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Manipulating volumetric deformable objects in the real world, like plush toys and pizza dough, bring substantial challenges due to infinite shape variations, non-rigid motions, and partial observability. We introduce ACID, an…
Fast, accurate, and generalizable simulations are a key enabler of modern advances in robot design and control. However, existing simulation frameworks in robotics either model rigid environments and mechanisms only, or if they include…
Few-shot adaptation is an important capability for intelligent robots that perform tasks in open-world settings such as everyday environments or flexible production. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for non-prehensile manipulation…
Contact-rich manipulation is crucial for robots to perform tasks requiring precise force control, such as insertion, assembly, and in-hand manipulation. However, most imitation learning (IL) policies remain position-centric and lack…
Fast and safe manipulation of flexible objects with a robot manipulator necessitates measures to cope with vibrations. Existing approaches either increase the task execution time or require complex models and/or additional instrumentation…
We present a framework for the simulation of rigid and deformable bodies in the presence of contact and friction. Our method is based on a non-smooth Newton iteration that solves the underlying nonlinear complementarity problems (NCPs)…
Robotic manipulation is essential for the widespread adoption of robots in industrial and home settings and has long been a focus within the robotics community. Advances in artificial intelligence have introduced promising learning-based…
Nonprehensile manipulation involves long horizon underactuated object interactions and physical contact with different objects that can inherently introduce a high degree of uncertainty. In this work, we introduce a novel Real-to-Sim reward…
Robotic assembly is a longstanding challenge, requiring contact-rich interaction and high precision and accuracy. Many applications also require adaptivity to diverse parts, poses, and environments, as well as low cycle times. In other…
Fluidically actuated soft robots have promising capabilities such as inherent compliance and user safety. The control of soft robots needs to properly handle nonlinear actuation dynamics, motion constraints, workspace limitations, and…
State-of-the-art robotics simulators operate in discrete time. This requires users to choose a time step, which is both critical and challenging: large steps can produce non-physical artifacts, while small steps force the simulation to run…
Soft robotic grippers facilitate contact-rich manipulation, including robust grasping of varied objects. Yet the beneficial compliance of a soft gripper also results in significant deformation that can make precision manipulation…
Achieving human-like motion in robots has been a fundamental goal in many areas of robotics research. Inverse kinematic (IK) solvers have been explored as a solution to provide kinematic structures with anthropomorphic movements. In…
Simulating stiff materials in applications where deformations are either not significant or can safely be ignored is a pivotal task across fields. Rigid body modeling has thus long remained a fundamental tool and is, by far, the most…
With the explosive growth of rigid-body simulators, policy learning in simulation has become the de facto standard for most rigid morphologies. In contrast, soft robotic simulation frameworks remain scarce and are seldom adopted by the soft…
Robotic cutting of soft materials is critical for applications such as food processing, household automation, and surgical manipulation. As in other areas of robotics, simulators can facilitate controller verification, policy learning, and…
Model Predictive Control (MPC) is widely used for torque-controlled robots, but classical formulations often neglect real-time force feedback and struggle with contact-rich industrial tasks under collision constraints. Deburring in…
We propose a novel fast and accurate simulation framework for contact-intensive tight-tolerance robotic assembly tasks. The key components of our framework are as follows: 1) data-driven contact point clustering with a certain…
Robots built from soft materials will inherently apply lower environmental forces than their rigid counterparts, and therefore may be more suitable in sensitive settings with unintended contact. However, these robots' applied forces result…
Laminate mechanisms are a reliable concept in producing lowcost robots for educational and commercial purposes. These mechanisms are produced using low-cost manufacturing techniques which have improved significantly during recent years and…