Related papers: The HAPPY HEDGEHOG Project
Modern cities are growing ecosystems that face new challenges due to the increasing population demands. One of the many problems they face nowadays is waste management, which has become a pressing issue requiring new solutions. Swarm…
Exploring bodies of water on their surface allows robots to efficiently communicate and harvest energy from the sun. On the water surface, however, robots often face highly unstructured environments, cluttered with plant matter, animals,…
Swarms of robots will revolutionize many industrial applications, from targeted material delivery to precision farming. Controlling the motion and behavior of these swarms presents unique challenges for human operators, who cannot yet…
Social robots are increasingly being deployed in public spaces, where they face not only technological difficulties and unexpected user utterances, but also objections from stakeholders who may not be comfortable with introducing a robot…
The integration of humanoid and animal-shaped robots into specialized domains, such as healthcare, multi-terrain operations, and psychotherapy, necessitates a deep understanding of proxemics--the study of spatial behavior that governs…
Transfer of objects between humans and robots is a critical capability for collaborative robots. Although there has been a recent surge of interest in human-robot handovers, most prior research focus on robot-to-human handovers. Further,…
Robot capabilities are maturing across domains, from self-driving cars, to bipeds and drones. As a result, robots will soon no longer be confined to safety-controlled industrial settings; instead, they will directly interact with the…
Forestry plays a vital role in our society, creating significant ecological, economic, and recreational value. Efficient forest management involves labor-intensive and complex operations. One essential task for maintaining forest health and…
Animal welfare education could greatly benefit from customized robots to help children learn about animals and their behavior, and thereby promote positive, safe child-animal interactions. To this end, we ran Participatory Design workshops…
The heavy-load legged robot has strong load carrying capacity and can adapt to various unstructured terrains. But the large weight results in higher requirements for motion stability and environmental perception ability. In order to utilize…
Robots applications in our daily life increase at an unprecedented pace. As robots will soon operate "out in the wild", we must identify the safety and security vulnerabilities they will face. Robotics researchers and manufacturers focus…
The field of bio-inspired robotics seeks to create mechanical systems that mimic the designs and concepts used by biological systems. One of the more challenging biological concepts to imitate in mechanical systems is the ability to create…
Climate change is one of the defining challenges of the 21st century, and many in the robotics community are looking for ways to contribute. This paper presents a roadmap for climate-relevant robotics research, identifying high-impact…
Human teams exhibit both implicit and explicit intention sharing. To further development of human-robot collaboration, intention recognition is crucial on both sides. Present approaches rely on a vast sensor suite on and around the robot to…
This paper presents the behaviour control of a service robot for intelligent object search in a domestic environment. A major challenge in service robotics is to enable fetch-and-carry missions that are satisfying for the user in terms of…
Outdoor navigation on sidewalks in urban environments is the key technology behind important human assistive applications, such as last-mile delivery or neighborhood patrol. This paper aims to develop a quadruped robot that follows a route…
Purpose of Review: The field of humanoid robotics, perception plays a fundamental role in enabling robots to interact seamlessly with humans and their surroundings, leading to improved safety, efficiency, and user experience. This…
This research investigates strategies for multi-robot coordination in multi-human environments. It proposes a multi-objective learning-based coordination approach to addressing the problem of path planning, navigation, task scheduling, task…
The primary aim of this paper is to investigate the integration of emotions into the social navigation framework to analyse its effect on both navigation and human physiological safety and comfort. The proposed framework uses leg detection…
We consider a service robot that offers chocolate treats to people passing in its proximity: it has the capability of predicting in advance a person's intention to interact, and to actuate an "offering" gesture, subtly extending the tray of…