Related papers: Exciting Contact Modes in Differentiable Simulatio…

This paper proposes a novel methodology for addressing the simulation-reality gap for multi-robot swarm systems. Rather than immediately try to shrink or `bridge the gap' anytime a real-world experiment failed that worked in simulation, we…

Many successful applications of computer vision to image or video manipulation are interactive by nature. However, parameters of such systems are often trained neglecting the user. Traditionally, interactive systems have been treated in the…

The simulation of multi-body systems with frictional contacts is a fundamental tool for many fields, such as robotics, computer graphics, and mechanics. Hard frictional contacts are particularly troublesome to simulate because they make the…

General robot manipulation requires the handling of previously unseen objects. Learning a physically accurate model at test time can provide significant benefits in data efficiency, predictability, and reuse between tasks. Tactile sensing…

In this paper we propose a method to improve the accuracy of trajectory optimization for dynamic robots with intermittent contact by using orthogonal collocation. Until recently, most trajectory optimization methods for systems with…

We introduce DIFFTACTILE, a physics-based differentiable tactile simulation system designed to enhance robotic manipulation with dense and physically accurate tactile feedback. In contrast to prior tactile simulators which primarily focus…

Robots operating alongside humans often encounter unfamiliar environments that make autonomous task completion challenging. Though improving models and increasing dataset size can enhance a robot's performance in unseen environments, data…

Physical human-robot interaction has been an area of interest for decades. Collaborative tasks, such as joint compliance, demand high-quality joint torque sensing. While external torque sensors are reliable, they come with the drawbacks of…

Defining sound and complete specifications for robots using formal languages is challenging, while learning formal specifications directly from demonstrations can lead to over-constrained task policies. In this paper, we propose a Bayesian…

In this paper, we present a robotic model-based reinforcement learning method that combines ideas from model identification and model predictive control. We use a feature-based representation of the dynamics that allows the dynamics model…

This paper presents a contact-implicit model predictive control (MPC) framework for the real-time discovery of multi-contact motions, without predefined contact mode sequences or foothold positions. This approach utilizes the…

Robot simulation has been an essential tool for data-driven manipulation tasks. However, most existing simulation frameworks lack either efficient and accurate models of physical interactions with tactile sensors or realistic tactile…

In robots, nonprehensile manipulation operations such as pushing are a useful way of moving large, heavy or unwieldy objects, moving multiple objects at once, or reducing uncertainty in the location or pose of objects. In this study, we…

The rise of deep learning has caused a paradigm shift in robotics research, favoring methods that require large amounts of data. Unfortunately, it is prohibitively expensive to generate such data sets on a physical platform. Therefore,…

One effective approach for equipping artificial agents with sensorimotor skills is to use self-exploration. To do this efficiently is critical, as time and data collection are costly. In this study, we propose an exploration mechanism that…

This paper presents a novel approach using sensitivity analysis for generalizing Differential Dynamic Programming (DDP) to systems characterized by implicit dynamics, such as those modelled via inverse dynamics and variational or implicit…

Physics-based simulation is essential for developing and evaluating robot manipulation policies, particularly in scenarios involving deformable objects and complex contact interactions. However, existing simulators often struggle to balance…

Precise robotic grasping of several novel objects is a huge challenge in manufacturing, automation, and logistics. Most of the current methods for model-free grasping are disadvantaged by the sparse data in grasping datasets and by errors…

In recent years, an increasing amount of work has focused on differentiable physics simulation and has produced a set of open source projects such as Tiny Differentiable Simulator, Nimble Physics, diffTaichi, Brax, Warp, Dojo and DiffCoSim.…

Intrinsically motivated goal exploration algorithms enable machines to discover repertoires of policies that produce a diversity of effects in complex environments. These exploration algorithms have been shown to allow real world robots to…