Related papers: Task-Driven Manipulation with Reconfigurable Paral…

Knowledge of a manipulator's workspace is fundamental for a variety of tasks including robot design, grasp planning and robot base placement. Consequently, workspace representations are well studied in robotics. Two important…

Performing long-term experimentation or large-scale data collection for machine learning in the field of soft robotics is challenging, due to the hardware robustness and experimental flexibility required. In this work, we propose a modular…

Multi-robot systems, particularly mobile manipulators, face challenges in control coordination and dynamic stability when working together. To address this issue, this study proposes MobiDock, a modular self-reconfigurable mobile…

Humans show specialized strategies for efficient collaboration. Transferring similar strategies to humanoid robots can improve their capability to interact with other agents, leading the way to complex collaborative scenarios with multiple…

Worm-inspired robots provide an effective locomotion strategy for constrained environments by combining cyclic body deformation with alternating anchoring. For compliant robots, however, the interaction between deformable anchoring…

Learning-based approaches have recently shown notable success in legged locomotion. However, these approaches often lack accountability, necessitating empirical tests to determine their effectiveness. In this work, we are interested in…

Mobile manipulators require coordinated control between navigation and manipulation to accomplish tasks. Typically, coordinated mobile manipulation behaviors have base navigation to approach the goal followed by arm manipulation to reach…

Robot manipulation in cluttered scenes often requires contact-rich interactions with objects. It can be more economical to interact via non-prehensile actions, for example, push through other objects to get to the desired grasp pose,…

In post-disaster scenarios, efficient search and rescue operations involve collaborative efforts between robots and humans. Existing planning approaches focus on specific aspects but overlook crucial elements like information gathering,…

This paper presents a trajectory optimization and control approach for the guidance of an orbital four-arm robot in extravehicular activities. The robot operates near the target spacecraft, enabling its arm's end-effectors to reach the…

While multi-joint continuum robots are highly dexterous and flexible, designing an optimal robot can be challenging due to its kinematics involving curvatures. Hence, the current work presents a computational method developed to find…

Teleoperation provides a way for human operators to guide robots in situations where full autonomy is challenging or where direct human intervention is required. It can also be an important tool to teach robots in order to achieve…

Loco-manipulation, physical interaction of various objects that is concurrently coordinated with locomotion, remains a major challenge for legged robots due to the need for both precise end-effector control and robustness to unmodeled…

Assistive robotic arms enable users with physical disabilities to perform everyday tasks without relying on a caregiver. Unfortunately, the very dexterity that makes these arms useful also makes them challenging to teleoperate: the robot…

In this work, we aim to teach robots to manipulate various thin-shell materials. Prior works studying thin-shell object manipulation mostly rely on heuristic policies or learn policies from real-world video demonstrations, and only focus on…

Collaborative transport of objects via pushing by multiple robots has many applications, ranging from construction and warehouse environments to post disaster debris clean-up. Achieving collaborative transport over surfaces with different…

Uncertainties in contact dynamics and object geometry remain significant barriers to robust robotic manipulation. Caging mitigates these uncertainties by constraining an object's mobility without requiring precise contact modeling. However,…

Lengthy setup processes that require robotics expertise remain a major barrier to deploying robots for tasks involving high product variability and small batch sizes. As a result, collaborative robots, despite their advanced sensing and…

Assistive robots have growing potential to support physical wellbeing in home and healthcare settings, for example, by guiding users through stretching or rehabilitation routines. However, existing systems remain largely scripted, which…

Robotic manipulation in dynamic environments often requires seamless transitions between different grasp types to maintain stability and efficiency. However, achieving smooth and adaptive grasp transitions remains a challenge, particularly…