Related papers: No-brainer: Morphological Computation driven Adapt…
Optimizing the morphologies and the controllers that adapt to various tasks is a critical issue in the field of robot design, aka. embodied intelligence. Previous works typically model it as a joint optimization problem and use search-based…
What if a robot could rethink its own morphological representation to better meet the demands of diverse tasks? Most robotic systems today treat their physical form as a fixed constraint rather than an adaptive resource, forcing the same…
The human mind effortlessly simulates the movements of objects governed by the laws of physics, such as a fluttering, or a waving flag under wind force, without understanding the underlying physics. This suggests that human cognition can…
Humanoid robots, as general-purpose physical agents, must integrate both intelligent control and adaptive morphology to operate effectively in diverse real-world environments. While recent research has focused primarily on optimizing…
Teleoperated robotic characters can perform expressive interactions with humans, relying on the operators' experience and social intuition. In this work, we propose to create autonomous interactive robots, by training a model to imitate…
We introduce a novel framework for automatic behavior tree (BT) construction in heterogeneous multi-robot systems, designed to address the challenges of adaptability and robustness in dynamic environments. Traditional robots are limited by…
Reconfigurable robot swarms are capable of connecting with each other to form complex structures. Current mechanical or magnetic connection mechanisms can be complicated to manufacture, consume high power, have a limited load-bearing…
Imitation learning from human motion capture (MoCap) data provides a promising way to train humanoid robots. However, due to differences in morphology, such as varying degrees of joint freedom and force limits, exact replication of human…
Many animals meander in environments and avoid collisions. How the underlying neuronal machinery can yield robust behaviour in a variety of environments remains unclear. In the fly brain, motion-sensitive neurons indicate the presence of…
The mechanisms of infant development are far from understood. Learning about one's own body is likely a foundation for subsequent development. Here we look specifically at the problem of how spontaneous touches to the body in early infancy…
We consider the problem of optimizing a robot morphology to achieve the best performance for a target task, under computational resource limitations. The evaluation process for each morphological design involves learning a controller for…
Robots need robust and flexible vision systems to perceive and reason about their environments beyond geometry. Most of such systems build upon deep learning approaches. As autonomous robots are commonly deployed in initially unknown…
Soft robots are robotic systems made of deformable materials and exhibit unique flexibility that can be exploited for complex environments and tasks. However, their control problem has been considered a challenging subject because they are…
Our goal in this work is to expand the theory and practice of robot locomotion by addressing critical challenges associated with the robotic biomimicry of bat aerial locomotion. Bats wings exhibit fast wing articulation and can mobilize as…
Soft robots offer more flexibility, compliance, and adaptability than traditional rigid robots. They are also typically lighter and cheaper to manufacture. However, their use in real-world applications is limited due to modeling challenges…
Voxel-based structures provide a modular, mechanically flexible periodic lattice which can be used as a soft robot through internal deformations. To engage these structures for robotic tasks, we use a finite element method to characterize…
Vision-based learning methods provide promise for robots to learn complex manipulation tasks. However, how to generalize the learned manipulation skills to real-world interactions remains an open question. In this work, we study robotic…
Many organisms leverage an interplay between shape and activity to generate motion and adapt to their environment. Embedding such feedback into synthetic microrobots could eliminate the need for sensors, software, and actuators, yet current…
Endowing robots with tactile capabilities opens up new possibilities for their interaction with the environment, including the ability to handle fragile and/or soft objects. In this work, we equip the robot gripper with low-cost…
Electrically-driven soft robots based on piezoelectric actuators may enable compact form factors and maneuverability in complex environments. In most prior work, piezoelectric actuators are used to control a single degree of freedom. In…