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Intercepting dynamic objects in uncertain environments involves a significant unresolved challenge in modern robotic systems. Current control approaches rely solely on estimated information, and results lack guarantees of robustness and…
Deformable object manipulation (DOM) for robots has a wide range of applications in various fields such as industrial, service and health care sectors. However, compared to manipulation of rigid objects, DOM poses significant challenges for…
Motion planning is a fundamental problem and focuses on finding control inputs that enable a robot to reach a goal region while safely avoiding obstacles. However, in many situations, the state of the system may not be known but only…
This work provides a complete framework for the simulation, co-optimization, and sim-to-real transfer of the design and control of soft legged robots. The compliance of soft robots provides a form of "mechanical intelligence" -- the ability…
We present a framework for deformable object manipulation that interleaves planning and control, enabling complex manipulation tasks without relying on high-fidelity modeling or simulation. The key question we address is when should we use…
Underactuated robots are characterized by a larger number of degrees of freedom than actuators and if they are designed with a specific mass distribution, they can be controlled by means of differential flatness theory. This structural…
We present a framework for bi-level trajectory optimization in which a system's dynamics are encoded as the solution to a constrained optimization problem and smooth gradients of this lower-level problem are passed to an upper-level…
Dual-arm manipulation is an area of growing interest in the robotics community. Enabling robots to perform tasks that require the coordinated use of two arms, is essential for complex manipulation tasks such as handling large objects,…
This paper presents an approach to deal with safety of dynamical systems in presence of multiple non-convex unsafe sets. While optimal control and model predictive control strategies can be employed in these scenarios, they suffer from high…
Attempts to install a rotating tool at the end of a robot arm poly-articulated date back twenty years, but these robots were not designed for that. Indeed, two essential features are necessary for machining: high rigidity and precision in a…
Robots are becoming a vital ingredient in society. Some of their daily tasks require dual-arm manipulation skills in the rapidly changing, dynamic and unpredictable real-world environments where they have to operate. Given the expertise of…
In the field of robotic manipulation, the proficiency of deformable object manipulation lags behind human capabilities due to the inherent characteristics of deformable objects. These objects have infinite degrees of freedom, resulting in…
Motion planning trajectories for a multi-limbed robot to climb up walls requires a unique combination of constraints on torque, contact force, and posture. This paper focuses on motion planning for one particular setup wherein a six-legged…
The paper focuses on the calibration of elastostatic parameters of spatial anthropomorphic robots. It proposes a new strategy for optimal selection of the measurement configurations that essentially increases the efficiency of robot…
Convex optimization is crucial in controlling legged robots, where stability and optimal control are vital. Many control problems can be formulated as convex optimization problems, with a convex cost function and constraints capturing…
Accurately modeling local surface properties of objects is crucial to many robotic applications, from grasping to material recognition. Surface properties like friction are however difficult to estimate, as visual observation of the object…
To achieve high-accuracy manipulation in the presence of unknown disturbances, we propose two novel efficient and robust motion control schemes for high-dimensional robot manipulators. Both controllers incorporate an unknown system dynamics…
In outdoor environments, mobile robots are required to navigate through terrain with varying characteristics, some of which might significantly affect the integrity of the platform. Ideally, the robot should be able to identify areas that…
Force modulation of robotic manipulators has been extensively studied for several decades but is not yet commonly used in safety-critical applications due to a lack of accurate interaction contact modeling and weak performance guarantees -…
Bilevel optimization and bilevel minimax optimization have recently emerged as unifying frameworks for a range of machine-learning tasks, including hyperparameter optimization and reinforcement learning. The existing literature focuses on…