Related papers: Wrapped Haptic Display for Communicating Physical …

Robot-to-human object handover is an essential skill for robot assistants, from serving drinks at home to passing surgical tools in the operating room. We expect robots to perform handover robustly -- to release the object only after a firm…

Human body motions can be captured as a high-dimensional continuous signal using motion sensor technologies. The resulting data can be surprisingly rich in information, even when captured from persons with limited mobility. In this work, we…

Soft robots have the potential to revolutionize the use of robotic systems with their capability of establishing safe, robust, and adaptable interactions with their environment, but their precise control remains challenging. In contrast,…

Assistive robotic arms enable users with physical disabilities to perform everyday tasks without relying on a caregiver. Unfortunately, the very dexterity that makes these arms useful also makes them challenging to teleoperate: the robot…

Haptic upper limb exoskeletons are robots that assist human operators during task execution while having the ability to render virtual or remote environments. Therefore, the stability of such robots in physical human-robot-environment…

Expressivity--the use of multiple modalities to convey internal state and intent of a robot--is critical for interaction. Yet, due to cost, safety, and other constraints, many robots lack high degrees of physical expressivity. This paper…

Robot-assisted dressing offers an opportunity to benefit the lives of many people with disabilities, such as some older adults. However, robots currently lack common sense about the physical implications of their actions on people. The…

People learn motor activities best when they are conscious of their errors and make a concerted effort to correct them. While haptic interfaces can facilitate motor training, existing interfaces are often bulky and do not always ensure…

Hybrid rigid-soft robots combine the precision of rigid manipulators with the compliance and adaptability of soft arms, offering a promising approach for versatile grasping in unstructured environments. However, coordinating hybrid robots…

In this work, we propose a gesture based language to allow humans to interact with robots using their body in a natural way. We have created a new gesture detection model using neural networks and a custom dataset of humans performing a set…

Collocated tactile sensing is a fundamental enabling technology for dexterous manipulation. However, deformable sensors introduce complex dynamics between the robot, grasped object, and environment that must be considered for fine…

Assistive robot arms can help humans by partially automating their desired tasks. Consider an adult with motor impairments controlling an assistive robot arm to eat dinner. The robot can reduce the number of human inputs -- and how precise…

Many people suffer from the loss of a limb. Learning to get by without an arm or hand can be very challenging, and existing prostheses do not yet fulfil the needs of individuals with amputations. One promising solution is to provide greater…

Physical human-robot interactions (pHRI) are less efficient and communicative than human-human interactions, and a key reason is a lack of informative sense of touch in robotic systems. Interpreting human touch gestures is a nuanced,…

Sensory feedback is essential for the control of soft robotic systems and to enable deployment in a variety of different tasks. Proprioception refers to sensing the robot's own state and is of crucial importance in order to deploy soft…

We propose a haptic system that applies forces or skin deformation to the user's arm, rather than at the fingertips, for believable interaction with virtual objects as an alternative to complex thimble devices. Such a haptic system would be…

Soft robots can exhibit diverse behaviors with simple types of actuation by partially outsourcing control to the morphological and material properties of their soft bodies, which is made possible by the tight coupling between control, body,…

We present a customizable soft haptic system that integrates modular hardware with an information-theoretic algorithm to personalize feedback for different users and tasks. Our platform features modular, multi-degree-of-freedom pneumatic…

This paper presents a novel human-robot interaction (HRI) framework that enables intuitive gesture-driven control through a capacitance-based woven tactile skin. Unlike conventional interfaces that rely on panels or handheld devices, the…

People with lower and upper body disabilities can benefit from wheelchairs and robotic arms to improve mobility and independence. Prior assistive interfaces, such as touchscreens and voice-driven predefined commands, often remain…