Related papers: Team CERBERUS Wins the DARPA Subterranean Challeng…
To perform tasks well in a new domain, one must first know something about it. This paper reports on a robot controller for navigation through unfamiliar indoor worlds. Based on spatial affordances, it integrates planning with reactive…
Multi-task indoor scene understanding is widely considered as an intriguing formulation, as the affinity of different tasks may lead to improved performance. In this paper, we tackle the new problem of joint semantic, affordance and…
After the three DARPA Grand Challenge contests many groups around the world have continued to actively research and work toward an autonomous vehicle capable of accomplishing a mission in a given context (e.g. desert, city) while following…
The popularity of mobile robots has been steadily growing, with these robots being increasingly utilized to execute tasks previously completed by human workers. For bipedal robots to see this same success, robust autonomous navigation…
The Daedalus 2 mission aboard REXUS 29 is a technology demonstrator for an alternative descent mechanism for very high altitude drops based on auto-rotation. It consists of two probes that are ejected from a sounding rocket at an altitude…
Robotic systems need advanced mobility capabilities to operate in complex, three-dimensional environments designed for human use, e.g., multi-level buildings. Incorporating some level of autonomy enables robots to operate robustly,…
This paper develops a communication-efficient distributed mapping approach for rapid exploration of a cave by a multi-robot team. Subsurface planetary exploration is an unsolved problem challenged by communication, power, and compute…
Background: Assistance robots have the potential to increase the independence of people who need daily care due to limited mobility or being wheelchair-bound. Current solutions of attaching robotic arms to motorized wheelchairs offer…
Robots will bring search and rescue (SaR) in disaster response to another level, in case they can autonomously take over dangerous SaR tasks from humans. A main challenge for autonomous SaR robots is to safely navigate in cluttered…
Solving mobile manipulation tasks in inaccessible and dangerous environments is an important application of robots to support humans. Example domains are construction and maintenance of manned and unmanned stations on the moon and other…
Design, implementation, and machine learning issues associated with developing a control system for a serpentine robotic manipulator are explored. The controller developed provides autonomous control of the serpentine robotic…
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…
We present an autonomous exploration system for efficient coverage of unknown environments. First, a rapid environment preprocessing method is introduced to provide environmental information for subsequent exploration planning. Then, the…
Autonomously controlling quadrotors in large-scale subterranean environments is applicable to many areas such as environmental surveying, mining operations, and search and rescue. Learning-based controllers represent an appealing approach…
The DARPA Subterranean Challenge is leading the development of robots capable of mapping underground mines and tunnels up to 8km in length and identify objects and people. Developing these autonomous abilities paves the way for future…
The DARPA Fast Lightweight Autonomy (FLA) program (2015 - 2018) served as a significant milestone in the development of UAS, particularly for autonomous navigation through unknown GPS-denied environments. Three performing teams developed…
Atmospheric clouds exhibit complex three-dimensional structure and microphysical details that are poorly constrained by the predominantly two-dimensional satellite observations available at global scales. This mismatch complicates…
Mobile manipulation robots have high potential to support rescue forces in disaster-response missions. Despite the difficulties imposed by real-world scenarios, robots are promising to perform mission tasks from a safe distance. In the…
This paper presents a vision system and a depth processing algorithm for DRC-HUBO+, the winner of the DRC finals 2015. Our system is designed to reliably capture 3D information of a scene and objects robust to challenging environment…
This paper presents an algorithmic framework for the distributed on-line source seeking, termed as 'DoSS', with a multi-robot system in an unknown dynamical environment. Our algorithm, building on a novel concept called dummy confidence…