Related papers: Tactile Probabilistic Contact Dynamics Estimation …
Tactile feedback is critical for understanding the dynamics of both rigid and deformable objects in many manipulation tasks, such as non-prehensile manipulation and dense packing. We introduce an approach that combines visual and tactile…
We present an approach to robotic manipulation of unknown objects through regulation of the object's contact configuration: the location, geometry, and mode of all contacts between the object, robot, and environment. A contact configuration…
Trajectory optimization with contact-rich behaviors has recently gained attention for generating diverse locomotion behaviors without pre-specified ground contact sequences. However, these approaches rely on precise models of robot dynamics…
This paper explores active sensing strategies that employ vision-based tactile sensors for robotic perception and classification of fabric textures. We formalize the active sampling problem in the context of tactile fabric recognition and…
Estimation of tactile properties from vision, such as slipperiness or roughness, is important to effectively interact with the environment. These tactile properties help us decide which actions we should choose and how to perform them.…
In this study, we investigate the problem of tracking objects with unknown shapes using three-dimensional (3D) point cloud data. We propose a Gaussian process-based model to jointly estimate object kinematics, including position,…
Robotic exploration under uncertain environments is challenging when optical information is not available. In this paper, we propose an autonomous solution of exploring an unknown task space based on tactile sensing alone. We first designed…
Learning physically structured representations of dynamical systems that include contact between different objects is an important problem for learning-based approaches in robotics. Black-box neural networks can learn to approximately…
Mobile robots that navigate in unknown environments need to be constantly aware of the dynamic objects in their surroundings for mapping, localization, and planning. It is key to reason about moving objects in the current observation and at…
This paper proposes a new method for manipulating unknown objects through a sequence of non-prehensile actions that displace an object from its initial configuration to a given goal configuration on a flat surface. The proposed method…
Spatial tactile feedback can enhance the realism of geometry exploration in virtual reality applications. Current vibrotactile approaches often face challenges with the spatial and temporal resolution needed to render different 3D…
In this work, we present a method to estimate the mass distribution of a rigid object through robotic interactions and tactile feedback. This is a challenging problem because of the complexity of physical dynamics modeling and the action…
We address the problem of tracking 3D object poses from touch during in-hand manipulations. Specifically, we look at tracking small objects using vision-based tactile sensors that provide high-dimensional tactile image measurements at the…
In this paper we propose a novel method for in-hand object recognition. The method is composed of a grasp stabilization controller and two exploratory behaviours to capture the shape and the softness of an object. Grasp stabilization plays…
This paper investigates one of the most challenging tasks in dynamic manipulation -- catching large-momentum moving objects. Beyond the realm of quasi-static manipulation, dealing with highly dynamic objects can significantly improve the…
Several robot manipulation tasks are extremely sensitive to variations of the physical properties of the manipulated objects. One such task is manipulating objects by using gravity or arm accelerations, increasing the importance of mass,…
The perception of an object's surface is important for robotic applications enabling robust object manipulation. The level of accuracy in such a representation affects the outcome of the action planning, especially during tasks that require…
We introduce a novel motion estimation method, MaskFlow, that is capable of estimating accurate motion fields, even in very challenging cases with small objects, large displacements and drastic appearance changes. In addition to lower-level…
Contact-rich manipulation is difficult for robots to execute and requires accurate perception of the environment. In some scenarios, vision is occluded. The robot can then no longer obtain real-time scene state information through visual…
We consider exploration tasks in which an autonomous mobile robot incrementally builds maps of initially unknown indoor environments. In such tasks, the robot makes a sequence of decisions on where to move next that, usually, are based on…