Related papers: Non-impulsive Contact-Implicit Motion Planning for…
Object manipulation has been extensively studied in the context of fixed base and mobile manipulators. However, the overactuated locomotion modality employed by snake robots allows for a unique blend of object manipulation through…
Object manipulation has been extensively studied in the context of fixed base and mobile manipulators. However, the overactuated locomotion modality employed by snake robots allows for a unique blend of object manipulation through…
Contact-rich problems, such as snake robot locomotion, offer unexplored yet rich opportunities for optimization-based trajectory and acyclic contact planning. So far, a substantial body of control research has focused on emulating snake…
This paper presents the development and integration of a vision-guided loco-manipulation pipeline for Northeastern University's snake robot, COBRA. The system leverages a YOLOv8-based object detection model and depth data from an onboard…
Passive tumbling uses natural forces like gravity for efficient travel. But without an active means of control, passive tumblers must rely entirely on external forces. Northeastern University's COBRA is a snake robot that can morph into a…
Recent studies on quadruped robots have focused on either locomotion or mobile manipulation using a robotic arm. Legged robots can manipulate heavier and larger objects using non-prehensile manipulation primitives, such as planar pushing,…
This thesis presents a unified modeling and simulation framework for analyzing sidewinding and tumbling locomotion of the COBRA snake robot across rigid, compliant, and granular terrains. A contact-implicit formulation is used to model…
Snake robots offer exceptional mobility across extreme terrain inaccessible to conventional rovers, yet their highly articulated bodies present fundamental challenges for autonomous navigation in environments lacking external tracking…
We present a contact-implicit trajectory optimization framework that can plan contact-interaction trajectories for different robot architectures and tasks using a trivial initial guess and without requiring any parameter tuning. This is…
Navigating rugged terrain and steep slopes is a challenge for mobile robots. Conventional legged and wheeled systems struggle with these environments due to limited traction and stability. Northeastern University's COBRA (Crater Observing…
This paper presents a novel contact-implicit trajectory optimization method using an analytically solvable contact model to enable planning of interactions with hard, soft, and slippery environments. Specifically, we propose a novel contact…
In this letter, we propose an efficient and highly versatile loco-manipulation planning for humanoid robots. Loco-manipulation planning is a key technological brick enabling humanoid robots to autonomously perform object transportation by…
Studying snake robot locomotion in a cluttered environment has been a complicated task because the motion model is discontinuous due to the physical contact with obstacles, and the contact force cannot be determined solely by contact…
Magnetic microrobots can be navigated by an external magnetic field to autonomously move within living organisms with complex and unstructured environments. Potential applications include drug delivery, diagnostics, and therapeutic…
Most animal and human locomotion behaviors for solving complex tasks involve dynamic motions and rich contact interaction. In fact, complex maneuvers need to consider dynamic movement and contact events at the same time. We present a…
We present a reformulation of a contact-implicit optimization (CIO) approach that computes optimal trajectories for rigid-body systems in contact-rich settings. A hard-contact model is assumed, and the unilateral constraints are imposed in…
Long-term non-prehensile planar manipulation is a challenging task for planning and control, requiring determination of both continuous and discrete contact configurations, such as contact points and modes. This leads to the non-convexity…
In this paper, we analyze the effects of contact models on contact-implicit trajectory optimization for manipulation. We consider three different approaches: (1) a contact model that is based on complementarity constraints, (2) a smooth…
Snake robots offer considerable potential for endoscopic interventions due to their ability to follow curvilinear paths. Telemanipulation is an open problem due to hyper-redundancy, as input devices only allow a specification of six degrees…
This work employs a reinforcement learning-based model identification method aimed at enhancing the accuracy of the dynamics for our snake robot, called COBRA. Leveraging gradient information and iterative optimization, the proposed…