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Navigating robots safely and efficiently in crowded and complex environments remains a significant challenge. However, due to the dynamic and intricate nature of these settings, planning efficient and collision-free paths for robots to…
Collaborative decision-making is an essential capability for multi-robot systems, such as connected vehicles, to collaboratively control autonomous vehicles in accident-prone scenarios. Under limited communication bandwidth, capturing…
Majority of the existing robot navigation systems, which facilitate the use of laser range finders, sonar sensors or artificial landmarks, has the ability to locate itself in an unknown environment and then build a map of the corresponding…
Centralized architectures for systems such as smart offices and homes are rapidly becoming obsolete due to inherent inflexibility in their design and management. This is because such systems should not only be easily re-configurable with…
We present Visual Navigation and Locomotion over obstacles (ViNL), which enables a quadrupedal robot to navigate unseen apartments while stepping over small obstacles that lie in its path (e.g., shoes, toys, cables), similar to how humans…
Accessibility is one of the most important features in the design of robots and their interfaces. This thesis proposes methods that improve the accessibility of robots for three different target audiences: consumers, researchers, and…
We exploit the complementary strengths of vision and proprioception to develop a point-goal navigation system for legged robots, called VP-Nav. Legged systems are capable of traversing more complex terrain than wheeled robots, but to fully…
Navigating unknown three-dimensional (3D) rugged environments is challenging for multi-robot systems. Traditional discrete systems struggle with rough terrain due to limited individual mobility, while modular systems--where rigid,…
This work presents the Human Navigation Simulator (HuNavSim), a novel open-source tool for the simulation of different human-agent navigation behaviors in scenarios with mobile robots. The tool, the first programmed under the ROS 2…
The recent adoption of the Robot Operating System (ROS) as a software standard in robotics has contributed to novel solutions for several problems on the area. One such problem is known as Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) with…
Robots will bring search and rescue (SaR) in disaster response to another level, in case they can autonomously take over dangerous SaR tasks from humans. A main challenge for autonomous SaR robots is to safely navigate in cluttered…
In this work, we address the problem of ensuring real-time safety in autonomous robot navigation, in spatially constrained dynamic environments, by utilizing only onboard sensors. We present a real-time control architecture that integrates…
Autonomous navigation capabilities play a critical role in service robots operating in environments where human interactions are pivotal, due to the dynamic and unpredictable nature of these environments. However, the variability in human…
Navigating fluently around pedestrians is a necessary capability for mobile robots deployed in human environments, such as buildings and homes. While research on social navigation has focused mainly on the scalability with the number of…
In the near future, the development of autonomous driving will get more complex as the vehicles will not only rely on their own sensors but also communicate with other vehicles and the infrastructure to cooperate and improve the driving…
Many robots are not equipped with a manipulator and many objects are not suitable for prehensile manipulation (such as large boxes and cylinders). In these cases, pushing is a simple yet effective non-prehensile skill for robots to interact…
Adapting to social conventions is an unavoidable requirement for the acceptance of assistive and social robots. While the scientific community broadly accepts that assistive robots and social robot companions are unlikely to have widespread…
Coordinated multi-robot navigation is an essential ability for a team of robots operating in diverse environments. Robot teams often need to maintain specific formations, such as wedge formations, to enhance visibility, positioning, and…
Visually impaired people usually find it hard to travel independently in many public places such as airports and shopping malls due to the problems of obstacle avoidance and guidance to the desired location. Therefore, in the highly dynamic…
Transitioning from a Drive-by-Wire (DBW) system to a fully autonomous driving system (ADS) involves multiple stages of development and demands robust positioning and sensing capabilities. This paper presents a practice-driven framework for…