Related papers: Task2Morph: Differentiable Task-inspired Framework…
Soft robots achieve functionality through tight coupling among geometry, material composition, and actuation. As a result, effective design optimization requires these three aspects to be considered jointly rather than in isolation. This…
A key challenge towards the goal of multi-part assembly tasks is finding robust sensorimotor control methods in the presence of uncertainty. In contrast to previous works that rely on a priori knowledge on whether two parts match, we aim to…
Space robots have played a critical role in autonomous maintenance and space junk removal. Multi-arm space robots can efficiently complete the target capture and base reorientation tasks due to their flexibility and the collaborative…
Bimanual manipulation with tactile feedback will be key to human-level robot dexterity. However, this topic is less explored than single-arm settings, partly due to the availability of suitable hardware along with the complexity of…
Robotic solutions, in particular robotic arms, are becoming more frequently deployed for close collaboration with humans, for example in manufacturing or domestic care environments. These robotic arms require the user to control several…
Dexterous manipulation is limited by both control and design, without consensus as to what makes manipulators best for performing dexterous tasks. This raises a fundamental challenge: how should we design and control robot manipulators that…
In previous work on learning and controlling contact-rich tasks, the procedure for choosing a proper reference frame to express learned signals for the motion and the interaction wrench is often implicit, requires expert insight, or starts…
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…
Embodied intelligence has advanced rapidly in recent years; however, bimanual manipulation-especially in contact-rich tasks remains challenging. This is largely due to the lack of datasets with rich physical interaction signals, systematic…
Non-prehensile planar manipulation, including pushing and press-and-slide, is critical for diverse robotic tasks, but notoriously challenging due to hybrid contact mechanics, under-actuation, and asymmetric friction limits that…
In this paper, we discuss a framework for teaching bimanual manipulation tasks by imitation. To this end, we present a system and algorithms for learning compliant and contact-rich robot behavior from human demonstrations. The presented…
This work presents an optimization-based task and motion planning (TAMP) framework that unifies planning for locomotion and manipulation through a shared representation of contact modes. We define symbolic actions as contact mode changes,…
Collaborative robots are expected to be able to work alongside humans and in some cases directly replace existing human workers, thus effectively responding to rapid assembly line changes. Current methods for programming contact-rich tasks,…
Manipulation planning is the task of computing robot trajectories that move a set of objects to their target configuration while satisfying physically feasibility. In contrast to existing works that assume known object templates, we are…
In Evolutionary Robotics, evolutionary algorithms are used to co-optimize morphology and control. However, co-optimizing leads to different challenges: How do you optimize a controller for a body that often changes its number of inputs and…
Contact-rich manipulation tasks in unstructured environments often require both haptic and visual feedback. It is non-trivial to manually design a robot controller that combines these modalities which have very different characteristics.…
Soft robots, inspired by elephant trunks or octopus arms, offer extraordinary flexibility to bend, twist, and elongate in ways that rigid robots cannot. However, their motion planning remains a challenge, especially in cluttered…
Robot-to-human object handover is an important step in many human robot collaboration tasks. A successful handover requires the robot to maintain a stable grasp on the object while making sure the human receives the object in a natural and…
Humanoid robots could benefit from using their upper bodies for support contacts, enhancing their workspace, stability, and ability to perform contact-rich and pushing tasks. In this paper, we propose a unified approach that combines an…
Internal computational models of physical bodies are fundamental to the ability of robots and animals alike to plan and control their actions. These "self-models" allow robots to consider outcomes of multiple possible future actions,…