Related papers: ReachBot: A Small Robot for Large Mobile Manipulat…
A robotic platform for mobile manipulation needs to satisfy two contradicting requirements for many real-world applications: A compact base is required to navigate through cluttered indoor environments, while the support needs to be large…
Grasping small objects surrounded by unstable or non-rigid material plays a crucial role in applications such as surgery, harvesting, construction, disaster recovery, and assisted feeding. This task is especially difficult when fine…
Dynamic motions are a key feature of robotic arms, enabling them to perform tasks quickly and efficiently. Soft continuum manipulators do not currently consider dynamic parameters when operating in task space. This shortcoming makes…
Rescue missions in mountain environments are hardly achievable by standard legged robots-because of the high slopes-or by flying robots-because of limited payload capacity. We present a concept for a rope-aided climbing robot which can…
This paper explores the design strategies for hybrid pole- or trunk-climbing robots, focusing on methods to inform design decisions and assess metrics such as adaptability and performance. A wheeled-grasping hybrid robot with modular,…
This paper presents an approach for approximating the reachable space of robotic manipulators based on convex polytopes. The proposed approach predicts the reachable space over a given time horizon based on the robot's actuation limits and…
This paper presents a novel algorithm for robot task and motion planning (TAMP) problems by utilizing a reachability tree. While tree-based algorithms are known for their speed and simplicity in motion planning (MP), they are not…
This paper presents a soft earthworm robot that is capable of both efficient locomotion and obstacle avoidance. The robot is designed to replicate the unique locomotion mechanisms of earthworms, which enable them to move through narrow and…
Recently, many humanoid robots have been increasingly deployed in various facilities, including hospitals and assisted living environments, where they are often remotely controlled by human operators. Their kinematic redundancy enhances…
Before beginning any robot task, users must position the robot's base, a task that now depends entirely on user intuition. While slight perturbation is tolerable for robots with moveable bases, correcting the problem is imperative for…
Human-robot object handovers have been an actively studied area of robotics over the past decade; however, very few techniques and systems have addressed the challenge of handing over diverse objects with arbitrary appearance, size, shape,…
While both navigation and manipulation are challenging topics in isolation, many tasks require the ability to both navigate and manipulate in concert. To this end, we propose a mobile manipulation system that leverages novel navigation and…
Robotic mobility in microgravity is necessary to expand human utilization and exploration of outer space. Bio-inspired multi-legged robots are a possible solution for safe and precise locomotion. However, a dynamic motion of a robot in…
Planetary exploration missions require robots capable of navigating extreme and unknown environments. While wheeled rovers have dominated past missions, their mobility is limited to traversable surfaces. Legged robots, especially…
Mobility on asteroids by multi-limbed climbing robots is expected to achieve our exploration goals in such challenging environments. We propose a mobility strategy to improve the locomotion safety of climbing robots in such harsh…
Soft robots offer more flexibility, compliance, and adaptability than traditional rigid robots. They are also typically lighter and cheaper to manufacture. However, their use in real-world applications is limited due to modeling challenges…
The exploration of asteroids and comets is important in the quest for the formation of the Solar System and it is an important step for human space travel. Moving on the surface of asteroids is challenging for future robotic explorers due…
Designing an in-pipe climbing robot that manipulates sharp gears to study complex line relationships. Traditional rolling/happening pipe climbing robots tend to slide when exploring pipe curves. The proposed gearbox connects to the farthest…
For humanoid robots to live up to their potential utility, they must be able to robustly recover from instabilities. In this work, we propose a number of balance enhancements to enable the robot to both achieve specific, desired footholds…
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…