Related papers: Entanglement Definitions for Tethered Robots: Expl…
As robots are being increasingly used in close proximity to humans and objects, it is imperative that robots operate safely and efficiently under real-world conditions. Yet, the environment is seldom known perfectly. Noisy sensors and…
Consider a set of autonomous computational entities, called \emph{robots}, operating inside a polygonal enclosure (possibly with holes), that have to perform some collaborative tasks. The boundary of the polygon obstructs both visibility…
We study the problem of reducing the amount of communication in decentralized target tracking. We focus on the scenario where a team of robots are allowed to move on the boundary of the environment. Their goal is to seek a formation so as…
This paper addresses the problem of mobile grasping in dynamic, unknown environments where a robot must operate under a limited field-of-view. The fundamental challenge is the inherent trade-off between ``seeing'' around to reduce…
Robotics landscape is experiencing big changes. Robots are spreading and will soon be everywhere. Systems traditionally employed in industry are being replaced by collaborative robots, while more and more professional and consumer robots…
In this paper, we consider the gathering problem of seven autonomous mobile robots on triangular grids. The gathering problem requires that, starting from any connected initial configuration where a subgraph induced by all robot nodes…
In this context, a major focus of this thesis is on unintentional collisions, where a straight goal is to eliminate injury from users and passerby's via realtime sensing and control systems. A less obvious focus is to combine collision…
Tendon-actuated concentric tube mechanisms combine the advantages of tendon-driven continuum robots and concentric tube robots while addressing their respective limitations. They overcome the restricted degrees of freedom often seen in…
Collaboration is a central theme in multi-robot systems as tasks and demands increasingly require capabilities that go beyond what any one individual robot possesses. Yet, despite extensive work on cooperative control and coordinated…
Random packings of stiff rods are self-supporting mechanical structures stabilized by long range interactions induced by contacts. To understand the geometrical and topological complexity of the packings, we first deploy X-ray computerized…
Legged robots can have a unique role in manipulating objects in dynamic, human-centric, or otherwise inaccessible environments. Although most legged robotics research to date typically focuses on traversing these challenging environments,…
We introduce a new problem in the domain of mobile robots, which we term dispersion. In this problem, $n$ robots are placed in an $n$ node graph arbitrarily and must coordinate with each other to reach a final configuration such that…
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,…
Nowadays service robots are leaving the structured and completely known environments and entering human-centric settings. For these robots, object perception and grasping are two challenging tasks due to the high demand for accurate and…
Tendon-driven robots, a type of continuum robot, have the potential to reduce the invasiveness of surgery by enabling access to difficult-to-reach anatomical targets. In the future, the automation of surgical tasks for these robots may help…
Traditional robots have rigid links and structures that limit their ability to interact with the dynamics of their immediate environment. For example, conventional robot manipulators with rigid links can only manipulate objects using…
This paper explores the concept of engagement, the process by which individuals in an interaction start, maintain and end their perceived connection to one another. The paper reports on one aspect of engagement among human interactors--the…
The graph exploration problem requires a group of mobile robots, initially placed arbitrarily on the nodes of a graph, to work collaboratively to explore the graph such that each node is eventually visited by at least one robot. One…
Continuum robots have gained widespread popularity due to their inherent compliance and flexibility, particularly their adjustable levels of stiffness for various application scenarios. Despite efforts to dynamic modeling and control…
In the pattern formation problem, robots in a system must self-coordinate to form a given pattern, regardless of translation, rotation, uniform-scaling, and/or reflection. In other words, a valid final configuration of the system is a…