Related papers: Co-optimizing Physical Reconfiguration Parameters …
In the automated co-design of soft robots, precisely adapting the material stiffness field to task environments is crucial for unlocking their full physical potential. However, mainstream platforms (e.g., EvoGym) strictly discretize the…
Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders continue to be a major challenge in industrial environments, leading to reduced workforce participation, increased healthcare costs, and long-term disability. This study introduces a human-sensitive…
Convex optimization is crucial in controlling legged robots, where stability and optimal control are vital. Many control problems can be formulated as convex optimization problems, with a convex cost function and constraints capturing…
Our goal is to make robotics more accessible to casual users by reducing the domain knowledge required in designing and building robots. Towards this goal, we present an interactive computational design system that enables users to design…
Most traditional robotic mechanisms feature inelastic joints that are unable to robustly handle large deformations and off-axis moments. As a result, the applied loads are transferred rigidly throughout the entire structure. The…
Origami structures have been widely explored in robotics due to their many potential advantages. Origami robots can be very compact, as well as cheap and efficient to produce. In particular, they can be constructed in a flat format using…
Cloth manipulation is a category of deformable object manipulation of great interest to the robotics community, from applications of automated laundry-folding and home organizing and cleaning to textiles and flexible manufacturing. Despite…
Designing a robot or structure that can fold itself into a target shape is a process that involves challenges originated from multiple sources. For example, the designer of rigid self-folding robots must consider foldability from geometric…
Orthogonally assembled double-layered corrugated (OADLC) mechanisms are a class of foldable structures that harness origami-inspired methods to enhance the structural stiffness of resulting devices; these mechanisms have extensive…
Constraint-based optimization is a cornerstone of robotics, enabling the design of controllers that reliably encode task and safety requirements such as collision avoidance or formation adherence. However, handcrafted constraints can fail…
Accurate deformable object manipulation (DOM) is essential for achieving autonomy in robotic surgery, where soft tissues are being displaced, stretched, and dissected. Many DOM methods can be powered by simulation, which ensures realistic…
Robots can provide assistance to a human by moving objects to locations around the person's body. With a well chosen initial configuration, a robot can better reach locations important to an assistive task despite model error, pose…
Biomimicry has played a pivotal role in robotics. In contrast to rigid robots, bio-inspired robots exhibit an inherent compliance, facilitating versatile movements and operations in constrained spaces. The robot implementation in…
Autonomous robots may be able to adapt their behavior in response to changes in the environment. This is useful, for example, to efficiently handle limited resources or to respond appropriately to unexpected events such as faults. The…
Personalised rehabilitation can be key to promoting gait independence and quality of life. Robots can enhance therapy by systematically delivering support in gait training, but often use one-size-fits-all control methods, which can be…
Adaptive structures are of interest for their ability to dynamically modify mechanical properties post fabrication, enabling structural performance that is responsive to environmental uncertainty and changing loading conditions. Dynamic…
We introduce MORPH, a method for co-optimization of hardware design parameters and control policies in simulation using reinforcement learning. Like most co-optimization methods, MORPH relies on a model of the hardware being optimized,…
This work develops a control-centric framework for a custom 4-DOF rigid-body manipulator by coupling a reduced-order Pontryagin's Maximum Principle (PMP) controller with a physics-informed Gradient Descent stage. The reduced PMP model…
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…
Design of active orthosis is a challenging problem from both the dynamic simulation and control points of view. The redundancy problem of the simultaneous human-orthosis actuation is an interesting exercise to solve concerning the…