Related papers: Complex In-Hand Manipulation via Compliance-Enable…
Reinforcement learning (RL) and sim-to-real transfer have advanced rigid-object manipulation. However, policies remain brittle for articulated mechanisms due to contact-rich dynamics that require both stable grasping and simultaneous free…
Machines that mimic humans have inspired scientists for centuries. Bio-inspired soft robotic hands are a good example of such an endeavor, featuring intrinsic material compliance and continuous motion to deal with uncertainty and adapt to…
This paper uses a mobile manipulator with a collaborative robotic arm to manipulate objects beyond the robot's maximum payload. It proposes a single-shot probabilistic roadmap-based method to plan and optimize manipulation motion with…
This paper presents a soft robot finger capable of adaptive-twist deformation to grasp objects by wrapping them. For a soft hand to grasp and pick-up one object from densely contained multiple objects, a soft finger requires the…
Tactile information plays a critical role in human dexterity. It reveals useful contact information that may not be inferred directly from vision. In fact, humans can even perform in-hand dexterous manipulation without using vision. Can we…
Contact can be conceptualized as a set of constraints imposed on two bodies that are interacting with one another in some way. The nature of a contact, whether a point, line, or surface, dictates how these bodies are able to move with…
Most robotic hands and grippers rely on actuators with large gearboxes and force sensors for controlling gripping force. However, this might not be ideal for tasks which require the robot to interact with an unstructured and/or unknown…
In this paper, we consider the problem of non-prehensile manipulation using grasped objects. This problem is a superset of many common manipulation skills including instances of tool-use (e.g., grasped spatula flipping a burger) and…
This paper proposes a controller for stable grasping of unknown-shaped objects by two robotic fingers with tactile fingertips. The grasp is stabilised by rolling the fingertips on the contact surface and applying a desired grasping force to…
This paper proposes a novel approach to performing in-grasp manipulation: the problem of moving an object with reference to the palm from an initial pose to a goal pose without breaking or making contacts. Our method to perform in-grasp…
We present a self-contained, soft robotic hand composed of soft pneumatic actuator modules that are equipped with strain and pressure sensing. We show how this data can be used to discern whether a grasp was successful. Co-locating sensing…
Human grasps can be roughly categorized into two types: power grasps and precision grasps. Precision grasping enables tool use and is believed to have influenced human evolution. Today's multi-fingered robotic hands are effective in power…
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…
Robotic in-hand manipulation has been a long-standing challenge due to the complexity of modelling hand and object in contact and of coordinating finger motion for complex manipulation sequences. To address these challenges, the majority of…
Tendon-driven underactuated hands excel in adaptive grasping but often suffer from kinematic unpredictability and highly non-linear force transmission. This ambiguity limits their ability to perform precise free-motion shaping and deliver…
Dexterous multi-fingered hands can provide robots with the ability to flexibly perform a wide range of manipulation skills. However, many of the more complex behaviors are also notoriously difficult to control: Performing in-hand object…
In-hand object reorientation has been a challenging problem in robotics due to high dimensional actuation space and the frequent change in contact state between the fingers and the objects. We present a simple model-free framework that can…
Attempts to achieve robotic Within-Hand-Manipulation (WIHM) generally utilize either high-DOF robotic hands with elaborate sensing apparatus or multi-arm robotic systems. In prior work we presented a simple robot hand with variable friction…
Contact-based motion planning for manipulation, object exploration or balancing often requires finding sequences of fixed and sliding contacts and planning the transition from one contact in the environment to another. However, most…
To adapt to constantly changing environments and be safe for human interaction, robots should have compliant and soft characteristics as well as the ability to sense the world around them. Even so, the incorporation of tactile sensing into…