Related papers: GRACE: Generalizing Robot-Assisted Caregiving with…
Recent work in sim2real has successfully enabled robots to act in physical environments by training in simulation with a diverse ''population'' of environments (i.e. domain randomization). In this work, we focus on enabling generalization…
When operating in human environments, robots need to handle complex tasks while both adhering to social norms and accommodating individual preferences. For instance, based on common sense knowledge, a household robot can predict that it…
The global increase in the elderly population necessitates innovative long-term care solutions to improve the quality of life for vulnerable individuals while reducing caregiver burdens. Assistive robots, leveraging advancements in Machine…
As the population continues to age, a shortage of caregivers is expected in the future. Dressing assistance, in particular, is crucial for opportunities for social participation. Especially dressing close-fitting garments, such as socks,…
In this project, we focus on human-robot interaction in caregiving scenarios like bathing, where physical contact is inevitable and necessary for proper task execution because force must be applied to the skin. Using finite element…
We present RCareWorld, a human-centric simulation world for physical and social robotic caregiving designed with inputs from stakeholders, including care recipients, caregivers, occupational therapists, and roboticists. RCareWorld has…
Despite the recent advancements of vision-language-action (VLA) models on a variety of robotics tasks, they suffer from critical issues such as poor generalizability to unseen tasks, due to their reliance on behavior cloning exclusively…
Robot-assisted dressing has the potential to significantly improve the lives of individuals with mobility impairments. To ensure an effective and comfortable dressing experience, the robot must be able to handle challenging deformable…
This paper addresses the multi-faceted problem of robot grasping, where multiple criteria may conflict and differ in importance. We introduce a probabilistic framework, Grasp Ranking and Criteria Evaluation (GRaCE), which employs…
Robot-assisted navigation is a perfect example of a class of applications requiring flexible control approaches. When the human is reliable, the robot should concede space to their initiative. When the human makes inappropriate choices the…
Robot-assisted dressing could profoundly enhance the quality of life of adults with physical disabilities. To achieve this, a robot can benefit from both visual and force sensing. The former enables the robot to ascertain human body pose…
Robots hold significant promise to assist with providing care to an aging population and to help overcome increasing caregiver demands. Although a large body of research has explored robotic assistance for individuals with disabilities and…
Smooth and seamless robot navigation while interacting with humans depends on predicting human movements. Forecasting such human dynamics often involves modeling human trajectories (global motion) or detailed body joint movements (local…
Designing intuitive interfaces for robotic control remains a central challenge in enabling effective human-robot interaction, particularly in assistive care settings. Eye gaze offers a fast, non-intrusive, and intent-rich input modality,…
For humans, the process of grasping an object relies heavily on rich tactile feedback. Most recent robotic grasping work, however, has been based only on visual input, and thus cannot easily benefit from feedback after initiating contact.…
Building generalist robots capable of performing functional grasping in everyday, open-world environments remains a significant challenge due to the vast diversity of objects and tasks. Existing methods are either constrained to narrow…
Robots are good at performing repetitive tasks in modern manufacturing industries. However, robot motions are mostly planned and preprogrammed with a notable lack of adaptivity to task changes. Even for slightly changed tasks, the whole…
Assistive robotic systems endeavour to support those with movement disabilities, enabling them to move again and regain functionality. Main issue with these systems is the complexity of their low-level control, and how to translate this to…
Achieving generalizable and precise robotic manipulation across diverse environments remains a critical challenge, largely due to limitations in spatial perception. While prior imitation-learning approaches have made progress, their…
Autonomous robots have the potential to serve as versatile caregivers that improve quality of life for millions of people worldwide. Yet, conducting research in this area presents numerous challenges, including the risks of physical…