Related papers: Explicit Contact Optimization in Whole-Body Contac…
Linear models for control and motion generation of humanoid robots have received significant attention in the past years, not only due to their well known theoretical guarantees, but also because of practical computational advantages.…
Dexterous manipulation requires careful reasoning over extrinsic contacts. The prevalence of deforming tools in human environments, the use of deformable sensors, and the increasing number of soft robots yields a need for approaches that…
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,…
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…
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…
Redundant robots are desired to execute multitasks with different priorities simultaneously. The task priorities are necessary to be transitioned for complex task scheduling of whole-body control (WBC). Many methods focused on guaranteeing…
The current dominant paradigm for robotic manipulation involves two separate stages: manipulator design and control. Because the robot's morphology and how it can be controlled are intimately linked, joint optimization of design and control…
Robotic manipulation in unstructured environments requires planners to reason jointly about free-space motion and sustained, frictional contact with the environment. Existing (local) planning and simulation frameworks typically separate…
We present in-hand manipulation tasks where a robot moves an object in grasp, maintains its external contact mode with the environment, and adjusts its in-hand pose simultaneously. The proposed manipulation task leads to complex contact…
Generalizable manipulation requires that robots be able to interact with novel objects and environment. This requirement makes manipulation extremely challenging as a robot has to reason about complex frictional interactions with…
Aerial manipulation combines the maneuverability of multirotors with the dexterity of robotic arms to perform complex tasks in cluttered spaces. Yet planning safe, dynamically feasible trajectories remains difficult due to whole-body…
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…
Effective close-proximity human-robot interaction (CP-HRI) requires robots to be able to both efficiently perform tasks as well as adapt to human behavior and preferences. However, this ability is mediated by many, sometimes competing,…
In this paper, a novel approach is proposed for learning robot control in contact-rich tasks such as wiping, by developing Diffusion Contact Model (DCM). Previous methods of learning such tasks relied on impedance control with time-varying…
Unlike human beings that can employ the entire surface of their limbs as a means to establish contact with their environment, robots are typically programmed to interact with their environments via their end-effectors, in a collision-free…
A key challenge in intelligent robotics is creating robots that are capable of directly interacting with the world around them to achieve their goals. The last decade has seen substantial growth in research on the problem of robot…
In this work we present a whole-body Nonlinear Model Predictive Control approach for Rigid Body Systems subject to contacts. We use a full dynamic system model which also includes explicit contact dynamics. Therefore, contact locations,…
Humanoid robots often face significant balance issues due to the motion of their heavy limbs. These challenges are particularly pronounced when attempting dynamic motion or operating in environments with irregular terrain. To address this…
Robotic manipulation stands as a largely unsolved problem despite significant advances in robotics and machine learning in recent years. One of the key challenges in manipulation is the exploration of the dynamics of the environment when…
We introduce multi-task Visuo-Tactile World Models (VT-WM), which capture the physics of contact through touch reasoning. By complementing vision with tactile sensing, VT-WM better understands robot-object interactions in contact-rich…