Related papers: Perceiving Extrinsic Contacts from Touch Improves …
We propose a method that actively estimates contact location between a grasped rigid object and its environment and uses this as input to a peg-in-hole insertion policy. An estimation model and an active tactile feedback controller work…
Robust manipulation often hinges on a robot's ability to perceive extrinsic contacts-contacts between a grasped object and its surrounding environment. However, these contacts are difficult to observe through vision alone due to occlusions,…
Contact-rich manipulation requires reliable estimation of extrinsic contacts-the interactions between a grasped object and its environment which provide essential contextual information for planning, control, and policy learning. However,…
We present Neural Contact Fields, a method that brings together neural fields and tactile sensing to address the problem of tracking extrinsic contact between object and environment. Knowing where the external contact occurs is a first step…
The advent of tactile sensors in robotics has sparked many ideas on how robots can leverage direct contact measurements of their environment interactions to improve manipulation tasks. An important line of research in this regard is that of…
Reasoning over the interplay between object deformation and force transmission through contact is central to the manipulation of compliant objects. In this paper, we propose Neural Deforming Contact Field (NDCF), a representation that…
We present a learnable physics-based predictive model that provides accurate motion and force-torque prediction of the robot end effector in contact-rich manipulation. The proposed model extends the state-of-the-art GNN-based simulator…
We propose a method that simultaneously estimates and controls extrinsic contact with tactile feedback. The method enables challenging manipulation tasks that require controlling light forces and accurate motions in contact, such as…
This paper addresses the localization of contacts of an unknown grasped rigid object with its environment, i.e., extrinsic to the robot. We explore the key role that distributed tactile sensing plays in localizing contacts external to the…
Dense collections of movable objects are common in everyday spaces-from cabinets in a home to shelves in a warehouse. Safely retracting objects from such collections is difficult for robots, yet people do it frequently, leveraging learned…
Dexterous manipulation of objects through fine control of physical contacts is essential for many important tasks of daily living. A fundamental ability underlying fine contact control is compliant control, \textit{i.e.}, controlling the…
High-fidelity physics simulation is essential for scalable robotic learning, but the sim-to-real gap persists, especially for tasks involving complex, dynamic, and discontinuous interactions like physical contacts. Explicit system…
Object insertion is a classic contact-rich manipulation task. The task remains challenging, especially when considering general objects of unknown geometry, which significantly limits the ability to understand the contact configuration…
Grasping accuracy is a critical prerequisite for precise object manipulation, often requiring careful alignment between the robot hand and object. Neural Descriptor Fields (NDF) offer a promising vision-based method to generate grasping…
Extrinsic manipulation, the use of environment contacts to achieve manipulation objectives, enables strategies that are otherwise impossible with a parallel jaw gripper. However, orchestrating a long-horizon sequence of contact interactions…
Object insertion under tight tolerances ($< \hspace{-.02in} 1mm$) is an important but challenging assembly task as even small errors can result in undesirable contacts. Recent efforts focused on Reinforcement Learning (RL), which often…
Grasping objects under uncertainty remains an open problem in robotics research. This uncertainty is often due to noisy or partial observations of the object pose or shape. To enable a robot to react appropriately to unforeseen effects, it…
A simple gripper can solve more complex manipulation tasks if it can utilize the external environment such as pushing the object against the table or a vertical wall, known as "Extrinsic Dexterity." Previous work in extrinsic dexterity…
Dexterous manipulation requires careful reasoning over extrinsic contacts. The prevalence of deforming tools in human environments, the use of deformable sensors, and the increasing number of soft robots yields a need for approaches that…
Visual-inertial sensors have a wide range of applications in robotics. However, good performance often requires different sophisticated motion routines to accurately calibrate camera intrinsics and inter-sensor extrinsics. This work…