Related papers: Embracing Safe Contacts with Contact-aware Plannin…
Direct physical interaction with robots is becoming increasingly important in flexible production scenarios, but robots without protective fences also pose a greater risk to the operator. In order to keep the risk potential low, relatively…
Existing imitation learning methods enable robots to interact autonomously with the physical environment. However, contact-rich manipulation tasks remain a significant challenge due to complex contact dynamics that demand high-precision…
Force control enables hands-on teaching and physical collaboration, with the potential to improve ergonomics and flexibility of automation. Established methods for the design of compliance, impedance control, and \rev{collision response}…
Non-prehensile manipulation methods usually use a simple end effector, e.g., a single rod, to manipulate the object. Compared to the grasping method, such an end effector is compact and flexible, and hence it can perform tasks in a…
When mobile robots maneuver near people, they run the risk of rudely blocking their paths; but not all people behave the same around robots. People that have not noticed the robot are the most difficult to predict. This paper investigates…
Implicit communication plays such a crucial role during social exchanges that it must be considered for a good experience in human-robot interaction. This work addresses implicit communication associated with the detection of physical…
In order to be effective partners for humans, robots must become increasingly comfortable with making contact with their environment. Unfortunately, it is hard for robots to distinguish between ``just enough'' and ``too much'' force: some…
Sim-to-real transfer for contact-rich manipulation remains challenging due to the inherent discrepancy in contact dynamics. While existing methods often rely on costly real-world data or utilize blind compliance through fixed controllers,…
The current dominant paradigm for robotic manipulation involves two separate stages: manipulator design and control. Because the robot's morphology and how it can be controlled are intimately linked, joint optimization of design and control…
Human-robot cooperation is essential in environments such as warehouses and retail stores, where workers frequently handle deformable objects like paper, bags, and fabrics. Coordinating robotic actions with human assistance remains…
Contact dynamics hold immense amounts of information that can improve a robot's ability to characterize and learn about objects in their environment through interactions. However, collecting information-rich contact data is challenging due…
As robots move from the laboratory into the real world, motion planning will need to account for model uncertainty and risk. For robot motions involving intermittent contact, planning for uncertainty in contact is especially important, as…
An important factor in developing control models for human-robot collaboration is how acceptable they are to their human partners. One such method for creating acceptable control models is to attempt to mimic human-like behaviour in robots…
Human-robot co-carrying tasks reveal their potential in both industrial and everyday applications by leveraging the strengths of both parties. Effective control of robots in these tasks requires managing the energy level in the closed-loop…
Ensuring safe and efficient operation of collaborative robots in human environments is challenging, especially in dynamic settings where both obstacle motion and tasks change over time. Current robot controllers typically assume full…
When a robot performs a task next to a human, physical interaction is inevitable: the human might push, pull, twist, or guide the robot. The state-of-the-art treats these interactions as disturbances that the robot should reject or avoid.…
Although manipulation capabilities of aerial robots greatly improved in the last decade, only few works addressed the problem of aerial physical interaction with dynamic environments, proposing strongly model-based approaches. However, in…
With robots leaving factories and entering less controlled domains, possibly sharing the space with humans, safety is paramount and multimodal awareness of the body surface and the surrounding environment is fundamental. Taking inspiration…
Endowing continuum robots with compliance while it is interacting with the internal environment of the human body is essential to prevent damage to the robot and the surrounding tissues. Compared with passive compliance, active compliance…
We propose a method for planning motion for robots with actuation uncertainty that incorporates contact with the environment and the compliance of the robot to reliably perform manipulation tasks. Our approach consists of two stages: (1)…