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Generalizable manipulation requires that robots be able to interact with novel objects and environment. This requirement makes manipulation extremely challenging as a robot has to reason about complex frictional interactions with…
Many industries extensively use flexible materials. Effective approaches for handling flexible objects with a robot manipulator must address residual vibrations. Existing solutions rely on complex models, use additional instrumentation for…
We consider the problem of reorienting a rigid object with arbitrary known shape on a table using a two-finger pinch gripper. Reorienting problem is challenging because of its non-smoothness and high dimensionality. In this work, we focus…
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…
Bilevel optimization is a powerful tool for modeling hierarchical decision making processes. However, the resulting problems are challenging to solve - both in theory and practice. Fortunately, there have been significant algorithmic…
Robust motion planning is a well-studied problem in the robotics literature, yet current algorithms struggle to operate scalably and safely in the presence of other moving agents, such as humans. This paper introduces a novel framework for…
This paper introduces a new technique for learning probabilistic models of mass and friction distributions of unknown objects, and performing robust sliding actions by using the learned models. The proposed method is executed in two…
Manipulating deformable objects arises in daily life and numerous applications. Despite phenomenal advances in industrial robotics, manipulation of deformable objects remains mostly a manual task. This is because of the high number of…
Planning accurate manipulation for deformable objects requires prediction of their state. The prediction is often complicated by a loss of stability that may result in collapse of the deformable object. In this work, stability of a fabric…
We study the problem of bipedal robot navigation in complex environments with uncertain and rough terrain. In particular, we consider a scenario in which the robot is expected to reach a desired goal location by traversing an environment…
(Stochastic) bilevel optimization is a frequently encountered problem in machine learning with a wide range of applications such as meta-learning, hyper-parameter optimization, and reinforcement learning. Most of the existing studies on…
This work establishes a solution to the problem of assessing the capacity of multi-object assemblies to withstand external forces without becoming unstable. Our physically-grounded approach handles arbitrary structures made from rigid…
In experimental robotics, researchers may face uncertainties in parameters of a robot manipulator that they are working with. This uncertainty may be caused by deviations in the manufacturing process of a manipulator, or changes applied to…
In-hand object manipulation is an important capability for dexterous manipulation. In this paper, we introduce a modeling and planning framework for in-hand object reconfiguration, focusing on frictional patch contacts between the robot's…
Robotic manipulation demands precise control over both contact forces and motion trajectories. While force control is essential for achieving compliant interaction and high-frequency adaptation, it is limited to operations in close…
Robots are moving towards applications in less structured environments, but their model-based controllers are challenged by the tasks' complexity and intrinsic environmental unpredictability. Studying biological motor control can provide…
Pivoting gait is efficient for manipulating a big and heavy object with relatively small manipulating force, in which a robot iteratively tilts the object, rotates it around the vertex, and then puts it down to the floor. However, pivoting…
This paper focuses on robustness to disturbance forces and uncertain payloads. We present a novel formulation to optimize the robustness of dynamic trajectories. A straightforward transcription of this formulation into a nonlinear…
Parameterizing finger rolling and finger-object contacts in a differentiable manner is important for formulating dexterous manipulation as a trajectory optimization problem. In contrast to previous methods which often assume simplified…
Multi-robot formation control has various applications in domains such as vehicle troops, platoons, payload transportation, and surveillance. Maintaining formation in a vehicle platoon requires designing a suitable control scheme that can…