English
Related papers

Related papers: Single-Level Differentiable Contact Simulation

200 papers

We present a framework for generating convex approximations of complex contact models, incorporating experimentally validated models like Hunt & Crossley coupled with Coulomb's law of friction alongside the principle of maximum dissipation.…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-07-16 Alejandro Castro , Xuchen Han , Joseph Masterjohn

This article presents computationally efficient algorithms for modeling two special cases of rigid contact---contact with only viscous friction and contact without slip---that have particularly useful applications in robotic locomotion and…

Robotics · Computer Science 2015-04-06 Evan Drumwright

We introduce a general differentiable solver for time-dependent deformation problems with contact and friction. Our approach uses a finite element discretization with a high-order time integrator coupled with the recently proposed…

Linear models for control and motion generation of humanoid robots have received significant attention in the past years, not only due to their well known theoretical guarantees, but also because of practical computational advantages.…

Robotics · Computer Science 2016-08-01 Brahayam Ponton , Alexander Herzog , Stefan Schaal , Ludovic Righetti

In this work, we present an approach to minimizing the time necessary for the end-effector of a redundant robot manipulator to traverse a Cartesian path by optimizing the trajectory of its joints. Each joint has limits in the ranges of…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-12-12 Jonathan Fried , Santiago Paternain

We introduce DIFFTACTILE, a physics-based differentiable tactile simulation system designed to enhance robotic manipulation with dense and physically accurate tactile feedback. In contrast to prior tactile simulators which primarily focus…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-03-14 Zilin Si , Gu Zhang , Qingwei Ben , Branden Romero , Zhou Xian , Chao Liu , Chuang Gan

Efficient and robust trajectories play a crucial role in contact-rich manipulation, which demands accurate mod- eling of object-robot interactions. Many existing approaches rely on point contact models due to their computational effi-…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-02-04 Haegu Lee , Yitaek Kim , Casper Hewson Rask , Christoffer Sloth

Creation of collision objects for 3D models is a time-consuming task, requiring modelers to manually place primitives such as bounding boxes, capsules, spheres, and other convex primitives to approximate complex meshes. While there has been…

Graphics · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Julian Knodt , Xifeng Gao

Differentiable rendering has gained significant attention in the field of robotics, with differentiable robot rendering emerging as an effective paradigm for learning robotic actions from image-space supervision. However, the lack of…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-03-27 Quanyuan Ruan , Jiabao Lei , Wenhao Yuan , Yanglin Zhang , Dekun Lu , Guiliang Liu , Kui Jia

We consider bilevel optimization problems with general nonconvex lower-level objectives and show that the classical hyperfunction-based formulation is unsettled, since the global minimizer of the lower-level problem is generally…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-31 Xiaotian Jiang , Jiaxiang Li , Jiawen Bi , Mingyi Hong , Shuzhong Zhang

Identifying predictive world models for robots in novel environments from sparse online observations is essential for robot task planning and execution in novel environments. However, existing methods that leverage differentiable…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-05-13 Yifan Zhu , Tianyi Xiang , Aaron Dollar , Zherong Pan

For many robotic manipulation and contact tasks, it is crucial to accurately estimate uncertain object poses, for which certain geometry and sensor information are fused in some optimal fashion. Previous results for this problem primarily…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-05-29 Jeongmin Lee , Minji Lee , Dongjun Lee

Generalizable manipulation requires that robots be able to interact with novel objects and environment. This requirement makes manipulation extremely challenging as a robot has to reason about complex frictional interactions with…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-07-08 Yuki Shirai , Devesh K. Jha , Arvind U. Raghunathan

Dexterous manipulation requires careful reasoning over extrinsic contacts. The prevalence of deforming tools in human environments, the use of deformable sensors, and the increasing number of soft robots yields a need for approaches that…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-05-19 Mark Van der Merwe , Miquel Oller , Dmitry Berenson , Nima Fazeli

We present a novel, fast differentiable simulator for soft-body learning and control applications. Existing differentiable soft-body simulators can be classified into two categories based on their time integration methods: Simulators using…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-12 Tao Du , Kui Wu , Pingchuan Ma , Sebastien Wah , Andrew Spielberg , Daniela Rus , Wojciech Matusik

Deformable object manipulation is a classical and challenging research area in robotics. Compared with rigid object manipulation, this problem is more complex due to the deformation properties including elastic, plastic, and elastoplastic…

Optimal control approaches in combination with trajectory optimization have recently proven to be a promising control strategy for legged robots. Computationally efficient and robust algorithms were derived using simplified models of the…

Robotics · Computer Science 2016-12-28 Alexander Herzog , Stefan Schaal , Ludovic Righetti

Articulated objects used in simulation and embodied AI are typically specified by geometry and kinematic structure, but lack the fine-grained dynamical effects that govern realistic mechanical behavior, such as frictional holding, detents,…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Tianhong Gao , Cheng Yu , Yinghao Xu , Mengyu Chu

Robotic manipulation in unstructured environments requires planners to reason jointly about free-space motion and sustained, frictional contact with the environment. Existing (local) planning and simulation frameworks typically separate…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-02-05 Bingkun Huang , Xin Ma , Nilanjan Chakraborty , Riddhiman Laha

Soft robots can safely interact with environments because of their mechanical compliance. Self-collision is also employed in the modern design of soft robots to enhance their performance during different tasks. However, developing an…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-08-02 Guoxin Fang , Yingjun Tian , Andrew Weightman , Charlie C. L. Wang