Related papers: Visual-auditory Extrinsic Contact Estimation
Robot-to-human object handover is an essential skill for robot assistants, from serving drinks at home to passing surgical tools in the operating room. We expect robots to perform handover robustly -- to release the object only after a firm…
We present a robotic grasping system that uses a single external monocular RGB camera as input. The object-to-robot pose is computed indirectly by combining the output of two neural networks: one that estimates the object-to-camera pose,…
Active perception approaches select future viewpoints by using some estimate of the information gain. An inaccurate estimate can be detrimental in critical situations, e.g., locating a person in distress. However the true information gained…
We present a novel approach for mobile manipulator self-calibration using contact information. Our method, based on point cloud registration, is applied to estimate the extrinsic transform between a fixed vision sensor mounted on a mobile…
In minimally invasive telesurgery, obtaining accurate force information is difficult due to the complexities of in-vivo end effector force sensing. This constrains development and implementation of haptic feedback and force-based automated…
The vast majority of visual animals actively control their eyes, heads, and/or bodies to direct their gaze toward different parts of their environment. In contrast, recent applications of reinforcement learning in robotic manipulation…
Accurate intrinsic and extrinsic camera calibration can be an important prerequisite for robotic applications that rely on vision as input. While there is ongoing research on enabling camera calibration using natural images, many systems in…
Accurate and robust object state estimation enables successful object manipulation. Visual sensing is widely used to estimate object poses. However, in a cluttered scene or in a tight workspace, the robot's end-effector often occludes the…
Perception algorithms that provide estimates of their uncertainty are crucial to the development of autonomous robots that can operate in challenging and uncontrolled environments. Such perception algorithms provide the means for having…
Robotic manipulation research has investigated contact-rich problems and strategies that require robots to intentionally collide with their environment, to accomplish tasks that cannot be handled by traditional collision-free solutions. By…
We present a visuo-tactile data-collection system that generates temporally structured, contact-rich demonstrations for imitation learning. Conventional systems often decouple the operator from contact forces, which hinders the…
For humans, the process of grasping an object relies heavily on rich tactile feedback. Most recent robotic grasping work, however, has been based only on visual input, and thus cannot easily benefit from feedback after initiating contact.…
Dexterous in-hand manipulation is an essential skill of production and life. However, the highly stiff and mutable nature of contacts limits real-time contact detection and inference, degrading the performance of model-based methods.…
In essence, successful grasp boils down to correct responses to multiple contact events between fingertips and objects. In most scenarios, tactile sensing is adequate to distinguish contact events. Due to the nature of high dimensionality…
Robot simulation has been an essential tool for data-driven manipulation tasks. However, most existing simulation frameworks lack either efficient and accurate models of physical interactions with tactile sensors or realistic tactile…
Many manipulation tasks require the robot to control the contact between a grasped compliant tool and the environment, e.g. scraping a frying pan with a spatula. However, modeling tool-environment interaction is difficult, especially when…
Reconstructing hand-held objects from monocular RGB images is an appealing yet challenging task. In this task, contacts between hands and objects provide important cues for recovering the 3D geometry of the hand-held objects. Though recent…
In this paper, we propose a method to estimate the proximity of an acoustic reflector, e.g., a wall, using ego-noise, i.e., the noise produced by the moving parts of a listening robot. This is achieved by estimating the times of arrival of…
Many functional elements of human homes and workplaces consist of rigid components which are connected through one or more sliding or rotating linkages. Examples include doors and drawers of cabinets and appliances; laptops; and swivel…
To achieve general-purpose dexterous manipulation, robots must rapidly devise and execute contact-rich behaviors. Existing model-based controllers are incapable of globally optimizing in real-time over the exponential number of possible…