Related papers: MOSAIC: Modular Foundation Models for Assistive an…
When humans perform contact-rich manipulation tasks, customized tools are often necessary to simplify the task. For instance, we use various utensils for handling food, such as knives, forks and spoons. Similarly, robots may benefit from…
In collaborative robotic cells, a human operator and a robot share the workspace in order to execute a common job, consisting of a set of tasks. A proper allocation and scheduling of the tasks for the human and for the robot is crucial for…
Humans engaged in collaborative activities are naturally able to convey their intentions to teammates through multi-modal communication, which is made up of explicit and implicit cues. Similarly, a more natural form of human-robot…
In recent years, cloud service providers have been building and hosting datacenters across multiple geographical locations to provide robust services. However, the geographical distribution of datacenters introduces growing pressure to both…
Achieving realistic simulations of humans interacting with a wide range of objects has long been a fundamental goal. Extending physics-based motion imitation to complex human-object interactions (HOIs) is challenging due to intricate…
Conversational information seeking (CIS) has been recognized as a major emerging research area in information retrieval. Such research will require data and tools, to allow the implementation and study of conversational systems. This paper…
This paper introduces a cognitive architecture for a humanoid robot to engage in a proactive, mixed-initiative exploration and manipulation of its environment, where the initiative can originate from both the human and the robot. The…
Multi-task imitation learning (MTIL) has shown significant potential in robotic manipulation by enabling agents to perform various tasks using a single policy. This simplifies the policy deployment and enhances the agent's adaptability…
For robots to assist users with household tasks, they must first learn about the tasks from the users. Further, performing the same task every day, in the same way, can become boring for the robot's user(s), therefore, assistive robots must…
Foundation models are rapidly improving the capability of robots in performing everyday tasks autonomously such as meal preparation, yet robots will still need to be instructed by humans due to model performance, the difficulty of capturing…
Worker-Robot Cooperation is a new industrial trend, which aims to sum the advantages of both the human and the industrial robot to afford a new intelligent manufacturing techniques. The cooperative manufacturing between the worker and the…
Imitating tool manipulation from human videos offers an intuitive approach to teaching robots, while also providing a promising and scalable alternative to labor-intensive teleoperation data collection for visuomotor policy learning. While…
Large language models can encode a wealth of semantic knowledge about the world. Such knowledge could be extremely useful to robots aiming to act upon high-level, temporally extended instructions expressed in natural language. However, a…
Accessibility is one of the most important features in the design of robots and their interfaces. This thesis proposes methods that improve the accessibility of robots for three different target audiences: consumers, researchers, and…
The ability to reflect on and correct failures is crucial for robotic systems to interact stably with real-life objects.Observing the generalization and reasoning capabilities of Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs), previous approaches…
Effective human-robot collaboration requires informed anticipation. The robot must anticipate the human's actions, but also react quickly and intuitively when its predictions are wrong. The robot must plan its actions to account for the…
The impressive capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) have led to various efforts to enable robots to be controlled through natural language instructions, opening exciting possibilities for human-robot interaction The goal is for the…
For safe and effective operation of humanoid robots in human-populated environments, the problem of commanding a large number of Degrees of Freedom (DoF) while simultaneously considering dynamic obstacles and human proximity has still not…
The increasing presence of robots alongside humans, such as in human-robot teams in manufacturing, gives rise to research questions about the kind of behaviors people prefer in their robot counterparts. We term actions that support…
Multi-step dexterous manipulation is a fundamental skill in household scenarios, yet remains an underexplored area in robotics. This paper proposes a modular approach, where each step of the manipulation process is addressed with dedicated…