Related papers: Caging in Time: A Framework for Robust Object Mani…

Coordinating a team of robots to reposition multiple objects in cluttered environments requires reasoning jointly about where robots should establish contact, how to manipulate objects once contact is made, and how to navigate safely and…

We present a sampling-based approach to reasoning about the caging-based manipulation of rigid and a simplified class of deformable 3D objects subject to energy constraints. Towards this end, we propose the notion of soft fixtures extending…

We present a framework for deformable object manipulation that interleaves planning and control, enabling complex manipulation tasks without relying on high-fidelity modeling or simulation. The key question we address is when should we use…

Many robot manipulation tasks require the robot to make and break contact with objects and surfaces. The dynamics of such changing-contact robot manipulation tasks are discontinuous when contact is made or broken, and continuous elsewhere.…

Intercepting dynamic objects in uncertain environments involves a significant unresolved challenge in modern robotic systems. Current control approaches rely solely on estimated information, and results lack guarantees of robustness and…

Recently, there has been a growing interest in rescue robots due to their vital role in addressing emergency scenarios and providing crucial support in challenging or hazardous situations where human intervention is difficult. However, very…

In this work, we build on our method for manipulating unknown objects via contact configuration regulation: the estimation and control of the location, geometry, and mode of all contacts between the robot, object, and environment. We…

Robotic dexterous in-hand manipulation, where multiple fingers dynamically make and break contact, represents a step toward human-like dexterity in real-world robotic applications. Unlike learning-based approaches that rely on large-scale…

Studies of human-robot interaction in dynamic and unstructured environments show that as more advanced robotic capabilities are deployed, the need for cooperative competencies to support collaboration with human problem-holders increases.…

Manipulation in confined and cluttered environments remains a significant challenge due to partial observability and complex configuration spaces. Effective manipulation in such environments requires an intelligent exploration strategy to…

Mobile robots are ubiquitous. Such vehicles benefit from well-designed and calibrated control algorithms ensuring their task execution under precise uncertainty bounds. Yet, in tasks involving humans in the loop, such as elderly or mobility…

Highly constrained manipulation tasks continue to be challenging for autonomous robots as they require high levels of precision, typically less than 1mm, which is often incompatible with what can be achieved by traditional perception…

It has always been expected that a robot can be easily deployed to unknown scenarios, accomplishing robotic grasping tasks without human intervention. Nevertheless, existing grasp detection approaches are typically off-body techniques and…

We address the challenging problem of robotic grasping and manipulation in the presence of uncertainty. This uncertainty is due to noisy sensing, inaccurate models and hard-to-predict environment dynamics. We quantify the importance of…

Robotic grasping is a fundamental skill across all domains of robot applications. There is a large body of research for grasping objects in table-top scenarios, where finding suitable grasps is the main challenge. In this work, we are…

Rearrangement planning for object retrieval tasks from confined spaces is a challenging problem, primarily due to the lack of open space for robot motion and limited perception. Several traditional methods exist to solve object retrieval…

While both navigation and manipulation are challenging topics in isolation, many tasks require the ability to both navigate and manipulate in concert. To this end, we propose a mobile manipulation system that leverages novel navigation and…

Robotic manipulators are essential for future autonomous systems, yet limited trust in their autonomy has confined them to rigid, task-specific systems. The intricate configuration space of manipulators, coupled with the challenges of…

Non-prehensile manipulation such as pushing is typically subject to uncertain, non-smooth dynamics. However, modeling the uncertainty of the dynamics typically results in intractable belief dynamics, making data-efficient planning under…

Complex manipulation tasks, such as rearrangement planning of numerous objects, are combinatorially hard problems. Existing algorithms either do not scale well or assume a great deal of prior knowledge about the environment, and few offer…