Related papers: GRAINS: Proximity Sensing of Objects in Granular M…
The proximity perception of objects in granular materials is significant, especially for applications like minesweeping. However, due to particles' opacity and complex properties, existing proximity sensors suffer from high costs from…
In this paper we present an early prototype of the Digger Finger that is designed to easily penetrate granular media and is equipped with the GelSight sensor. Identifying objects buried in granular media using tactile sensors is a…
Granular media (e.g., cereal grains, plastic resin pellets, and pills) are ubiquitous in robotics-integrated industries, such as agriculture, manufacturing, and pharmaceutical development. This prevalence mandates the accurate and efficient…
Understanding how granular materials behave in low gravity is crucial for planetary science and space exploration. It can also help us understand granular phenomena usually hidden by gravity. On Earth, gravity dominates granular behavior,…
Granular systems are not always homogeneous and can be composed of grains with very different mechanical properties. To improve our understanding of the behavior of real granular systems, in this experimental study, we compress 2D…
Despite the potential the ability to identify granular materials creates for applications such as robotic cooking or earthmoving, granular material identification remains a challenging area, existing methods mostly relying on shaking the…
We present the design, implementation, and evaluation of RF-Grasp, a robotic system that can grasp fully-occluded objects in unknown and unstructured environments. Unlike prior systems that are constrained by the line-of-sight perception of…
Granular materials are heterogenous grains in contact, which are ubiquitous in many scientific and engineering applications such as chemical engineering, fluid mechanics, geomechanics, pharmaceutics, and so on. Granular materials pose a…
Can a robot grasp an unknown object without seeing it? In this paper, we present a tactile-sensing based approach to this challenging problem of grasping novel objects without prior knowledge of their location or physical properties. Our…
We test grip strength and shock absorption properties of various granular material in granular jamming robotic components. The granular material comprises a range of natural, manufactured, and 3D printed material encompassing a wide range…
Granular intrusions, such as dynamic impact or wheel locomotion, are complex multiphase phenomena where the grains exhibit solid-like and fluid-like characteristics together with an ejected gas-like phase. Despite decades of modeling…
In a future with autonomous robots, visual and spatial perception is of utmost importance for robotic systems. Particularly for aerial robotics, there are many applications where utilizing visual perception is necessary for any real-world…
Granular materials (GMs) are ubiquitous in daily life. Understanding their properties is also important, especially in agriculture and industry. However, existing works require dedicated measurement equipment and also need large human…
This paper proposes a novel learning-free three-stage method that predicts grasping poses, enabling robots to pick up and transfer previously unseen objects. Our method first identifies potential structures that can afford the action of…
A loosely packed bed of sand sits precariously on the fence between mechanically stable and flowing states. This has especially strong implications for animals or vehicles needing to navigate sandy environments, which can sink and become…
We study the impact of a projectile onto a bed of 3 mm grains immersed in an index-matched fluid. Specifically, we vary the amount of prestrain on the sample, strengthening the force chains within the system. We find this affects only the…
Accurate observation of dynamic environments traditionally relies on synthesizing raw, signal-level information from multiple distributed sensors. This work investigates an alternative approach: performing geospatial inference using only…
In recent years, self-burrowing probes have been studied since they can be suitable for soil monitoring in locations with limited access such as outer space bodies and underneath existing structures. We study the performance of a…
Grasping is an essential capability for most robots in practical applications. Soft robotic grippers are considered as a critical part of robotic grasping and have attracted considerable attention in terms of the advantages of the high…
Locating and grasping of objects by robots is typically performed using visual sensors. Haptic feedback from contacts with the environment is only secondary if present at all. In this work, we explored an extreme case of searching for and…