Related papers: An Inextensible Model for Robotic Simulations of T…
Most object manipulation strategies for robots are based on the assumption that the object is rigid (i.e., with fixed geometry) and the goal's details have been fully specified (e.g., the exact target pose). However, there are many tasks…
Although robots with flexible bodies are superior in terms of the contact and adaptability, it is difficult to control them precisely. On the other hand, human beings make use of the surrounding environments to stabilize their bodies and…
Robotic manipulation of deformable objects is a difficult problem especially because of the complexity of the many different ways an object can deform. Searching such a high dimensional state space makes it difficult to recognize, track,…
Dressing is a fundamental task of everyday living and robots offer an opportunity to assist people with motor impairments. While several robotic systems have explored robot-assisted dressing, few have considered how a robot can manage…
We investigate the Green function of two-dimensional dense random packings of grains in order to discriminate between the different theories of stress transmission in granular materials. Our computer simulations allow for a detailed…
A shared grasp is a grasp formed by contacts between the manipulated object and both the robot hand and the environment. By trading off hand contacts for environmental contacts, a shared grasp requires fewer contacts with the hand, and…
For robots to operate in general environments like households, they must be able to perform non-prehensile manipulation actions such as toppling and rolling to manipulate ungraspable objects. However, prior works on non-prehensile…
Robotic manipulation of deformable objects remains a challenging task. One such task is to iron a piece of cloth autonomously. Given a roughly flattened cloth, the goal is to have an ironing plan that can iteratively apply a regular iron to…
Tactile feedback is critical for understanding the dynamics of both rigid and deformable objects in many manipulation tasks, such as non-prehensile manipulation and dense packing. We introduce an approach that combines visual and tactile…
As robotic systems become more popular in household environments, the complexity of required tasks also increases. In this work we focus on a domestic chore deemed dull by a majority of the population, the task of ironing. The presented…
Sequential multi-step cloth manipulation is a challenging problem in robotic manipulation, requiring a robot to perceive the cloth state and plan a sequence of chained actions leading to the desired state. Most previous works address this…
Soft robots are notoriously hard to control. This is partly due to the scarcity of models able to capture their complex continuum mechanics, resulting in a lack of control methodologies that take full advantage of body compliance. Currently…
Recent research on mobile robots has focused on increasing their adaptability to unpredictable and unstructured environments using soft materials and structures. However, the determination of key design parameters and control over these…
This paper introduces a new technique for learning probabilistic models of mass and friction distributions of unknown objects, and performing robust sliding actions by using the learned models. The proposed method is executed in two…
Although strain-based models have been widely adopted in robotics, no comparison beyond the uniform bending test is commonly recognized to assess their performance. In addition, the increasing effort in prototyping continuum robots…
Fabric has been a fundamental part of human life for thousands of years, providing comfort, protection, and aesthetic expression. While modern advancements have enhanced fabric's functionality, it remains static and unchangeable, failing to…
We consider the nonprehensile object transportation task known as the waiter's problem - in which a robot must move an object on a tray from one location to another - when the transported object has uncertain inertial parameters. In…
We introduce an approximate model for predicting the net contact wrench between nominally rigid objects for use in simulation, control, and state estimation. The model combines and generalizes two ideas: a bed of springs (an "elastic…
This paper presents volumetric homogenization, a spatially varying homogenization scheme for knitwear simulation. We are motivated by the observation that macro-scale fabric dynamics is strongly correlated with its underlying knitting…
We have seen much recent progress in rigid object manipulation, but interaction with deformable objects has notably lagged behind. Due to the large configuration space of deformable objects, solutions using traditional modelling approaches…