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There is a growing need for robots that can change their shape, size and mechanical properties to adapt to evolving tasks and environments. However, current shape-changing systems generally utilize bespoke, system-specific mechanisms that…
A popular paradigm in robotic learning is to train a policy from scratch for every new robot. This is not only inefficient but also often impractical for complex robots. In this work, we consider the problem of transferring a policy across…
Flexible-joint manipulators are governed by complex nonlinear dynamics, defining a challenging control problem. In this work, we propose an approach to learn an outer-loop joint trajectory tracking controller with deep reinforcement…
Robots can influence people to accomplish their tasks more efficiently: autonomous cars can inch forward at an intersection to pass through, and tabletop manipulators can go for an object on the table first. However, a robot's ability to…
In this work we propose an approach to learn a robust policy for solving the pivoting task. Recently, several model-free continuous control algorithms were shown to learn successful policies without prior knowledge of the dynamics of the…
The paper proposes a feed-forward control strategy for mobile robot control that accounts for a non-linear model of the vehicle with interaction between inputs and outputs. It is possible to include specific model uncertainties in the…
The ability of animals to interact with complex dynamics is unmatched in robots. Especially important to the interaction performances is the online adaptation of body dynamics, which can be modeled as an impedance behaviour. However, the…
Many robots are not equipped with a manipulator and many objects are not suitable for prehensile manipulation (such as large boxes and cylinders). In these cases, pushing is a simple yet effective non-prehensile skill for robots to interact…
This paper proposes an adaptive control allocation approach for uncertain over-actuated systems with actuator saturation. The proposed method does not require uncertainty estimation or a persistent excitation assumption. Using the…
Endowing continuum robots with compliance while it is interacting with the internal environment of the human body is essential to prevent damage to the robot and the surrounding tissues. Compared with passive compliance, active compliance…
This letter proposes a method to integrate auxiliary actuators that enhance the task space capabilities of commercial underactuated systems, leaving the internal certified low level controller untouched. The additional actuators are…
This paper presents two novel control methodologies for the cooperative manipulation of an object by N robotic agents. Firstly, we design an adaptive control protocol which employs quaternion feedback for the object orientation to avoid…
This paper proposes a unified robust motion controller for the position and force control problems of compliant robot manipulators driven by Series Elastic Actuators (SEAs). It is shown that the dynamic model of the compliant robot includes…
In evolutionary robotics, jointly optimising the design and the controller of robots is a challenging task due to the huge complexity of the solution space formed by the possible combinations of body and controller. We focus on the…
An impedance-based control scheme is introduced for cooperative manipulators grasping a rigid load. The position and orientation of the load are to be maintained close to a desired trajectory, trading off tracking accuracy by low energy…
Many modern robotic systems such as multi-robot systems and manipulators exhibit redundancy, a property owing to which they are capable of executing multiple tasks. This work proposes a novel method, based on the Reinforcement Learning (RL)…
Robots that physically interact with their surroundings, in order to accomplish some tasks or assist humans in their activities, require to exploit contact forces in a safe and proficient manner. Impedance control is considered as a…
Deep reinforcement learning is becoming increasingly popular for robot control algorithms, with the aim for a robot to self-learn useful feature representations from unstructured sensory input leading to the optimal actuation policy. In…
We propose a general strategy for feedback control design of complex dynamical systems exploiting the nonlinear mechanisms in a systematic unsupervised manner. These dynamical systems can have a state space of arbitrary dimension with…
We propose a simple, practical and intuitive approach to improve the performance of a conventional controller in uncertain environments using deep reinforcement learning while maintaining safe operation. Our approach is motivated by the…