until randomly achieving the goal, which becomes…
In this paper, we present an approach to tactile pose estimation from the first touch for known objects. First, we create an object-agnostic map from real tactile observations to contact shapes. Next, for a new object with known geometry,…
Sense of touch that allows robots to detect contact and measure interaction forces enables them to perform challenging tasks such as grasping fragile objects or using tools. Tactile sensors in theory can equip the robots with such…
Extrinsic manipulation, the use of environment contacts to achieve manipulation objectives, enables strategies that are otherwise impossible with a parallel jaw gripper. However, orchestrating a long-horizon sequence of contact interactions…
Robot-to-human object handover is an essential skill for robot assistants, from serving drinks at home to passing surgical tools in the operating room. We expect robots to perform handover robustly -- to release the object only after a firm…
Robotic manipulation tasks such as object insertion typically involve interactions between object and environment, namely extrinsic contacts. Prior work on Neural Contact Fields (NCF) use intrinsic tactile sensing between gripper and object…
High-resolution tactile sensing can provide accurate information about local contact in contact-rich robotic tasks. However, the deployment of such tasks in unstructured environments remains under-investigated. To improve the robustness of…
The estimation of external joint torque and contact wrench is essential for achieving stable locomotion of humanoids and safety-oriented robots. Although the contact wrench on the foot of humanoids can be measured using a force-torque…
Grasping objects whose physical properties are unknown is still a great challenge in robotics. Most solutions rely entirely on visual data to plan the best grasping strategy. However, to match human abilities and be able to reliably pick…
We develop a real-time state estimation system to recover the pose and contact formation of an object relative to its environment. In this paper, we focus on the application of inserting an object picked by a suction cup into a tight space,…
Many robots utilize commercial force/torque sensors to identify inertial properties of unknown objects. However, such sensors can be difficult to apply to small-sized robots due to their weight, size, and cost. In this paper, we propose a…
Object pose estimation methods allow finding locations of objects in unstructured environments. This is a highly desired skill for autonomous robot manipulation as robots need to estimate the precise poses of the objects in order to…
Collision-free motion is often aided by tactile and proximity sensors distributed on the body of the robot due to their resistance to occlusion as opposed to external cameras. However, how to shape the sensor's properties, such as sensing…
Tactile sensing allows robots to gather detailed geometric information about objects through physical interaction, complementing vision-based approaches. However, efficiently acquiring useful tactile data remains challenging due to the…