Related papers: N-LIMB: Neural Limb Optimization for Efficient Mor…
Many microorganisms swim by performing larger non-reciprocal shape deformations that are initiated locally by molecular motors. However, it remains unclear how decentralized shape control determines the movement of the entire organism.…
Motion planning for multi-jointed robots is challenging. Due to the inherent complexity of the problem, most existing works decompose motion planning as easier subproblems. However, because of the inconsistent performance metrics, only…
Robotic arms are highly common in various automation processes such as manufacturing lines. However, these highly capable robots are usually degraded to simple repetitive tasks such as pick-and-place. On the other hand, designing an optimal…
Soft robots offer more flexibility, compliance, and adaptability than traditional rigid robots. They are also typically lighter and cheaper to manufacture. However, their use in real-world applications is limited due to modeling challenges…
Robots' behavior and performance are determined both by hardware and software. The design process of robotic systems is a complex journey that involves multiple phases. Throughout this process, the aim is to tackle various criteria…
Enabling robots to autonomously perform hybrid motions in diverse environments can be beneficial for long-horizon tasks such as material handling, household chores, and work assistance. This requires extensive exploitation of intrinsic…
Designing modern imitation learning (IL) policies requires making numerous decisions, including the selection of feature encoding, architecture, policy representation, and more. As the field rapidly advances, the range of available options…
Multi-robot systems offer enhanced capability over their monolithic counterparts, but they come at a cost of increased complexity in coordination. To reduce complexity and to make the problem tractable, multi-robot motion planning (MRMP)…
Natural organisms utilize distributed actuation through their musculoskeletal systems to adapt their gait for traversing diverse terrains or to morph their bodies for varied tasks. A longstanding challenge in robotics is to emulate this…
This paper presents a control framework that combines model-based optimal control and reinforcement learning (RL) to achieve versatile and robust legged locomotion. Our approach enhances the RL training process by incorporating on-demand…
The coupling of human movement dynamics with the function and design of wearable assistive devices is vital to better understand the interaction between the two. Advanced neuromuscular models and optimal control formulations provide the…
Consider the problem of planning collision-free motion of $n$ objects in the plane movable through contact with a robot that can autonomously translate in the plane and that can move a maximum of $m \leq n$ objects simultaneously. This…
Replicating and surpassing the autonomy of natural organisms remains a long-standing goal in robotics. Yet most robotic systems have their structure, materials, and control designed separately, in sharp contrast to the co-evolution in…
Classically, the development of humanoid robots has been sequential and iterative. Such bottom-up design procedures rely heavily on intuition and are often biased by the designer's experience. Exploiting the non-linear coupled design space…
Designing robotic hand morphologies for diverse manipulation tasks requires balancing dexterity, manufacturability, and task-specific functionality. While open-source frameworks and parametric tools support reproducible design, they still…
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…
Multiple domains like vision, natural language, and audio are witnessing tremendous progress by leveraging Transformers for large scale pre-training followed by task specific fine tuning. In contrast, in robotics we primarily train a single…
Robots are traditionally bounded by a fixed embodiment during their operational lifetime, which limits their ability to adapt to their surroundings. Co-optimizing control and morphology of a robot, however, is often inefficient due to the…
Humanoid robots are machines built with an anthropomorphic shape. Despite decades of research into the subject, it is still challenging to tackle the robot locomotion problem from an algorithmic point of view. For example, these machines…
This paper deals with the problem of time-constrained navigation of a robot modeled by uncertain nonlinear non-affine dynamics in a bounded workspace of $\mathbb{R}^n$. Initially, we provide a novel class of robust feedback controllers that…