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Simulators are an important tool in robotics that is used to develop robot software and generate synthetic data for machine learning algorithms. Faster simulation can result in better software validation and larger amounts of data. Previous…
Generating safe motion plans in real-time is a key requirement for deploying robot manipulators to assist humans in collaborative settings. In particular, robots must satisfy strict safety requirements to avoid self-damage or harming nearby…
Generating intelligent robot behavior in contact-rich settings is a research problem where zeroth-order methods currently prevail. Developing methods that make use of first/second order information about rigid-body dynamics in the presence…
The deployment of complex soft robots in multiphysics environments requires advanced simulation frameworks that not only capture interactions between different types of material, but also translate accurately to real-world performance. Soft…
Many robotic tasks involving some form of 3D visual perception greatly benefit from a complete knowledge of the working environment. However, robots often have to tackle unstructured environments and their onboard visual sensors can only…
Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) presents a formidable challenge in robotics, involving the dynamic construction of a map while concurrently determining the precise location of the robotic agent within an unfamiliar environment.…
Accurate and efficient simulation tools are essential in robotics, enabling the visualization of system dynamics and the validation of control laws before committing resources to physical experimentation. Developing physically accurate…
Spherical symmetry is ubiquitous in nature. It's therefore unfortunate that spherical system simulations are so hard, and require complete spheres with millions of interacting particles. Here we introduce an approach to model spherical…
Simulating deformable objects under rich interactions remains a fundamental challenge for real-to-sim robot manipulation, with dynamics jointly driven by environmental effects and robot actions. Existing simulators rely on predefined…
Deformable object manipulation (DOM) for robots has a wide range of applications in various fields such as industrial, service and health care sectors. However, compared to manipulation of rigid objects, DOM poses significant challenges for…
We address the problem of controlling a mobile robot to explore a partially known environment. The robot's objective is the maximization of the amount of information collected about the environment. We formulate the problem as a partially…
Multi-task imitation learning (MTIL) has shown significant potential in robotic manipulation by enabling agents to perform various tasks using a single policy. This simplifies the policy deployment and enhances the agent's adaptability…
Pneumatic soft robots present many advantages in manipulation tasks. Notably, their inherent compliance makes them safe and reliable in unstructured and fragile environments. However, full-body shape sensing for pneumatic soft robots is…
Because physical phenomena on Earth's surface occur on many different length scales, it makes sense when seeking an efficient approximation to start with a crude global approximation, and then make a sequence of corrections on finer and…
Co-design optimization strategies usually rely on simplified robot models extracted from CAD. While these models are useful for optimizing geometrical and inertial parameters for robot control, they might overlook important details…
Underwater simulators offer support for building robust underwater perception solutions. Significant work has recently been done to develop new simulators and to advance the performance of existing underwater simulators. Still, there…
General scene understanding for robotics requires flexible semantic representation, so that novel objects and structures which may not have been known at training time can be identified, segmented and grouped. We present an algorithm which…
3D spatial perception is fundamental to generalizable robotic manipulation, yet obtaining reliable, high-quality 3D geometry remains challenging. Depth sensors suffer from noise and material sensitivity, while existing reconstruction models…
Autonomy for robots interacting with sand will enable a wide range of beneficial behaviors, from earth moving for construction and farming vehicles to navigating rough terrain for Mars rovers. The goal of this work is to shape sand into…
Many organisms, including various species of spiders and caterpillars, change their shape to switch gaits and adapt to different environments. Recent technological advances, ranging from stretchable circuits to highly deformable soft…