Related papers: DoorBot: Closed-Loop Task Planning and Manipulatio…
With the increasing prevalence and diversity of robots interacting in the real world, there is need for flexible, on-the-fly planning and cooperation. Large Language Models are starting to be explored in a multimodal setup for…
This paper proposes a control method to address the physical Human-Robot Interaction (pHRI) challenge in the context of hierarchical tasks. A common approach to managing hierarchical tasks is Hierarchical Quadratic Programming (HQP), which,…
Complex robotic systems require whole-body controllers to deal with contact interactions, handle closed kinematic chains, and track task-space control objectives. However, for many applications, safety-critical controllers are important to…
Robots are increasingly operating in indoor environments designed for and shared with people. However, robots working safely and autonomously in uneven and unstructured environments still face great challenges. Many modern indoor…
Heterogeneous multi-robot systems feature significant adaptability for complex environments. However, effective collaboration that fully exploits the robots' potential remains a core challenge. This paper proposes a decentralized…
Task-space quadratic programming (QP) is an elegant approach for controlling robots subject to constraints. Yet, in the case of kinematic-controlled (i.e., high-gains position or velocity) robots, closed-loop QP control scheme can be prone…
Locating and grasping of objects by robots is typically performed using visual sensors. Haptic feedback from contacts with the environment is only secondary if present at all. In this work, we explored an extreme case of searching for and…
A fruitful collaboration is based on the mutual knowledge of each other skills and on the possibility of communicating their own limits and proposing alternatives to adapt the execution of a task to the capabilities of the collaborators.…
The autonomous mapping of large-scale urban scenes presents significant challenges for autonomous robots. To mitigate the challenges, global planning, such as utilizing prior GPS trajectories from OpenStreetMap (OSM), is often used to guide…
Articulated object manipulation is a critical capability for robots to perform various tasks in real-world scenarios. Composed of multiple parts connected by joints, articulated objects are endowed with diverse functional mechanisms through…
Unlike human beings that can employ the entire surface of their limbs as a means to establish contact with their environment, robots are typically programmed to interact with their environments via their end-effectors, in a collision-free…
Highly constrained manipulation tasks continue to be challenging for autonomous robots as they require high levels of precision, typically less than 1mm, which is often incompatible with what can be achieved by traditional perception…
As robots become increasingly prominent in diverse industrial settings, the desire for an accessible and reliable system has correspondingly increased. Yet, the task of meaningfully assessing the feasibility of introducing a new robotic…
Active sensing and planning in unknown, cluttered environments is an open challenge for robots intending to provide home service, search and rescue, narrow-passage inspection, and medical assistance. Although many active sensing methods…
Mapping is a time-consuming process for deploying robotic systems to new environments. The handling of maps is also risk-adverse when not managed effectively. We propose here, a standardised approach to handling such maps in a manner which…
Robots assist in many areas that are considered unsafe for humans to operate. For instance, in handling pandemic diseases such as the recent Covid-19 outbreak and other outbreaks like Ebola, robots can assist in reaching areas dangerous for…
The teleoperation of complex, kinematically redundant robots with loco-manipulation capabilities represents a challenge for human operators, who have to learn how to operate the many degrees of freedom of the robot to accomplish a desired…
Many intelligent systems currently interact with others using at least one of fixed communication inputs or preset responses, resulting in rigid interaction experiences and extensive efforts developing a variety of scenarios for the system.…
Haptic exploration is a key skill for both robots and humans to discriminate and handle unknown objects or to recognize familiar objects. Its active nature is evident in humans who from early on reliably acquire sophisticated sensory-motor…
Symbolic motion planning for robots is the process of specifying and planning robot tasks in a discrete space, then carrying them out in a continuous space in a manner that preserves the discrete-level task specifications. Despite progress…