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Six axis force-torque sensors are commonly attached to the wrist of serial robots to measure the external forces and torques acting on the robot's end-effector. These measurements are used for load identification, contact detection, and…
Soft, tip-extending "vine" robots offer a unique mode of inspection and manipulation in highly constrained environments. For practicality, it is desirable that the distal end of the robot can be manipulated freely, while the body remains…
Closed-loop control remains an open challenge in soft robotics. The nonlinear responses of soft actuators under dynamic loading conditions limit the use of analytic models for soft robot control. Traditional methods of controlling soft…
Desktop organization remains challenging for service robots because of heterogeneous objects and diverse manipulation objectives, such as collection and stacking. In this article, a task-oriented framework is presented for organizing planar…
Precise robotic manipulation skills are desirable in many industrial settings, reinforcement learning (RL) methods hold the promise of acquiring these skills autonomously. In this paper, we explicitly consider incorporating operational…
To enlarge the translational workspace of cable-driven robots, one common approach is to increase the number of cables. However, this introduces two challenges: (1) cable interference significantly reduces the rotational workspace, and (2)…
Vision-based models for robotic grasping automate critical, repetitive, and draining industrial tasks. Existing approaches are typically limited in two ways: they either target a single gripper and are potentially applied on costly dual-arm…
In hazardous and remote environments, robotic systems perform critical tasks demanding improved safety and efficiency. Among these, quadruped robots with manipulator arms offer mobility and versatility for complex operations. However,…
This paper presents a physical interface for collaborative mobile manipulators in industrial manufacturing and logistics applications. The proposed work builds on our earlier MOCA-MAN interface, through which an operator could be physically…
Pushing is a motion primitive useful to handle objects that are too large, too heavy, or too cluttered to be grasped. It is at the core of much of robotic manipulation, in particular when physical interaction is involved. It seems…
This paper proposes a new variable stiffness soft gripper that enables high-performance grasping tasks in industrial applications. The design of the proposed monolithic soft gripper includes a middle bellow and two side bellows (i.e.,…
We present algorithms and results for a robotic manipulation system that was designed to be easily programmable and adaptable to various tasks common to industrial setting, which is inspired by the Industrial Assembly Challenge at the 2018…
The term robot generally refers to a machine that looks and works in a way similar to a human. The modern industry is rapidly shifting from manual control of systems to automation, in order to increase productivity and to deliver quality…
Robotic grasp and manipulation taxonomies, inspired by observing human manipulation strategies, can provide key guidance for tasks ranging from robotic gripper design to the development of manipulation algorithms. The existing grasp and…
Optical pulling with tractor beams is so far highly dependent on (i) the property of embedding background or the particle itself , (ii) the number of the particles and/or (iii) the manual ramping of beam phase. A necessary theoretical…
Reconfigurable robot swarms are capable of connecting with each other to form complex structures. Current mechanical or magnetic connection mechanisms can be complicated to manufacture, consume high power, have a limited load-bearing…
Controlling soft continuum manipulator arms is difficult due to their infinite degrees of freedom, nonlinear material properties, and large deflections under loading. This paper presents a data-driven approach to identifying soft…
In this study, we report the successful execution of in-air knotting of rope using a dual-arm two-finger robot based on deep learning. Owing to its flexibility, the state of the rope was in constant flux during the operation of the robot.…
In this paper we consider the coverage control problem for a team of wire-traversing robots. The two-dimensional motion of robots moving in a planar environment has to be projected to one-dimensional manifolds representing the wires.…
Reaching-and-grasping is a fundamental skill for robotic manipulation, but existing methods usually train models on a specific gripper and cannot be reused on another gripper. In this paper, we propose a novel method that can learn a…