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Robots will become ubiquitously useful only when they can use few attempts to teach themselves to perform different tasks, even with complex bodies and in dynamical environments. Vertebrates, in fact, successfully use trial-and-error to…
This work developed collaborative bimanual manipulation for reliable and safe human-robot collaboration, which allows remote and local human operators to work interactively for bimanual tasks. We proposed an optimal motion adaptation to…
Manipulation performance improvement is crucial for aerial robots. For aerial manipulators, the baselink position and attitude errors directly affect the precision at the end effector. To address this stability problem, fixed-body…
Assistive robotic arms enable users with physical disabilities to perform everyday tasks without relying on a caregiver. Unfortunately, the very dexterity that makes these arms useful also makes them challenging to teleoperate: the robot…
Whole-body control (WBC) is a generic task-oriented control method for feedback control of loco-manipulation behaviors in humanoid robots. The combination of WBC and model-based walking controllers has been widely utilized in various…
Many robots are not equipped with a manipulator and many objects are not suitable for prehensile manipulation (such as large boxes and cylinders). In these cases, pushing is a simple yet effective non-prehensile skill for robots to interact…
Legged locomotion is commonly studied and expressed as a discrete set of gait patterns, like walk, trot, gallop, which are usually treated as given and pre-programmed in legged robots for efficient locomotion at different speeds. However,…
Animals achieve robust locomotion by offloading regulation from the brain to physical couplings within the body. In contrast, locomotion in artificial systems often depends on centralized processors. We introduce a rapid and autonomous…
Humans' ability to smoothly switch between locomotion and manipulation is a remarkable feature of sensorimotor coordination. Leaning and replication of such human-like strategies can lead to the development of more sophisticated robots…
Robots excel at avoiding obstacles but struggle to traverse complex 3-D terrain with cluttered large obstacles. By contrast, insects like cockroaches excel at doing so. Recent research in our lab elucidated how locomotor transitions emerge…
Non-prehensile planar manipulation, including pushing and press-and-slide, is critical for diverse robotic tasks, but notoriously challenging due to hybrid contact mechanics, under-actuation, and asymmetric friction limits that…
Manipulation and grasping with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) currently require accurate positioning and are often executed at reduced speed to ensure successful grasps. This is due to the fact that typical UAVs can only accommodate rigid…
While humans can use parts of their arms other than the hands for manipulations like gathering and supporting, whether robots can effectively learn and perform the same type of operations remains relatively unexplored. As these…
Rigid grippers used in existing aerial manipulators require precise positioning to achieve successful grasps and transmit large contact forces that may destabilize the drone. This limits the speed during grasping and prevents "dynamic…
Underactuated robots are characterized by a larger number of degrees of freedom than actuators and if they are designed with a specific mass distribution, they can be controlled by means of differential flatness theory. This structural…
This paper focusses on the energy-efficient control of a cable-driven robot for tasks that only require precise positioning at few points in their motion, and where that accuracy can be obtained through contacts. This includes the majority…
This chapter is about the fundamentals of fabrication, control, and human-robot interaction of a new type of collaborative robotic manipulators, called malleable robots, which are based on adjustable architectures of varying stiffness for…
Humanoid robots deployed in industrial environments are required to perform load-carrying transportation tasks that tightly couple locomotion and manipulation. However, achieving stable and robust locomotion under varying payloads and…
The Mixed convention/braking Actuation Mobile Robot (MAMR) was designed to tackle some of the drawbacks of conventional mobile robots such as losing controllability due to primary actuator failures, mechanical complexity, weight, and cost.…
Although robots with flexible bodies are superior in terms of the contact and adaptability, it is difficult to control them precisely. On the other hand, human beings make use of the surrounding environments to stabilize their bodies and…