Related papers: Non-impulsive Contact-Implicit Motion Planning for…
A common way to manipulate heavy objects is to maintain at least one point of the object in contact with the environment during the manipulation. When the object has a cylindrical shape or, in general, a curved edge, not only sliding and…
Non-prehensile manipulation is challenging due to complex contact interactions between objects, the environment, and robots. Model-based approaches can efficiently generate complex trajectories of robots and objects under contact…
Robots must make and break contact with the environment to perform useful tasks, but planning and control through contact remains a formidable challenge. In this work, we achieve real-time contact-implicit model predictive control with a…
In this paper we present a new approach for dynamic motion planning for legged robots. We formulate a trajectory optimization problem based on a compact form of the robot dynamics. Such a form is obtained by projecting the rigid body…
Loco-manipulation planning skills are pivotal for expanding the utility of robots in everyday environments. These skills can be assessed based on a system's ability to coordinate complex holistic movements and multiple contact interactions…
Robotic manipulation research has investigated contact-rich problems and strategies that require robots to intentionally collide with their environment, to accomplish tasks that cannot be handled by traditional collision-free solutions. By…
Humans' ability to smoothly switch between locomotion and manipulation is a remarkable feature of sensorimotor coordination. Leaning and replication of such human-like strategies can lead to the development of more sophisticated robots…
Contact planning is crucial in locomoting systems.Specifically, appropriate contact planning can enable versatile behaviors (e.g., sidewinding in limbless locomotors) and facilitate speed-dependent gait transitions (e.g., walk-trot-gallop…
Soft robotic snakes made of compliant materials can continuously deform their bodies and, therefore, mimic the biological snakes' flexible and agile locomotion gaits better than their rigid-bodied counterparts. Without wheel support, to…
Non-prehensile manipulation enables fast interactions with objects by circumventing the need to grasp and ungrasp as well as handling objects that cannot be grasped through force closure. Current approaches to non-prehensile manipulation…
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,…
This paper proposes a novel approach to performing in-grasp manipulation: the problem of moving an object with reference to the palm from an initial pose to a goal pose without breaking or making contacts. Our method to perform in-grasp…
In this paper we propose a method to improve the accuracy of trajectory optimization for dynamic robots with intermittent contact by using orthogonal collocation. Until recently, most trajectory optimization methods for systems with…
In this paper, we present a model-free learning-based control scheme for the soft snake robot to improve its contact-aware locomotion performance in a cluttered environment. The control scheme includes two cooperative controllers: A…
We present a method that finds locomanipulation plans that perform simultaneous locomotion and manipulation of objects for a desired end-effector trajectory. Key to our approach is to consider a generic locomotion constraint manifold that…
This paper presents a novel method to control humanoid robot dynamic loco-manipulation with multiple contact modes via multi-contact Model Predictive Control (MPC) framework. The proposed framework includes a multi-contact dynamics model…
We examine the problem of snake-like locomotion by studying a system consisting of a planar inextensible elastic rod that is able to control its spontaneous curvature. Using a Cosserat model we derive, through variational principles, the…
Loco-manipulation is a key capability for legged robots to perform practical mobile manipulation tasks, such as transporting and pushing objects, in real-world environments. However, learning robust loco-manipulation skills remains…
Planning contact interactions is one of the core challenges of many robotic tasks. Optimizing contact locations while taking dynamics into account is computationally costly and, in environments that are only partially observable, executing…
Bioinspired snake robotics has been a highly active area of research over the years and resulted in many prototypes. Much of these prototypes takes the form of serially jointed-rigid bodies. The emergence of soft robotics contributed to a…