Related papers: Household navigation and manipulation for everyday…

To solve multi-step manipulation tasks in the real world, an autonomous robot must take actions to observe its environment and react to unexpected observations. This may require opening a drawer to observe its contents or moving an object…

We describe a mobile manipulation hardware and software system capable of autonomously performing complex human-level tasks in real homes, after being taught the task with a single demonstration from a person in virtual reality. This is…

Navigation is an essential ability for mobile agents to be completely autonomous and able to perform complex actions. However, the problem of navigation for agents with limited (or no) perception of the world, or devoid of a fully defined…

Objects rarely sit in isolation in everyday human environments. If we want robots to operate and perform tasks in our human environments, they must understand how the objects they manipulate will interact with structural elements of the…

Getting robots to navigate to multiple objects autonomously is essential yet difficult in robot applications. One of the key challenges is how to explore environments efficiently with camera sensors only. Existing navigation methods mainly…

Reorienting objects by using supports is a practical yet challenging manipulation task. Owing to the intricate geometry of objects and the constrained feasible motions of the robot, multiple manipulation steps are required for object…

A wide range of human-robot collaborative applications in diverse domains such as manufacturing, health care, the entertainment industry, and social interactions, require an autonomous robot to follow its human companion. Different working…

Augmented-reality (AR) glasses that will have access to onboard sensors and an ability to display relevant information to the user present an opportunity to provide user assistance in quotidian tasks. Many such tasks can be characterized as…

The anticipation of human behavior is a crucial capability for robots to interact with humans safely and efficiently. We employ a smart edge sensor network to provide global observations, future predictions, and goal information to…

Robot navigation in crowded public spaces is a complex task that requires addressing a variety of engineering and human factors challenges. These challenges have motivated a great amount of research resulting in important developments for…

Planning motions for two robot arms to move an object collaboratively is a difficult problem, mainly because of the closed-chain constraint, which arises whenever two robot hands simultaneously grasp a single rigid object. In this paper, we…

Task allocation plays a vital role in multi-robot autonomous cleaning systems, where multiple robots work together to clean a large area. However, most current studies mainly focus on deterministic, single-task allocation for cleaning…

Many industrial tasks-such as sanding, installing fasteners, and wire harnessing-are difficult to automate due to task complexity and variability. We instead investigate deploying robots in an assistive role for these tasks, where the robot…

In human-made scenarios, robots need to be able to fully operate objects in their surroundings, i.e., objects are required to be functionally grasped rather than only picked. This imposes very strict constraints on the object pose such that…

Future service robots working in human environments, such as kitchens, will face situations where they need to improvise. The usual tool for a given task might not be available and the robot will have to use some substitute tool. The robot…

Humans throw and catch objects all the time. However, such a seemingly common skill introduces a lot of challenges for robots to achieve: The robots need to operate such dynamic actions at high-speed, collaborate precisely, and interact…

The objective of this work is to expand upon previous works, considering socially acceptable behaviours within robot navigation and interaction, and allow a robot to closely approach static and dynamic individuals or groups. The space…

To operate safely and efficiently, autonomous warehouse/delivery robots must be able to accomplish tasks while navigating in dynamic environments and handling the large uncertainties associated with the motions/behaviors of other robots…

This paper investigates manipulation of multiple unknown objects in a crowded environment. Because of incomplete knowledge due to unknown objects and occlusions in visual observations, object observations are imperfect and action success is…

It is intractable for assistive robots to have all functionalities pre-programmed prior to deployment. Rather, it is more realistic for robots to perform supplemental, on-site learning about user's needs and preferences, and particularities…