Related papers: A Stack-of-Tasks Approach Combined with Behavior T…
Behavior Trees (BTs) have found a widespread adoption in robotics due to appealing features, their ease of use as a conceptual model of control policies and the availability of software tooling for BT-based design of control software.…
With the advancements in modern intelligent technologies, mobile robots equipped with manipulators are increasingly operating in unstructured environments. These robots can plan sequences of actions for long-horizon tasks based on perceived…
In a multi-robot system, the appropriate allocation of the tasks to the individual robots is a very significant component. The availability of a centralized infrastructure can guarantee an optimal allocation of the tasks. However, in many…
This paper presents a novel method for controlling teams of unmanned aerial vehicles using Stochastic Optimal Control (SOC) theory. The approach consists of a centralized high-level planner that computes optimal state trajectories as…
Interpretable policy representations like Behavior Trees (BTs) and Dynamic Motion Primitives (DMPs) enable robot skill transfer from human demonstrations, but each faces limitations: BTs require expert-crafted low-level actions, while DMPs…
The work presented here is a novel biological approach for the compliant control of a robotic arm in real time (RT). We integrate a spiking cerebellar network at the core of a feedback control loop performing torque-driven control. The…
Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a powerful mathematical framework that allows robots to learn complex skills by trial-and-error. Despite numerous successes in many applications, RL algorithms still require thousands of trials to converge to…
Achieving reactive robot behavior in complex dynamic environments is still challenging as it relies on being able to solve trajectory optimization problems quickly enough, such that we can replan the future motion at frequencies which are…
Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated unprecedented capability in reasoning with natural language. Coupled with this development is the emergence of embodied AI in robotics. Despite showing promise for verbal and written reasoning…
We propose a novel approach for sampling-based and control-based motion planning that combines a representation of the environment obtained via a modified version of optimal Rapidly-exploring Random Trees (RRT*), with landmark-based…
Efficient multi-robot task allocation (MRTA) is fundamental to various time-sensitive applications such as disaster response, warehouse operations, and construction. This paper tackles a particular class of these problems that we call…
Self-assembly of modular robotic systems enables the construction of complex robotic configurations to adapt to different tasks. This paper presents a framework for SMORES types of modular robots to efficiently self-assemble into tree…
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…
For a mobile robot to be truly autonomous, it must solve the simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) problem. We develop a new metaheuristic algorithm called Simulated Tom Thumb (STT), based on the detailed adventure of the clever Tom…
This paper introduces MRTA-Sim, a Python/ROS2/Gazebo simulator for testing approaches to Multi-Robot Task Allocation (MRTA) problems on simulated robots in complex, indoor environments. Grid-based approaches to MRTA problems can be too…
Robots usually establish contacts at rigid surfaces with near-zero relative velocities. Otherwise, impact-induced energy propagates in the robot's linkage and may cause irreversible damage to the hardware. Moreover, abrupt changes in…
Despite recent advances in learning-based controllers for legged robots, deployments in human-centric environments remain limited by safety concerns. Most of these approaches use position-based control, where policies output target joint…
In this paper, we enable automated property verification of deliberative components in robot control architectures. We focus on formalizing the execution context of Behavior Trees (BTs) to provide a scalable, yet formally grounded,…
In order to solve complex, long-horizon tasks, intelligent robots need to carry out high-level, abstract planning and reasoning in conjunction with motion planning. However, abstract models are typically lossy and plans or policies computed…
The Industry 4.0 paradigm manifests the shift towards mass customization and cyber-physical production systems (CPPS) and sets new requirements for industrial automation software in terms of modularity, flexibility, and short development…