Related papers: Reacting to Contact: Transparency and Collision Re…

Implicit communication plays such a crucial role during social exchanges that it must be considered for a good experience in human-robot interaction. This work addresses implicit communication associated with the detection of physical…

We present a fully distributed collision avoidance algorithm based on convex optimization for a team of mobile robots. This method addresses the practical case in which agents sense each other via measurements from noisy on-board sensors…

One of the most important aspects of autonomous systems is safety. This includes ensuring safe human-robot and safe robot-environment interaction when autonomously performing complex tasks or in collaborative scenarios. Although several…

Service and assistive robots are increasingly being deployed in dynamic social environments; however, ensuring transparent and explainable interactions remains a significant challenge. This paper presents a multimodal explainability module…

In Social Robot Navigation (SRN), the availability of meaningful metrics is crucial for evaluating trajectories from human-robot interactions. In the SRN context, such interactions often relate to resolving conflicts between two or more…

This paper addresses the localization of contacts of an unknown grasped rigid object with its environment, i.e., extrinsic to the robot. We explore the key role that distributed tactile sensing plays in localizing contacts external to the…

A shared grasp is a grasp formed by contacts between the manipulated object and both the robot hand and the environment. By trading off hand contacts for environmental contacts, a shared grasp requires fewer contacts with the hand, and…

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.…

The raise of collaborative robotics has led to wide range of sensor technologies to detect human-machine interactions: at short distances, proximity sensors detect nontactile gestures virtually occlusion-free, while at medium distances,…

This paper explores the concept of engagement, the process by which individuals in an interaction start, maintain and end their perceived connection to one another. The paper reports on one aspect of engagement among human interactors--the…

Soft electronic skins are one of the means to turn an industrial manipulator into a collaborative robot. For manipulators that are already fit for physical human-robot collaboration, soft skins can make them safer. In this work, we study…

The sense of touch plays a key role in enabling humans to understand and interact with surrounding environments. For robots, tactile sensing is also irreplaceable. While interacting with objects, tactile sensing provides useful information…

Robotics research has long sought to give robots the ability to perceive the physical world through touch in an analogous manner to many biological systems. Developing such tactile capabilities is important for numerous emerging…

The gaze of a person tends to reflect their interest. This work explores what happens when this statement is taken literally and applied to robots. Here we present a robot system that employs a moving robot head with a screen-based eye…

This paper describes the design of a multi-camera optical tactile sensor that provides information about the contact force distribution applied to its soft surface. This information is contained in the motion of spherical particles spread…

Aerial robots are a well-established solution for exploration, monitoring, and inspection, thanks to their superior maneuverability and agility. However, in many environments, they risk crashing and sustaining damage after collisions.…

Inferring physical properties can significantly enhance robotic manipulation by enabling robots to handle objects safely and efficiently through adaptive grasping strategies. Previous approaches have typically relied on either tactile or…

We present a model predictive controller (MPC) that automatically discovers collision-free locomotion while simultaneously taking into account the system dynamics, friction constraints, and kinematic limitations. A relaxed barrier function…

In this paper, we present a framework that unites obstacle avoidance and deliberate physical interaction for robotic manipulators. As humans and robots begin to coexist in work and household environments, pure collision avoidance is…

This study proposes novel control methods that lower impact force by preemptive movement and smoothly transition to conventional contact impedance control. These suggested techniques are for force control-based robots and position/velocity…