Related papers: Robot-Assisted Navigation for Visually Impaired th…

Transporting large and heavy objects can benefit from Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC), increasing the contribution of robots to our daily tasks and reducing the risk of injuries to the human operator. This approach usually posits the human…

Interactive navigation is crucial in scenarios where proactively interacting with objects can yield shorter paths, thus significantly improving traversal efficiency. Existing methods primarily focus on using the robot body to relocate large…

Assistive technologies for people with visual impairments (PVI) have made significant advancements, particularly with the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and real-time sensor technologies. However, current solutions often…

Robots are increasingly expected to execute open ended natural language requests in human environments, which demands reliable long horizon execution under partial observability. This is especially challenging for humanoids because…

This paper describes a novel approach in human robot interaction driven by ergonomics. With a clear focus on optimising ergonomics, the approach proposed here continuously observes a human user's posture and by invoking appropriate…

Assistive robot manipulators must be able to autonomously pick and place a wide range of novel objects to be truly useful. However, current assistive robots lack this capability. Additionally, assistive systems need to have an interface…

It is challenging for humans -- particularly those living with physical disabilities -- to control high-dimensional, dexterous robots. Prior work explores learning embedding functions that map a human's low-dimensional inputs (e.g., via a…

This work develops a novel trajectory planner for human-robot handovers. The handover requirements can naturally be handled by a path-following-based model predictive controller, where the path progress serves as a progress measure of the…

Haptic upper limb exoskeletons are robots that assist human operators during task execution while having the ability to render virtual or remote environments. Therefore, the stability of such robots in physical human-robot-environment…

There is invariably a trade-off between safety and efficiency for collaborative robots (cobots) in human-robot collaborations. Robots that interact minimally with humans can work with high speed and accuracy but cannot adapt to new tasks or…

Navigation and motion control of a robot to a destination are tasks that have historically been performed with the assumption that contact with the environment is harmful. This makes sense for rigid-bodied robots where obstacle collisions…

Assistive robotic systems endeavour to support those with movement disabilities, enabling them to move again and regain functionality. Main issue with these systems is the complexity of their low-level control, and how to translate this to…

While autonomous multi-robots can achieve safe and coordinated navigation, they often struggle to adapt to unforeseen conditions and to capture operator-driven objectives in unstructured environments. We present a Virtual Reality (VR)-based…

Indoor navigation is a challenging activity for persons with disabilities, particularly, for those with low vision and visual impairment. Researchers have explored numerous solutions to resolve these challenges; however, several issues…

The integration of collaborative robots into industrial environments has improved productivity, but has also highlighted significant challenges related to operator safety and ergonomics. This paper proposes an innovative framework that…

Anticipating the motion of all humans in dynamic environments such as homes and offices is critical to enable safe and effective robot navigation. Such spaces remain challenging as humans do not follow strict rules of motion and there are…

Path planning and collision avoidance are challenging in complex and highly variable environments due to the limited horizon of events. In literature, there are multiple model- and learning-based approaches that require significant…

Seeing-eye robots are very useful tools for guiding visually impaired people, potentially producing a huge societal impact given the low availability and high cost of real guide dogs. Although a few seeing-eye robot systems have already…

In this work, we aim to enable legged robots to learn how to interpret human social cues and produce appropriate behaviors through physical human guidance. However, learning through physical engagement can place a heavy burden on users when…

By learning Variable Impedance Control policy, robot assistants can intelligently adapt their manipulation compliance to ensure both safe interaction and proper task completion when operating in human-robot interaction environments. In this…