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Convex model predictive controls (MPCs) with a single rigid body model have demonstrated strong performance on real legged robots. However, convex MPCs are limited by their assumptions such as small rotation angle and pre-defined gait,…
External localization is an essential part for the indoor operation of small or cost-efficient robots, as they are used, for example, in swarm robotics. We introduce a two-stage localization and instance identification framework for…
We consider the problem of self-localization by a resource-constrained node within a network given radio signal strength indicator (RSSI) measurements from a set of anchor nodes where the RSSI measurements as well as the anchor position…
Applications from manipulation to autonomous vehicles rely on robust and general object tracking to safely perform tasks in dynamic environments. We propose the first certifiably optimal category-level approach for simultaneous shape…
Ground robots navigating in complex, dynamic environments must compute collision-free trajectories to avoid obstacles safely and efficiently. Nonconvex optimization is a popular method to compute a trajectory in real-time. However, these…
Gradient descent and coordinate descent are well understood in terms of their asymptotic behavior, but less so in a transient regime often used for approximations in machine learning. We investigate how proper initialization can have a…
We consider the question of estimating a solution to a system of equations that involve convex nonlinearities, a problem that is common in machine learning and signal processing. Because of these nonlinearities, conventional estimators…
A common way to implement navigation in mobile robots is through the use of landmarks. In this case, the main goal of the controller is to make progress toward a goal location (stability), while avoiding the boundary of the environment…
Non-convex optimization problems are challenging to solve; the success and computational expense of a gradient descent algorithm or variant depend heavily on the initialization strategy. Often, either random initialization is used or…
We target time-dependent partial differential equations (PDEs) with heterogeneous coefficients in space and time. To tackle these problems, we construct reduced basis/ multiscale ansatz functions defined in space that can be combined with…
We present a novel path-planning algorithm to reduce localization error for a network of robots cooperatively localizing via inter-robot range measurements. The quality of localization with range measurements depends on the configuration of…
This paper presents a coordination algorithm for mobile autonomous robots. Relying upon distributed sensing the robots achieve rendezvous, that is, they move to a common location. Each robot is a point mass moving in a nonconvex environment…
We propose a framework for deformable linear object prediction. Prediction of deformable objects (e.g., rope) is challenging due to their non-linear dynamics and infinite-dimensional configuration spaces. By mapping the dynamics from a…
We propose two novel algorithms for constructing convex collision-free polytopes in robot configuration space. Finding these polytopes enables the application of stronger motion-planning frameworks such as trajectory optimization with…
We study the performance of stochastic first-order methods for finding saddle points of convex-concave functions. A notorious challenge faced by such methods is that the gradients can grow arbitrarily large during optimization, which may…
This paper concerns with the sensor management problem in collocated Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) radars. After deriving the Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) as a performance measure, the antenna allocation problem is formulated as a…
This paper introduces UVIO, a multi-sensor framework that leverages Ultra Wide Band (UWB) technology and Visual-Inertial Odometry (VIO) to provide robust and low-drift localization. In order to include range measurements in state…
Pose estimation is the task of determining the 6D position of an object in a scene. Pose estimation aid the abilities and flexibility of robotic set-ups. However, the system must be configured towards the use case to perform adequately.…
We propose a new solver for the sparse spikes deconvolution problem over the space of Radon measures. A common approach to off-the-grid deconvolution considers semidefinite (SDP) relaxations of the total variation (the total mass of the…
To economically deploy robotic manipulators the programming and execution of robot motions must be swift. To this end, we propose a novel, constraint-based method to intuitively specify sequential manipulation tasks and to compute…