Related papers: The HAPPY HEDGEHOG Project
Launched by Elon Musk and its Optimus, we are witnessing a new race in which many companies have already engaged. The objective it to put at work a new generation of humanoid robots in demanding industrial environments within 2 or 3 years.…
This paper proposes a novel swarm-based control algorithm for exploration and coverage of unknown environments, while maintaining a formation that permits short-range communication. The algorithm combines two elements: swarm rules for…
The Industry 4.0 paradigm emphasizes the crucial benefits that collaborative robots, i.e., robots able to work alongside and together with humans, could bring to the whole production process. In this context, an enabling technology yet…
In today's high-pressure and isolated society, the demand for emotional support has surged, necessitating innovative solutions. Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) offer a technological approach to providing emotional assistance by leveraging…
While classical approaches to autonomous robot navigation currently enable operation in certain environments, they break down in tightly constrained spaces, e.g., where the robot needs to engage in agile maneuvers to squeeze between…
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…
Humanoid robots, capable of assuming human roles in various workplaces, have become essential to embodied intelligence. However, as robots with complex physical structures, learning a control model that can operate robustly across diverse…
When the human-robot interactions become ubiquitous, the environment surrounding these interactions will have significant impact on the safety and comfort of the human and the effectiveness and efficiency of the robot. Although most robots…
Autonomous robots can transform how we observe marine ecosystems, but close-range operation in reefs and other cluttered habitats remains difficult. Vehicles must maneuver safely near animals and fragile structures while coping with…
Bipedal locomotion makes humanoid robots inherently prone to falls, causing catastrophic damage to the expensive sensors, actuators, and structural components of full-scale robots. To address this critical barrier to real-world deployment,…
As sidewalk delivery robots become increasingly integrated into urban life, this paper begins with a critical provocation: Is robot labor labor? More than a rhetorical question, this inquiry invites closer attention to the social and…
Most conventional wheeled robots can only move in flat environments and simply divide their planar workspaces into free spaces and obstacles. Deeming obstacles as non-traversable significantly limits wheeled robots' mobility in real-world,…
This work explores a group learning scenario with an autonomous empathic robot. We address two research questions: (1) Can an autonomous robot designed with empathic competencies foster collaborative learning in a group context? (2) Can an…
Human-Robot-Interaction (HRI) research is typically built around the premise that the robot serves to assist a human in achieving a human-led goal or shared task. However, there are many circumstances during HRI in which a robot may need…
Research currently being conducted on the use of robots as human labor support technology. In particular, the service industry needs to allocate more manpower, and it will be important for robots to support people. This study focuses on…
As the aging population increases and the shortage of healthcare workers increases, the need to examine other means for caring for the aging population increases. One such means is the use of humanoid robots to care for social, emotional,…
This paper presents a modular, reconfigurable robot platform for robot manipulation in agriculture. While robot manipulation promises great advancements in automating challenging, complex tasks that are currently best left to humans, it is…
Emergent behavior arising in a joint human-robot system cannot be fully predicted based on an understanding of the individual agents. Typically, robot behavior is governed by algorithms that optimize a reward function that should…
Highly automated robot ecologies (HARE), or societies of independent autonomous robots or agents, are rapidly becoming an important part of much of the world's critical infrastructure. As with human societies, regulation, wherein a…
In the approximately century-long journey of robotics, humanoid robots made their debut around six decades ago. While current humanoids bear human-like appearances, none have embodied true humaneness, remaining distant from achieving…