Related papers: Differentiable Physics-based System Identification…
Dynamic state representation learning is an important task in robot learning. Latent space that can capture dynamics related information has wide application in areas such as accelerating model free reinforcement learning, closing the…
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…
High-fidelity simulation has become essential to the design and control of soft robots, where large geometric deformations and complex contact interactions challenge conventional modeling tools. Recent advances in the field demand…
This paper describes a 2D and 3D simulation engine that quantitatively models the statics, dynamics, and non-linear deformation of heterogeneous soft bodies in a computationally efficient manner. There is a large body of work simulating…
We address the challenge of learning to manipulate deformable objects with unknown dynamics. In non-rigid objects, the dynamics parameters define how they react to interactions -- how they stretch, bend, compress, and move -- and they are…
Advancing robotic manipulation of deformable objects can enable automation of repetitive tasks across multiple industries, from food processing to textiles and healthcare. Yet robots struggle with the high dimensionality of deformable…
Robotic manipulation of deformable 1D objects such as ropes, cables, and hoses is challenging due to the lack of high-fidelity analytic models and large configuration spaces. Furthermore, learning end-to-end manipulation policies directly…
Vision foundation models trained on massive amounts of visual data have shown unprecedented reasoning and planning skills in open-world settings. A key challenge in applying them to robotic tasks is the modality gap between visual data and…
We present a novel Learning from Demonstration (LfD) method, Deformable Manipulation from Demonstrations (DMfD), to solve deformable manipulation tasks using states or images as inputs, given expert demonstrations. Our method uses…
Developing robot controllers in a simulated environment is advantageous but transferring the controllers to the target environment presents challenges, often referred to as the "sim-to-real gap". We present a method for continuous…
Commonly used linear and nonlinear constitutive material models in deformation simulation contain many simplifications and only cover a tiny part of possible material behavior. In this work we propose a framework for learning customized…
Existing point cloud representation learning methods primarily rely on data-driven strategies to extract geometric information from large amounts of scattered data. However, most methods focus solely on the spatial distribution features of…
Interactive perception enables robots to manipulate the environment and objects to bring them into states that benefit the perception process. Deformable objects pose challenges to this due to significant manipulation difficulty and…
This paper proposes a unified vision-based manipulation framework using image contours of deformable/rigid objects. Instead of using human-defined cues, the robot automatically learns the features from processed vision data. Our method…
This paper addresses the problem of controlling a continuum manipulator (CM) in free or obstructed environments with no prior knowledge about the deformation behavior of the CM and the stiffness and geometry of the interacting obstructed…
Wheeled robots have gained significant attention due to their wide range of applications in manufacturing, logistics, and service industries. However, due to the difficulty of building a highly accurate dynamics model for wheeled robots,…
Manipulating deformable objects has long been a challenge in robotics due to its high dimensional state representation and complex dynamics. Recent success in deep reinforcement learning provides a promising direction for learning to…
Extrinsic manipulation, a technique that enables robots to leverage extrinsic resources for object manipulation, presents practical yet challenging scenarios. Particularly in the context of extrinsic manipulation on a supporting plane,…
Deformable linear objects (DLOs), such as rods, cables, and ropes, play important roles in daily life. However, manipulation of DLOs is challenging as large geometrically nonlinear deformations may occur during the manipulation process.…
Systems whose movement is highly dissipative provide an opportunity to both identify models easily and quickly optimize motions. Geometric mechanics provides means for reduction of the dynamics by environmental homogeneity, while the…