Related papers: Consolidating Kinematic Models to Promote Coordina…
Manipulation of objects by exploiting their contact with the environment can enhance both the dexterity and payload capability of robotic manipulators. A common way to manipulate heavy objects beyond the payload capability of a robot is to…
This work presents an optimization-based task and motion planning (TAMP) framework that unifies planning for locomotion and manipulation through a shared representation of contact modes. We define symbolic actions as contact mode changes,…
Cooperative manipulation tasks impose various structure-, task-, and robot-specific constraints on mobile manipulators. However, current methods struggle to model and solve these myriad constraints simultaneously. We propose a twofold…
One of the challenges of full autonomy is to have a robot capable of manipulating its current environment to achieve another environment configuration. This paper is a step towards this challenge, focusing on the visual understanding of the…
This paper is about generating motion plans for high degree-of-freedom systems that account for collisions along the entire body. A particular class of mathematical programs with complementarity constraints become useful in this regard.…
Mobile manipulators consist of a mobile platform equipped with one or more robot arms and are of interest for a wide array of challenging tasks because of their extended workspace and dexterity. Typically, mobile manipulators are deployed…
In this paper, a kinematic motion planning algorithm for cooperative spatial payload manipulation is presented. A hierarchical approach is introduced to compute real-time collision-free motion plans for a formation of mobile manipulator…
In robot manipulation, planning the motion of a robot manipulator to grasp an object is a fundamental problem. A manipulation planner needs to generate a trajectory of the manipulator arm to avoid obstacles in the environment and plan an…
Modern, torque-controlled service robots can regulate contact forces when interacting with their environment. Model Predictive Control (MPC) is a powerful method to solve the underlying control problem, allowing to plan for whole-body…
For successful goal-directed human-robot interaction, the robot should adapt to the intentions and actions of the collaborating human. This can be supported by musculoskeletal or data-driven human models, where the former are limited to…
Providing mobile robots with the ability to manipulate objects has, despite decades of research, remained a challenging problem. The problem is approachable in constrained environments where there is ample prior knowledge of the environment…
To economically deploy robotic manipulators the programming and execution of robot motions must be swift. To this end, we propose a novel, constraint-based method to intuitively specify sequential manipulation tasks and to compute…
In this paper, we analyze the effects of contact models on contact-implicit trajectory optimization for manipulation. We consider three different approaches: (1) a contact model that is based on complementarity constraints, (2) a smooth…
We propose coordinating guiding vector fields to achieve two tasks simultaneously with a team of robots: first, the guidance and navigation of multiple robots to possibly different paths or surfaces typically embedded in 2D or 3D; second,…
Recent studies on quadruped robots have focused on either locomotion or mobile manipulation using a robotic arm. Legged robots can manipulate heavier and larger objects using non-prehensile manipulation primitives, such as planar pushing,…
This work presents a decentralized motion planning framework for addressing the task of multi-robot navigation using deep reinforcement learning. A custom simulator was developed in order to experimentally investigate the navigation problem…
We present parametric trajectory optimization, a method for simultaneously computing physical parameters, actuation requirements, and robot motions for more efficient robot designs. In this scheme, robot dimensions, masses, and other…
Soft growing robots, commonly referred to as vine robots, have demonstrated remarkable ability to interact safely and robustly with unstructured and dynamic environments. It is therefore natural to exploit contact with the environment for…
Quadruped robots have received increasing attention for the past few years. However, existing works primarily focus on static environments or assume the robot has full observations of the environment. This limits their practical…
In this paper, we propose a novel trajectory optimization algorithm for mobile manipulators under end-effector path, collision avoidance and various kinematic constraints. Our key contribution lies in showing how this highly non-linear and…