Related papers: SDRS: Shape-Differentiable Robot Simulator
State estimation from measured data is crucial for robotic applications as autonomous systems rely on sensors to capture the motion and localize in the 3D world. Among sensors that are designed for measuring a robot's pose, or for soft…
Generating safe motion plans in real-time is necessary for the wide-scale deployment of robots in unstructured and human-centric environments. These motion plans must be safe to ensure humans are not harmed and nearby objects are not…
In this paper, we propose a novel vision-based control algorithm for regulating the whole body shape of extensible multisection soft continuum manipulators. Contrary to existing vision-based control algorithms in the literature that…
We introduce a novel shape-sensing method using Resistive Flex Sensors (RFS) embedded in cable-driven Continuum Dexterous Manipulators (CDMs). The RFS is predominantly sensitive to deformation rather than direct forces, making it a…
Developing socially competent robots requires tight integration of robotics, computer vision, speech processing, and web technologies. We present the Socially-interactive Robot Software platform (SROS), an open-source framework addressing…
Generating robot demonstrations through simulation is widely recognized as an effective way to scale up robot data. Previous work often trained reinforcement learning agents to generate expert policies, but this approach lacks sample…
Differentiable renderers have been used successfully for unsupervised 3D structure learning from 2D images because they can bridge the gap between 3D and 2D. To optimize 3D shape parameters, current renderers rely on pixel-wise losses…
Robotic cutting of soft materials is critical for applications such as food processing, household automation, and surgical manipulation. As in other areas of robotics, simulators can facilitate controller verification, policy learning, and…
Imagine a swarm of terrestrial robots that can explore an environment, and, upon completion of this task, reconfigure into a spherical ball and roll out. This dimensional change alters the dynamics of locomotion and can assist them to…
The automatic design of robots has existed for 30 years but has been constricted by serial non-differentiable design evaluations, premature convergence to simple bodies or clumsy behaviors, and a lack of sim2real transfer to physical…
When deploying reinforcement learning policies to physical robots, actuator rate constraints -- hard limits on how fast each joint can move per control step -- are unavoidable. These limits vary substantially across joints due to…
Continuum robots possess high flexibility and redundancy, making them well suited for safe interaction in complex environments, yet their continuous deformation and nonlinear dynamics pose fundamental challenges to perception, modeling, and…
Soft robotic snakes (SRSs) have a unique combination of continuous and compliant properties that allow them to imitate the complex movements of biological snakes. Despite the previous attempts to develop SRSs, many have been limited to…
In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a robust motion formation distributed control algorithm for a team of mobile robots. The primary task for the team is to form a geometric shape, which can be freely translated and…
We consider a distributed system consisting of autonomous mobile computing entities, called robots, moving in a specified space. The robots are anonymous, oblivious, and have neither any access to the global coordinate system nor any…
This paper presents the development of a wearable ankle rehabilitation robot based on a 3-RRR spherical parallel mechanism (SPM) to support multi-DOF recovery through pitch, roll, and yaw motions. The system features a compact, ergonomic…
Collision-free motion planning for redundant robot manipulators in complex environments is yet to be explored. Although recent advancements at the intersection of deep reinforcement learning (DRL) and robotics have highlighted its potential…
Differentiable simulators provide an avenue for closing the sim-to-real gap by enabling the use of efficient, gradient-based optimization algorithms to find the simulation parameters that best fit the observed sensor readings. Nonetheless,…
Two-dimensional multilinked structures can benefit aerial robots in both maneuvering and manipulation because of their deformation ability. However, certain types of singular forms must be avoided during deformation. Hence, an additional 1…
This paper introduces novel air actuated spherical robot called "RollRoller". The RollRoller robot consists of two essential parts: tubes covered with a shell as a frame and mechanical controlling parts to correspond movements. The…