Related papers: Explicit Contact Optimization in Whole-Body Contac…
This article propose a whole-body impedance coordinative control framework for a wheel-legged humanoid robot to achieve adaptability on complex terrains while maintaining robot upper body stability. The framework contains a bi-level control…
This paper considers the problem of maintaining global connectivity of a multi-robot system while executing a desired coordination task. Our approach builds on optimization-based feedback design formulations, where the nominal cost function…
Non-prehensile manipulation of diverse objects remains a core challenge in robotics, driven by unknown physical properties and the complexity of contact-rich interactions. Recent advances in contact-implicit model predictive control…
Learning from real-world robot demonstrations holds promise for interacting with complex real-world environments. However, the complexity and variability of interaction dynamics often cause purely positional controllers to struggle with…
In order to enable physical human-robot interaction where humans and (mobile) manipulators share their workspace and work together, robots have to be equipped with important capabilities to guarantee human safety. The robots have to…
This paper is about generating motion plans for high degree-of-freedom systems that account for collisions along the entire body. A particular class of mathematical programs with complementarity constraints become useful in this regard.…
For successful goal-directed human-robot interaction, the robot should adapt to the intentions and actions of the collaborating human. This can be supported by musculoskeletal or data-driven human models, where the former are limited to…
Generalizable manipulation involving cross-type object interactions is a critical yet challenging capability in robotics. To reliably accomplish such tasks, robots must address two fundamental challenges: "where to manipulate" (contact…
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…
In this letter, we investigate learning forward dynamics models and multi-step prediction of state variables (long-term prediction) for contact-rich manipulation. The problems are formulated in the context of model-based reinforcement…
In this work, we present an extension to a linear Model Predictive Control (MPC) scheme that plans external contact forces for the robot when given multiple contact locations and their corresponding friction cone. To this end, we set up a…
Physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) requires robots to adapt to individual contact preferences, such as where and how much force is applied. Identifying preferences is difficult for a single contact; with whole-arm interaction involving…
This paper explores the possibility of improving bilateral robot manipulation task performance through optimizing the robot morphology and configuration of the system through motion. To optimize the design for different scenarios, we select…
This paper presents a hybrid robot cognitive architecture, CRAM, that enables robot agents to accomplish everyday manipulation tasks. It addresses five key challenges that arise when carrying out everyday activities. These include (i) the…
Enabling robotic manipulation that generalizes to out-of-distribution scenes is a crucial step toward open-world embodied intelligence. For human beings, this ability is rooted in the understanding of semantic correspondence among objects,…
With the maturation of differentiable physics, its role in various downstream applications: such as model predictive control, robotic design optimization, and neural PDE solvers, has become increasingly important. However, the derivative…
Recent research on mobile robots has focused on increasing their adaptability to unpredictable and unstructured environments using soft materials and structures. However, the determination of key design parameters and control over these…
Robots often face manipulation tasks in environments where vision is inadequate due to clutter, occlusions, or poor lighting--for example, reaching a shutoff valve at the back of a sink cabinet or locating a light switch above a crowded…
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…
When a robot performs a task next to a human, physical interaction is inevitable: the human might push, pull, twist, or guide the robot. The state-of-the-art treats these interactions as disturbances that the robot should reject or avoid.…