Related papers: Differentiable Contact Dynamics for Stable Object …

To perform complex tasks, robots must be able to interact with and manipulate their surroundings. One of the key challenges in accomplishing this is robust state estimation during physical interactions, where the state involves not only the…

Simulation of contact and friction dynamics is an important basis for control- and learning-based algorithms. However, the numerical difficulties of contact interactions pose a challenge for robust and efficient simulators. A…

Robotic manipulation in dynamic and unstructured environments requires safety mechanisms that exploit what is known and what is uncertain about the world. Existing safety filters often assume full observability, limiting their applicability…

As robots move from the laboratory into the real world, motion planning will need to account for model uncertainty and risk. For robot motions involving intermittent contact, planning for uncertainty in contact is especially important, as…

Learning or identifying dynamics from a sequence of high-dimensional observations is a difficult challenge in many domains, including reinforcement learning and control. The problem has recently been studied from a generative perspective…

This work explores the potential of using differentiable simulation for learning quadruped locomotion. Differentiable simulation promises fast convergence and stable training by computing low-variance first-order gradients using robot…

Objects rarely sit in isolation in human environments. As such, we'd like our robots to reason about how multiple objects relate to one another and how those relations may change as the robot interacts with the world. To this end, we…

This paper presents a new method for parallel-jaw grasping of isolated objects from depth images, under large gripper pose uncertainty. Whilst most approaches aim to predict the single best grasp pose from an image, our method first…

We present Dojo, a differentiable physics engine for robotics that prioritizes stable simulation, accurate contact physics, and differentiability with respect to states, actions, and system parameters. Dojo models hard contact and friction…

We present a differentiable formulation of rigid-body contact dynamics for objects and robots represented as compositions of convex primitives. Existing optimization-based approaches simulating contact between convex primitives rely on a…

We consider the problem of grasping deformable objects with soft shells using a robotic gripper. Such objects have a center-of-mass that changes dynamically and are fragile so prone to burst. Thus, it is difficult for robots to generate…

Deformable object manipulation is a long-standing challenge in robotics. While existing approaches often focus narrowly on a specific type of object, we seek a general-purpose algorithm, capable of manipulating many different types of…

This paper presents a framework for dynamic object catching using a quadruped robot's front legs while it stands on its rear legs. The system integrates computer vision, trajectory prediction, and leg control to enable the quadruped to…

External collisions to robot actuators typically pose risks to grasping circular objects. This work presents a vision-based sensing module capable of detecting collisions to maintain stable grasping with a soft gripper system. The system…

Cloth simulation has wide applications in computer animation, garment design, and robot-assisted dressing. This work presents a differentiable cloth simulator whose additional gradient information facilitates cloth-related applications. Our…

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 of unknown objects is an important field of research. Practical applications occur in many real-world settings where robots need to interact with an unknown environment. We tackle the problem of reactive grasping by…

Stability guarantees are crucial when ensuring a fully autonomous robot does not take undesirable or potentially harmful actions. Unfortunately, global stability guarantees are hard to provide in dynamical systems learned from data,…

We present the design of a low-cost wheeled mobile robot, and an analytical model for predicting its motion under the influence of motor torques and friction forces. Using our proposed model, we show how to analytically compute the gradient…

Safety assurance is critical in the planning and control of robotic systems. For robots operating in the real world, the safety-critical design often needs to explicitly address uncertainties and the pre-computed guarantees often rely on…