Related papers: Design and Motion Planning for a Reconfigurable Ro…

Quadrupedal robots have emerged as a cutting-edge platform for assisting humans, finding applications in tasks related to inspection and exploration in remote areas. Nevertheless, their floating base structure renders them susceptible to…

Soft pneumatic legged robots show promise in their ability to traverse a range of different types of terrain, including natural unstructured terrain met in applications like precision agriculture. They can adapt their body morphology to the…

Soft robots are distinguished by their flexibility and adaptability, allowing them to perform nearly impossible tasks for rigid robots. However, controlling their behavior is challenging due to their nonlinear material response and infinite…

This paper presents a distributed method for robots moving in rigid formations while ensuring probabilistic collision avoidance between the robots. The formation is parametrised through the transformation of a base configuration. The robots…

Reconfigurable robots are at the forefront of robotics innovation due to their unmatched versatility and adaptability in addressing various tasks through collaborative operations. This paper explores the design and implementation of a novel…

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…

Many robot manipulation tasks require the robot to make and break contact with objects and surfaces. The dynamics of such changing-contact robot manipulation tasks are discontinuous when contact is made or broken, and continuous elsewhere.…

Legged robot locomotion requires the planning of stable reference trajectories, especially while traversing uneven terrain. The proposed trajectory optimization framework is capable of generating dynamically stable base and footstep…

Motion planning in high-dimensional space is a challenging task. In order to perform dexterous manipulation in an unstructured environment, a robot with many degrees of freedom is usually necessary, which also complicates its motion…

Recent advancements in robotics have transformed industries such as manufacturing, logistics, surgery, and planetary exploration. A key challenge is developing efficient motion planning algorithms that allow robots to navigate complex…

High-speed legged navigation in discrete and geometrically complex environments is a challenging task because of the high-degree-of-freedom dynamics and long-horizon, nonconvex nature of the optimization problem. In this work, we propose a…

Planning whole-body motions while taking into account the terrain conditions is a challenging problem for legged robots since the terrain model might produce many local minima. Our coupled planning method uses stochastic and…

For mobile robots, navigating cluttered or dynamic environments often necessitates non-prehensile manipulation, particularly when faced with objects that are too large, irregular, or fragile to grasp. The unpredictable behavior and varying…

While both navigation and manipulation are challenging topics in isolation, many tasks require the ability to both navigate and manipulate in concert. To this end, we propose a mobile manipulation system that leverages novel navigation and…

In field environments, numerous robots necessitate manual intervention for restoration of functionality post a turnover, resulting in diminished operational efficiency. This study presents an innovative design solution for a reversible…

Soft robotics has advanced rapidly, yet its control methods remain fragmented: different morphologies and actuation schemes still require task-specific controllers, hindering theoretical integration and large-scale deployment. A generic…

Coordination of movement and configuration in robotic swarms is a challenging endeavor. Deciding when and where each individual robot must move is a computationally complex problem. The challenge is further exacerbated by difficulties…

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…

Motion imitation is a pivotal and effective approach for humanoid robots to achieve a more diverse range of complex and expressive movements, making their performances more human-like. However, the significant differences in kinematics and…

Multi-robot control in cluttered environments is a challenging problem that involves complex physical constraints, including robot-robot collisions, robot-obstacle collisions, and unreachable motions. Successful planning in such settings…