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Identifying the physical properties of the surrounding environment is essential for robotic locomotion and navigation to deal with non-geometric hazards, such as slippery and deformable terrains. It would be of great benefit for robots to…
This paper proposes a safety-critical locomotion control framework employed for legged robots exploring through infeasible path in obstacle-rich environments. Our research focus is on achieving safe and robust locomotion where robots…
We present a method for image-guided exploration for mobile robotic systems. Our approach extends ergodic exploration methods, a recent exploration approach that prioritizes complete coverage of a space, with the use of a learned image…
Traversing risky terrains with sparse footholds presents significant challenges for legged robots, requiring precise foot placement in safe areas. To acquire comprehensive exteroceptive information, prior studies have employed motion…
We propose a novel visual localization and navigation framework for real-world environments directly integrating observed visual information into the bird-eye-view map. While the renderable neural radiance map (RNR-Map) shows considerable…
The allure of lunar surface exploration and development has recently captured widespread global attention. Robots have proved to be indispensable for exploring uncharted terrains, uncovering and leveraging local resources, and facilitating…
Legged robot locomotion on sand slopes is challenging due to the complex dynamics of granular media and how the lack of solid surfaces can hinder locomotion. A promising strategy, inspired by ghost crabs and other organisms in nature, is to…
Today, robotics is an auspicious and fast-growing branch of technology that involves the manufacturing, design, and maintenance of robot machines that can operate in an autonomous fashion and can be used in a wide variety of applications…
Social navigation in densely populated dynamic environments poses a significant challenge for autonomous mobile robots, requiring advanced strategies for safe interaction. Existing reinforcement learning (RL)-based methods require over…
To autonomously navigate in real-world environments, special in search and rescue operations, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) necessitate comprehensive maps to ensure safety. However, the prevalent metric map often lacks semantic…
One of the main challenges in autonomous robotic exploration and navigation in unknown and unstructured environments is determining where the robot can or cannot safely move. A significant source of difficulty in this determination arises…
How can a robot navigate successfully in rich and diverse environments, indoors or outdoors, along office corridors or trails on the grassland, on the flat ground or the staircase? To this end, this work aims to address three challenges:…
Robot navigation in dynamic, human-centered environments requires socially-compliant decisions grounded in robust scene understanding. Recent Vision-Language Models (VLMs) exhibit promising capabilities such as object recognition,…
Robots can now learn how to make decisions and control themselves, generalizing learned behaviors to unseen scenarios. In particular, AI powered robots show promise in rough environments like the lunar surface, due to the environmental…
Collision avoidance algorithms are essential for safe and efficient robot operation among pedestrians. This work proposes using deep reinforcement (RL) learning as a framework to model the complex interactions and cooperation with nearby,…
Planetary exploration using aerial assets has the potential for unprecedented scientific discoveries on Mars. While NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity proved flight in Martian atmosphere is possible, future Mars rotorcraft will require…
Distance-based reward mechanisms in deep reinforcement learning (DRL) navigation systems suffer from critical safety limitations in dynamic environments, frequently resulting in collisions when visibility is restricted. We propose DRL-NSUO,…
Robotic grasping presents a difficult motor task in real-world scenarios, constituting a major hurdle to the deployment of capable robots across various industries. Notably, the scarcity of data makes grasping particularly challenging for…
An efficient characterization of scientifically significant locations is essential prior to the return of humans to the Moon. The highest resolution imagery acquired from orbit of south-polar shadowed regions and other relevant locations…
The popularity of mobile robots has been steadily growing, with these robots being increasingly utilized to execute tasks previously completed by human workers. For bipedal robots to see this same success, robust autonomous navigation…