Related papers: Reconfigurable Robot Control Using Flexible Coupli…
Human-robot handover is a fundamental yet challenging task in human-robot interaction and collaboration. Recently, remarkable progressions have been made in human-to-robot handovers of unknown objects by using learning-based grasp…
Soft robots have a myriad of potentials because of their intrinsically compliant bodies, enabling safe interactions with humans and adaptability to unpredictable environments. However, most of them have limited actuation speeds, require…
In recent years, the demand for customized, on-demand production has grown in the manufacturing sector. Additive Manufacturing (AM) has emerged as a promising technology to enhance customization capabilities, enabling greater flexibility,…
In this paper, we investigate the synthesis of piecewise affine feedback controllers to address the problem of safe and robust controller design in robotics based on high-level controls specifications. The methodology is based on…
Soft robots are inherently compliant and have a strong potential to realize human-friendly and safe robots. Despite continued research highlighting the potential of soft robots, they remain largely confined to laboratory settings. In this…
Magnetic rolling microrobots enable gentle manipulation in confined microfluidic environments, yet autonomy for contact-rich behaviors such as cell pushing and multi-target assembly remains difficult to develop and evaluate reproducibly. We…
Pneumatic soft everting robotic structures have the potential to facilitate human transfer tasks due to their ability to grow underneath humans without sliding friction and their utility as a flexible sling when deflated. Tubular structures…
Haptic interaction is essential for the dynamic dexterity of animals, which seamlessly switch from an impedance to an admittance behaviour using the force feedback from their proprioception. However, this ability is extremely challenging to…
In this paper we present a reformulation--framed as a constrained optimization problem--of multi-robot tasks which are encoded through a cost function that is to be minimized. The advantages of this approach are multiple. The…
Synthetic active collectives, composed of many nonliving individuals capable of cooperative changes in group shape and dynamics, hold promise for practical applications and for the elucidation of guiding principles of natural collectives.…
Robotic manipulation demands precise control over both contact forces and motion trajectories. While force control is essential for achieving compliant interaction and high-frequency adaptation, it is limited to operations in close…
Automating the assembly of wire harnesses is challenging in automotive, electrical cabinet, and aircraft production, particularly due to deformable cables and a high variance in connector geometries. In addition, connectors must be inserted…
Soft robotic manipulators offer operational advantage due to their compliant and deformable structures. However, their inherently nonlinear dynamics presents substantial challenges. Traditional analytical methods often depend on simplifying…
Soft robots, compared to rigid robots, possess inherent advantages, including higher degrees of freedom, compliance, and enhanced safety, which have contributed to their increasing application across various fields. Among these benefits,…
Recent work leverages the capabilities and commonsense priors of generative models for robot control. In this paper, we present an agentic control system in which a reasoning-capable language model plans and executes tasks by selecting and…
Human collaboration with robots requires flexible role adaptation, enabling the robot to switch between an active leader and a passive follower. Effective role switching depends on accurately estimating human intentions, which is typically…
Autonomous robots may be able to adapt their behavior in response to changes in the environment. This is useful, for example, to efficiently handle limited resources or to respond appropriately to unexpected events such as faults. The…
The amoebot model [Derakhshandeh et al., 2014] has been proposed as a model for programmable matter consisting of tiny, robotic elements called amoebots. We consider the reconfigurable circuit extension [Feldmann et al., JCB 2022] of the…
Modular soft robots combine the strengths of two traditionally separate areas of robotics. As modular robots, they can show robustness to individual failure and reconfigurability; as soft robots, they can deform and undergo large shape…
The problem of robotic synchronisation and coordination is a long-standing one. Combining autonomous, computerised systems with unpredictable real-world conditions can have consequences ranging from poor performance to collisions and…