Related papers: A light- and heat-seeking vine-inspired robot with…
As robots become increasingly prominent in diverse industrial settings, the desire for an accessible and reliable system has correspondingly increased. Yet, the task of meaningfully assessing the feasibility of introducing a new robotic…
Enabling reaching capabilities in highly redundant continuum robot arms is an active area of research. Existing solutions comprise of task-space controllers, whose proper functioning is still limited to laboratory environments. In contrast,…
Vine-inspired robots achieve large workspace coverage through tip eversion, enabling safe navigation in confined and cluttered environments. However, their deployment in free space is fundamentally limited by low axial stiffness, poor…
Shape change enables new capabilities for robots. One class of robots capable of dramatic shape change is soft growing "vine" robots. These robots usually feature global actuation methods for bending that limit them to simple,…
My overarching research goal is to provide robots with perceptional abilities that allow interactions with humans in a human-like manner. To develop these perceptional abilities, I believe that it is useful to study the principles of the…
Natural lifeforms specialise to their environmental niches across many levels; from low-level features such as DNA and proteins, through to higher-level artefacts including eyes, limbs, and overarching body plans. We propose Multi-Level…
Humans in contrast to robots are excellent in performing fine manipulation tasks owing to their remarkable dexterity and sensorimotor organization. Enabling robots to acquire such capabilities, necessitates a framework that not only…
Mobile service robots are increasingly prevalent in human-centric, real-world domains, operating autonomously in unconstrained indoor environments. In such a context, robotic vision plays a central role in enabling service robots to…
Tight matching with the environment is key to effective robot operation in complex settings. Situated robots that build their bodies in situ (e.g. by spinning) are uniquely positioned to exploit their surroundings, yet functionalization of…
Soft robots have demonstrated superior flexibility and functionality than conventional rigid robots. These versatile devices can respond to a wide range of external stimuli (including light, magnetic field, heat, electric field, etc.), and…
Robustness, the ability of a system to maintain performance under significant and unanticipated environmental changes, is a critical property for robotic systems. While biological systems naturally exhibit robustness, there is no…
Biomimetic and Bioinspired design is not only a potent resource for roboticists looking to develop robust engineering systems or understand the natural world. It is also a uniquely accessible entry point into science and technology. Every…
While robots are increasingly integrated into the built environment, little is known how their qualities can meaningfully influence our spaces to facilitate enjoyable and agreeable interaction, rather than robotic settings that are driven…
Automating tasks in outdoor agricultural fields poses significant challenges due to environmental variability, unstructured terrain, and diverse crop characteristics. We present a robotic system for autonomous pepper harvesting designed to…
The advent of the era of machines has limited human interaction and this has increased their presence in the last decade. The requirement to increase the effectiveness, durability and reliability in the robots has also risen quite…
Pruning is the art of cutting unwanted and unhealthy plant branches and is one of the difficult tasks in the field robotics. It becomes even more complex when the plant branches are moving. Moreover, the reproducibility of robot pruning…
Artificial immune systems primarily mimic the adaptive nature of biological immune functions. Their ability to adapt to varying pathogens makes such systems a suitable choice for various robotic applications. Generally, AIS-based robotic…
Learning-based methods are promising to plan robot motion without performing extensive search, which is needed by many non-learning approaches. Recently, Value Iteration Networks (VINs) received much interest since---in contrast to standard…
Humanoid robots, as general-purpose physical agents, must integrate both intelligent control and adaptive morphology to operate effectively in diverse real-world environments. While recent research has focused primarily on optimizing…
In this paper we present a fully autonomous and intrinsically motivated robot usable for HRI experiments. We argue that an intrinsically motivated approach based on the Predictive Information formalism, like the one presented here, could…