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Soft robots are intrinsically capable of adapting to different environments by changing their shape in response to interaction forces with the environment. However, sensing and feedback are still required for higher level decisions and…

This paper develops model-based grasp planning algorithms for assembly tasks. It focuses on industrial end-effectors like grippers and suction cups, and plans grasp configurations considering CAD models of target objects. The developed…

While compliant grippers have become increasingly commonplace in robot manipulation, finding the right stiffness and geometry for grasping the widest variety of objects remains a key challenge. Adjusting both stiffness and gripper geometry…

Friction plays a key role in manipulating objects. Most of what we do with our hands, and most of what robots do with their grippers, is based on the ability to control frictional forces. This paper aims to better understand the variability…

Interaction in virtual reality (VR) environments is essential to achieve a pleasant and immersive experience. Most of the currently existing VR applications, lack of robust object grasping and manipulation, which are the cornerstone of…

Reliable aerial grasping in cluttered environments remains challenging due to occlusions and collision risks. Existing aerial manipulation pipelines largely rely on centroid-based grasping and lack integration between the grasp pose…

To achieve a successful grasp, gripper attributes such as its geometry and kinematics play a role as important as the object geometry. The majority of previous work has focused on developing grasp methods that generalize over novel object…

The logarithmic spiral is observed as a common pattern in several living beings across kingdoms and species. Some examples include fern shoots, prehensile tails, and soft limbs like octopus arms and elephant trunks. In the latter cases,…

The impressive capabilities of humans to robustly perform manipulation relies on compliant interactions, enabled through the structure and materials spatially distributed in our hands. We propose by mimicking this distributed compliance in…

The dynamics of geometrically non-linear flexible filaments play an important role in a host of biological processes, from flagella-driven cell transport to the polymeric structure of complex fluids. Such problems have historically been…

Simulating interactions between deformable bodies is vital in fields like material science, mechanical design, and robotics. While learning-based methods with Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are effective at solving complex physical systems,…

Alignment interactions in active matter are typically modeled as relaxational dynamics toward local consensus. In unbounded systems, this makes alignment effectively decoupled from local density and therefore unable to sustain self-confined…

Active solids consist of elastically coupled out-of-equilibrium units performing work. They are central to autonomous processes, such as locomotion, self-oscillations and rectification, in biological systems,designer materials and robotics.…

The inverse statistical problem of finding direct interactions in complex networks is difficult. In the natural sciences, well-controlled perturbation experiments are widely used to probe the structure of complex networks. However, our…

The accurate detection and grasping of transparent objects are challenging but of significance to robots. Here, a visual-tactile fusion framework for transparent object grasping under complex backgrounds and variant light conditions is…

We present an adaptive grasping method that finds stable grasps on novel objects. The main contributions of this paper is in the computation of the probability of success of grasps in the vicinity of an already applied grasp. Our method…

Selecting out-of-reach objects is a fundamental task in mixed reality (MR). Existing methods rely on a single cue or deterministically fuse multiple cues, leading to performance degradation when the dominant cue becomes unreliable. In this…

Robotic manipulation research has investigated contact-rich problems and strategies that require robots to intentionally collide with their environment, to accomplish tasks that cannot be handled by traditional collision-free solutions. By…

The elastic response is studied of a single flexible chain grafted on a rigid plane and an ensemble of non-interacting tethered chains. It is demonstrated that the entropic theory of rubber elasticity leads to conclusions that disagree with…

Gripping and holding of objects are key tasks for robotic manipulators. The development of universal grippers able to pick up unfamiliar objects of widely varying shape and surface properties remains, however, challenging. Most current…