Related papers: Cross-Tool and Cross-Behavior Perceptual Knowledge…
A key challenge in robotic food manipulation is modeling the material properties of diverse and deformable food items. We propose using a multimodal sensory approach to interact and play with food that facilitates the ability to distinguish…
Vision-based learning methods provide promise for robots to learn complex manipulation tasks. However, how to generalize the learned manipulation skills to real-world interactions remains an open question. In this work, we study robotic…
Whole-arm tactile sensing enables a robot to sense contact and infer contact properties across its entire arm. Within this paper, we demonstrate that using data-driven methods, a humanoid robot can infer mechanical properties of objects…
If a robot is supposed to roam an environment and interact with objects, it is often necessary to know all possible objects in advance, so that a database with models of all objects can be generated for visual identification. However, this…
Future service robots working in human environments, such as kitchens, will face situations where they need to improvise. The usual tool for a given task might not be available and the robot will have to use some substitute tool. The robot…
Touch sensing can help robots understand their sur- rounding environment, and in particular the objects they interact with. To this end, roboticists have, in the last few decades, developed several tactile sensing solutions, extensively…
To aid humans in everyday tasks, robots need to know which objects exist in the scene, where they are, and how to grasp and manipulate them in different situations. Therefore, object recognition and grasping are two key functionalities for…
Object handover is a basic, but essential capability for robots interacting with humans in many applications, e.g., caring for the elderly and assisting workers in manufacturing workshops. It appears deceptively simple, as humans perform…
Tools extend the manipulation abilities of robots, much like they do for humans. Despite human expertise in tool manipulation, teaching robots these skills faces challenges. The complexity arises from the interplay of two simultaneous…
Material recognition can help inform robots about how to properly interact with and manipulate real-world objects. In this paper, we present a multimodal sensing technique, leveraging near-infrared spectroscopy and close-range high…
Cutting is a common form of manipulation when working with divisible objects such as food, rope, or clay. Cooking in particular relies heavily on cutting to divide food items into desired shapes. However, cutting food is a challenging task…
Many functional elements of human homes and workplaces consist of rigid components which are connected through one or more sliding or rotating linkages. Examples include doors and drawers of cabinets and appliances; laptops; and swivel…
Tactile perception is an essential ability of intelligent robots in interaction with their surrounding environments. This perception as an intermediate level acts between sensation and action and has to be defined properly to generate…
During a robot to human object handover task, several intended or unintended events may occur with the object - it may be pulled, pushed, bumped or simply held - by the human receiver. We show that it is possible to differentiate between…
Humans usually perceive the world in a multimodal way that vision, touch, sound are utilised to understand surroundings from various dimensions. These senses are combined together to achieve a synergistic effect where the learning is more…
Robots require knowledge about objects in order to efficiently perform various household tasks involving objects. The existing knowledge bases for robots acquire symbolic knowledge about objects from manually-coded external common sense…
Instance segmentation of unknown objects from images is regarded as relevant for several robot skills including grasping, tracking and object sorting. Recent results in computer vision have shown that large hand-labeled datasets enable high…
Humans regularly interact with their surrounding objects. Such interactions often result in strongly correlated motion between humans and the interacting objects. We thus ask: "Is it possible to infer object properties from skeletal motion…
Object grasping is an important ability required for various robot tasks. In particular, tasks that require precise force adjustments during operation, such as grasping an unknown object or using a grasped tool, are difficult for humans to…
The ability to visually recognize objects is a fundamental skill for robotics systems. Indeed, a large variety of tasks involving manipulation, navigation or interaction with other agents, deeply depends on the accurate understanding of the…