Related papers: Safety-Augmented Operation of Mobile Robots Using …

Robots will bring search and rescue (SaR) in disaster response to another level, in case they can autonomously take over dangerous SaR tasks from humans. A main challenge for autonomous SaR robots is to safely navigate in cluttered…

In this paper we present a framework that allows the motion control of a robotic arm automatically handling different kinds of safety-related tasks. The developed controller is based on a Task-Priority Inverse Kinematics algorithm that…

This paper studies the problem of control strategy synthesis for dynamical systems with differential constraints to fulfill a given reachability goal while satisfying a set of safety rules. Particular attention is devoted to goals that…

Safety assurance is critical in the planning and control of robotic systems. For robots operating in the real world, the safety-critical design often needs to explicitly address uncertainties and the pre-computed guarantees often rely on…

The design of physical compliance -- its location, degree, and structure -- affects robot performance and robustness in contact-rich tasks. While compliance is often used in the robot's joints, flange, or end-effector, this paper proposes…

A new framework is developed for control of constrained nonlinear systems with structured parametric uncertainties. Forward invariance of a safe set is achieved through online parameter adaptation and data-driven model estimation. The new…

In this paper, an adaptive super-twisting controller is designed for an agile maneuvering quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle to achieve accurate trajectory tracking in the presence of external disturbances. A cascaded control architecture is…

This paper proposes an integrated approach for the safe and efficient control of mobile robots in dynamic and uncertain environments. The approach consists of two key steps: one-shot multimodal motion prediction to anticipate motions of…

Circumnavigation control is useful in real-world applications such as entrapping a hostile target. In this paper, we consider a heterogeneous multi-robot system where robots have different physical properties, such as maximum movement…

This paper investigates the resilient control, analysis, recovery, and operation of mobile robot networks in time-varying formation tracking under deception attacks on global positioning. Local and global tracking control algorithms are…

Performing swift and agile maneuvers is essential for the safe operation of autonomous mobile robots. Moreover, the presence of time-delay restricts the response time of the system and hinders the safety performance. Thus, this paper…

Robots built from soft materials will inherently apply lower environmental forces than their rigid counterparts, and therefore may be more suitable in sensitive settings with unintended contact. However, these robots' applied forces result…

Learning has propelled the cutting edge of performance in robotic control to new heights, allowing robots to operate with high performance in conditions that were previously unimaginable. The majority of the work, however, assumes that the…

Conventional passivity-based torque controllers for manipulators are typically unconstrained, which can lead to safety violations under external perturbations. In this paper, we employ viability theory to pre-compute safe sets in the…

Reinforcement learning (RL) is effective in many robotic applications, but it requires extensive exploration of the state-action space, during which behaviors can be unsafe. This significantly limits its applicability to large robots with…

Safe and compliant control of dynamic systems in interaction with the environment, e.g., in shared workspaces, continues to represent a major challenge. Mismatches in the dynamic model of the robots, numerical singularities, and the…

In this paper, we consider the problem of using a robot to explore an environment with an unknown, state-dependent disturbance function while avoiding some forbidden areas. The goal of the robot is to safely collect observations of the…

Compliance is a strong requirement for human-robot interactions. Soft-robots provide an opportunity to cover the lack of compliance in conventional actuation mechanisms, however, the control of them is very challenging given their intrinsic…

This paper presents an application of specification based runtime verification techniques to control mobile robots in a reactive manner. In our case study, we develop a layered control architecture where runtime monitors constructed from…

In human-robot systems, ensuring safety during force control in the presence of both internal and external disturbances is crucial. As a typical loosely coupled floating-base robot system, the supernumerary robotic leg (SRL) system is…