Related papers: Reprogrammable sequencing for physically intellige…

Recent literature in the robotics community has focused on learning robot behaviors that abstract out lower-level details of robot control. To fully leverage the efficacy of such behaviors, it is necessary to select and sequence them to…

Reprogrammable mechanical metamaterials, composed of a lattice of discretely adaptive elements, are emerging as a promising platform for mechanical intelligence. To operate in unknown environments, such structures must go beyond passive…

We propose an instructions-based approach for robot programming where the programmer interacts with the robot by issuing simple commands in a scripting language, like python. Internally, these commands make use of pre-programmed motion and…

Taking inspiration from how the brain coordinates multiple learning systems is an appealing strategy to endow robots with more flexibility. One of the expected advantages would be for robots to autonomously switch to the least costly system…

Sidewinding, a locomotion strategy characterized by the coordination of lateral and vertical body undulations, is frequently observed in rattlesnakes and has been successfully reconstructed by limbless robotic systems for effective movement…

This study presents a system integration approach for planning schedules, sequences, tasks, and motions for reconfigurable robots to automatically disassemble constrained structures in a non-destructive manner. Such systems must adapt their…

The development of robot control programs is a complex task. Many robots are different in their electrical and mechanical structure which is also reflected in the software. Specific robot software environments support the program…

The theoretical ability of modular robots to reconfigure in response to complex tasks in a priori unknown environments has frequently been cited as an advantage and remains a major motivator for work in the field. We present a modular robot…

Mobile soft robots offer compelling applications in fields ranging from urban search and rescue to planetary exploration. A critical challenge of soft robotic control is that the nonlinear dynamics imposed by soft materials often result in…

Consider a robot operating in an uncertain environment with stochastic, dynamic obstacles. Despite the clear benefits for trajectory optimization, it is often hard to keep track of each obstacle at every time step due to sensing and…

In intelligent manufacturing, robots are asked to dynamically adapt their behaviours without reducing productivity. Human teaching, where an operator physically interacts with the robot to demonstrate a new task, is a promising strategy to…

Robotic manipulation demands precise control over both contact forces and motion trajectories. While force control is essential for achieving compliant interaction and high-frequency adaptation, it is limited to operations in close…

The deformable and continuum nature of soft robots promises versatility and adaptability. However, control of modular, multi-limbed soft robots for terrestrial locomotion is challenging due to the complex robot structure, actuator mechanics…

Robust motion planning is a well-studied problem in the robotics literature, yet current algorithms struggle to operate scalably and safely in the presence of other moving agents, such as humans. This paper introduces a novel framework for…

Natural behavior consists of dynamics that are complex and unpredictable, especially when trying to predict many steps into the future. While some success has been found in building representations of behavior under constrained or…

The current methods to generate robot actions for automation in significantly different environments have limitations. This paper proposes a new method that matches the impedance of two prerecorded action data with the current environmental…

Humans can easily reason about the sequence of high level actions needed to complete tasks, but it is particularly difficult to instil this ability in robots trained from relatively few examples. This work considers the task of neural…

We investigate the scenario that a robot needs to reach a designated goal after taking a sequence of appropriate actions in a non-static environment that is partially structured. One application example is to control a marine vehicle to…

Legged machines are becoming increasingly agile and adaptive but they have so far lacked the morphological diversity of legged animals, which have been rearranged and reshaped to fill millions of niches. Unlike their biological…

The dynamics of a self-propelled particle are typically hard-wired by its microscopic construction, limiting the range of behaviors accessible without redesigning the particle itself. Here we show that intramolecular nonreciprocity provides…