Related papers: An End-to-End Differentiable Framework for Contact…
This paper investigates one of the most challenging tasks in dynamic manipulation -- catching large-momentum moving objects. Beyond the realm of quasi-static manipulation, dealing with highly dynamic objects can significantly improve the…
Robotic manipulation can greatly benefit from the data efficiency, robustness, and predictability of model-based methods if robots can quickly generate models of novel objects they encounter. This is especially difficult when effects like…
Bimanual robotic manipulation is an emerging and critical topic in the robotics community. Previous works primarily rely on integrated control models that take the perceptions and states of both arms as inputs to directly predict their…
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…
In this work, we build on our method for manipulating unknown objects via contact configuration regulation: the estimation and control of the location, geometry, and mode of all contacts between the robot, object, and environment. We…
The hybrid nature of multi-contact robotic systems, due to making and breaking contact with the environment, creates significant challenges for high-quality control. Existing model-based methods typically rely on either good prior knowledge…
Generalizable manipulation requires that robots be able to interact with novel objects and environment. This requirement makes manipulation extremely challenging as a robot has to reason about complex frictional interactions with…
Robotic performance emerges from the coupling of body and controller, yet it remains unclear when morphology-control co-design is necessary. We present a unified framework that embeds morphology and control parameters within a single neural…
This chapter is about the fundamentals of fabrication, control, and human-robot interaction of a new type of collaborative robotic manipulators, called malleable robots, which are based on adjustable architectures of varying stiffness for…
Generating intelligent robot behavior in contact-rich settings is a research problem where zeroth-order methods currently prevail. A major contributor to the success of such methods is their robustness in the face of non-smooth and…
Robotic manipulation is essential for modernizing factories and automating industrial tasks like polishing, which require advanced tactile abilities. These robots must be easily set up, safely work with humans, learn tasks autonomously, and…
Robotic dexterous in-hand manipulation, where multiple fingers dynamically make and break contact, represents a step toward human-like dexterity in real-world robotic applications. Unlike learning-based approaches that rely on large-scale…
Controlling the shape of deformable linear objects using robots and constraints provided by environmental fixtures has diverse industrial applications. In order to establish robust contacts with these fixtures, accurate estimation of the…
Generalizable manipulation involving cross-type object interactions is a critical yet challenging capability in robotics. To reliably accomplish such tasks, robots must address two fundamental challenges: "where to manipulate" (contact…
In this paper, we presented a new method for deformation control of deformable objects, which utilizes both visual and tactile feedback. At present, manipulation of deformable objects is basically formulated by assuming positional…
End-to-end autonomous driving has made impressive progress in recent years. Existing methods usually adopt the decoupled encoder-decoder paradigm, where the encoder extracts hidden features from raw sensor data, and the decoder outputs the…
Continuum soft robots are mechanical systems entirely made of continuously deformable elements. This design solution aims to bring robots closer to invertebrate animals and soft appendices of vertebrate animals (e.g., an elephant's trunk, a…
We present a differentiable dynamics solver that is able to handle frictional contact for rigid and deformable objects within a unified framework. Through a principled mollification of normal and tangential contact forces, our method…
Soft robots promise inherent safety via their material compliance for seamless interactions with humans or delicate environments. Yet, their development is challenging because it requires integrating materials, geometry, actuation, and…
Control techniques like MPC can realize contact-rich manipulation which exploits dynamic information, maintaining friction limits and safety constraints. However, contact geometry and dynamics are required to be known. This information is…