Related papers: Beyond Visuals: Investigating Force Feedback in Ex…
Providing Reinforcement Learning (RL) agents with human feedback can dramatically improve various aspects of learning. However, previous methods require human observer to give inputs explicitly (e.g., press buttons, voice interface),…
Robust and efficient learning remains a challenging problem in robotics, in particular with complex visual inputs. Inspired by human attention mechanism, with which we quickly process complex visual scenes and react to changes in the…
Mixed-initiative systems allow users to interactively provide feedback to potentially improve system performance. Human feedback can correct model errors and update model parameters to dynamically adapt to changing data. Additionally, many…
Understanding and respecting personal space preferences is essential for socially assistive robots designed for older adult users. This work introduces and evaluates a novel personalized context-aware method for modeling users' proxemics…
To collaborate well with robots, we must be able to understand their decision making. Humans naturally infer other agents' beliefs and desires by reasoning about their observable behavior in a way that resembles inverse reinforcement…
Current robotic minimally invasive surgery (RMIS) platforms provide surgeons with no haptic feedback of the robot's physical interactions. This limitation forces surgeons to rely heavily on visual feedback and can make it challenging for…
Virtual reality (VR) is known to cause a "time compression" effect, where the time spent in VR feels to pass faster than the effective elapsed time. Our goal with this research is to investigate if the physical realism of a VR experience…
Modern robotics is gravitating toward increasingly collaborative human robot interaction. Tools such as acceleration policies can naturally support the realization of reactive, adaptive, and compliant robots. These tools require us to model…
Virtual reality (VR) is on the edge of getting a mainstream platform for gaming, education and product design. The feeling of being present in the virtual world is influenced by many factors and even more intriguing a single negative…
The vast majority of visual animals actively control their eyes, heads, and/or bodies to direct their gaze toward different parts of their environment. In contrast, recent applications of reinforcement learning in robotic manipulation…
As human augmentation technologies evolve, the convergence of AI, robotics, and extended reality (XR) is redefining human potential -- enhancing cognition, perception, and physical abilities. However, these advancements also introduce…
We consider real-world reinforcement learning (RL) of robotic manipulation tasks that involve both visuomotor skills and contact-rich skills. We aim to train a policy that maps multimodal sensory observations (vision and force) to a…
Contact-rich manipulation demands human-like integration of perception and force feedback: vision should guide task progress, while high-frequency interaction control must stabilize contact under uncertainty. Existing learning-based…
In recent years, virtual sensing techniques have been extensively studied as a method of data collection in simulated virtual spaces for the development of human activity recognition (HAR) systems. To date, this technique has enabled the…
When we humans look at a video of human-object interaction, we can not only infer what is happening but we can even extract actionable information and imitate those interactions. On the other hand, current recognition or geometric…
Recent research using Reinforcement Learning (RL) to learn autonomous control for spacecraft operations has shown great success. However, a recent study showed their performance could be improved by changing the action space, i.e. control…
eXtended Reality (XR) autism research, ranging from Augmented Reality to Virtual Reality, focuses on socio-emotional abilities and high-functioning autism. However common autism interventions address the entire spectrum over social, sensory…
To perform complex tasks, robots must be able to interact with and manipulate their surroundings. One of the key challenges in accomplishing this is robust state estimation during physical interactions, where the state involves not only the…
In this paper, we address the problem of task-oriented grasping for humanoid robots, emphasizing the need to align with human social norms and task-specific objectives. Existing methods, employ a variety of open-loop and closed-loop…
Augmented reality (AR) offers immersive interaction but remains inaccessible for users with motor impairments or limited dexterity due to reliance on precise input methods. This study proposes a gesture-based interaction system for AR…