Related papers: Design and Motion Planning for a Reconfigurable Ro…
This paper studies jumping for wheeled-bipedal robots, a motion that takes full advantage of the benefits from the hybrid wheeled and legged design features. A comprehensive hierarchical scheme for motion planning and control of jumping…
Manipulation planning is the task of computing robot trajectories that move a set of objects to their target configuration while satisfying physically feasibility. In contrast to existing works that assume known object templates, we are…
Modular reconfigurable manipulators enable quick adaptation and versatility to address different application environments and tailor to the specific requirements of the tasks. Task performance significantly depends on the manipulator's…
Quadruped mammals coordinate spinal bending and axial compression to enhance locomotion agility and efficiency. However, existing robotic spines typically lack the active compliance required to support such dynamic behaviours. We present…
Non-prehensile planar manipulation, including pushing and press-and-slide, is critical for diverse robotic tasks, but notoriously challenging due to hybrid contact mechanics, under-actuation, and asymmetric friction limits that…
Robotic manipulation relies on analytical or learned models to simulate the system dynamics. These models are often inaccurate and based on offline information, so that the robot planner is unable to cope with mismatches between the…
Sprawling locomotion in vertebrates, particularly salamanders, demonstrates how body undulation and spinal mobility enhance stability, maneuverability, and adaptability across complex terrains. While prior work has separately explored…
Robot manipulation in cluttered scenes often requires contact-rich interactions with objects. It can be more economical to interact via non-prehensile actions, for example, push through other objects to get to the desired grasp pose,…
Magnetic microrobots can be navigated by an external magnetic field to autonomously move within living organisms with complex and unstructured environments. Potential applications include drug delivery, diagnostics, and therapeutic…
As a simple and robust mobile robot base, differential drive robots that can be modelled as a kinematic unicycle find significant applications in logistics and service robotics in both industrial and domestic settings. Safe robot navigation…
Planning and control for high-dimensional robot manipulators in cluttered dynamic environments require computational efficiency and robust safety guarantees. Inspired by recent advances in learning configuration-space distance functions…
Soft robots have drawn significant attention recently for their ability to achieve rich shapes when interacting with complex environments. However, their elasticity and flexibility compared to rigid robots also pose significant challenges…
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…
Soft robots have the potential to revolutionize the use of robotic systems with their capability of establishing safe, robust, and adaptable interactions with their environment, but their precise control remains challenging. In contrast,…
Reliably planning fingertip grasps for multi-fingered hands lies as a key challenge for many tasks including tool use, insertion, and dexterous in-hand manipulation. This task becomes even more difficult when the robot lacks an accurate…
Fluidically actuated soft robots have promising capabilities such as inherent compliance and user safety. The control of soft robots needs to properly handle nonlinear actuation dynamics, motion constraints, workspace limitations, and…
Soft machines typically exhibit slow locomotion speed and low manipulation strength because of intrinsic limitations of soft materials. Here, we present a generic design principle that harnesses mechanical instability for a variety of…
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…
Planning motions to grasp an object in cluttered and uncertain environments is a challenging task, particularly when a collision-free trajectory does not exist and objects obstructing the way are required to be carefully grasped and moved…
Most object manipulation strategies for robots are based on the assumption that the object is rigid (i.e., with fixed geometry) and the goal's details have been fully specified (e.g., the exact target pose). However, there are many tasks…