Related papers: Safe Autonomous Environmental Contact for Soft Rob…
Continuum robots are well suited for navigating confined and fragile environments, such as vascular or endoluminal anatomy, where contact with surrounding structures is often unavoidable. While controlled contact can assist motion,…
Flexible robots have advantages over rigid robots in their ability to conform physically to their environment and to form a wide variety of shapes. Sensing the force applied by or to flexible robots is useful for both navigation and…
Soft Robots distinguish themselves from traditional robots by embracing flexible kinematics. Because of their recent emergence, there exist numerous uncharted territories, including novel actuators, manufacturing processes, and advanced…
We present a closed-form optimal feedback control method that ensures safety in an a prior unknown and potentially dynamic environment. This article considers the scenario where local perception data (e.g., LiDAR) is obtained periodically,…
Soft robotic manipulators offer operational advantage due to their compliant and deformable structures. However, their inherently nonlinear dynamics presents substantial challenges. Traditional analytical methods often depend on simplifying…
The design of physical compliance -- its location, degree, and structure -- affects robot performance and robustness in contact-rich tasks. While compliance is often used in the robot's joints, flange, or end-effector, this paper proposes…
Soft robots are intrinsically capable of adapting to different environments by changing their shape in response to interaction forces with the environment. However, sensing and feedback are still required for higher level decisions and…
Reinforcement learning shows great potential to solve complex contact-rich robot manipulation tasks. However, the safety of using RL in the real world is a crucial problem, since unexpected dangerous collisions might happen when the RL…
Robotic grasping requires safe force interaction to prevent a grasped object from being damaged or slipping out of the hand. In this vein, this paper proposes an integrated framework for grasping with formal safety guarantees based on…
In order to be effective partners for humans, robots must become increasingly comfortable with making contact with their environment. Unfortunately, it is hard for robots to distinguish between ``just enough'' and ``too much'' force: some…
This paper presents two new control approaches for guaranteed safety (remaining in a safe set) subject to actuator constraints (the control is in a convex polytope). The control signals are computed using real-time optimization, including…
With the presence of robots increasing in the society, the need for interacting with robots is becoming necessary. The field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) has emerged important since more repetitive and tiresome jobs are being done by…
This paper presents a new control approach for guaranteed safety (remaining in a safe set) subject to actuator constraints (the control is in a convex polytope). The control signals are computed using real-time optimization, including…
Although autonomous control of robotic manipulators has been studied for several decades, they are not commonly used in safety-critical applications due to lack of safety and performance guarantees - many of them concerning the modulation…
Robots that physically interact with their surroundings, in order to accomplish some tasks or assist humans in their activities, require to exploit contact forces in a safe and proficient manner. Impedance control is considered as a…
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…
Reconfigurable robot swarms are capable of connecting with each other to form complex structures. Current mechanical or magnetic connection mechanisms can be complicated to manufacture, consume high power, have a limited load-bearing…
The ignition of flammable liquids and gases in offshore oil and gas environments is a major risk and can cause loss of life, serious injury, and significant damage to infrastructure. Power supplies that are used to provide regulated…
Soft robots have drawn significant attention recently for their ability to achieve rich shapes when interacting with complex environments. However, their elasticity and flexibility compared to rigid robots also pose significant challenges…
The physical interaction of aerial robots with their environment has countless potential applications and is an emerging area with many open challenges. Fully-actuated multirotors have been introduced to tackle some of these challenges.…