Related papers: RICE: Reactive Interaction Controller for Cluttere…
We consider the problem of grasping in clutter. While there have been motion planners developed to address this problem in recent years, these planners are mostly tailored for open-loop execution. Open-loop execution in this domain,…
Multi-legged mobile robots possess high mobility performance in rough terrain environments, stemming from their high postural stability, joint flexibility, and the redundancy provided by multiple legs. In prior research on navigating…
Reinforcement Learning (RL) methods have been proven successful in solving manipulation tasks autonomously. However, RL is still not widely adopted on real robotic systems because working with real hardware entails additional challenges,…
Virtual borders are employed to allow humans the interactive and flexible restriction of their mobile robots' workspaces in human-centered environments, e.g. to exclude privacy zones from the workspace or to indicate certain areas for…
Humanoid robots have great potential for real-world applications due to their ability to operate in environments built for humans, but their deployment is hindered by the challenge of controlling their underlying high-dimensional nonlinear…
In this paper, we propose a framework for the longitudinal control of connected and automated vehicles traveling in mixed traffic consisting of connected and non-connected human-driven vehicles. Reactive and predictive controllers are…
Autonomous under-canopy navigation faces additional challenges compared to over-canopy settings - for example the tight spacing between the crop rows, degraded GPS accuracy and excessive clutter. Keypoint-based visual navigation has been…
For mobile robots, navigating cluttered or dynamic environments often necessitates non-prehensile manipulation, particularly when faced with objects that are too large, irregular, or fragile to grasp. The unpredictable behavior and varying…
Field-based reactive control provides a minimalist, decentralized route to guiding robots that lack onboard computation. Such schemes are well suited to resource-limited machines like microrobots, yet implementation artifacts, limited…
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…
In this article we propose a reactive constrained navigation scheme, with embedded obstacles avoidance for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), for enabling navigation in obstacle-dense environments. The proposed navigation architecture is…
Autonomous navigation in unknown 3D environments is a key issue for intelligent transportation, while still being an open problem. Conventionally, navigation risk has been focused on mitigating collisions with obstacles, neglecting the…
Tasks where robots must anticipate human intent, such as navigating around a cluttered home or sorting everyday items, are challenging because they exhibit a wide range of valid actions that lead to similar outcomes. Moreover, zero-shot…
The current approach to exploring and monitoring complex underwater ecosystems, such as coral reefs, is to conduct surveys using diver-held or static cameras, or deploying sensor buoys. These approaches often fail to capture the full…
Safe navigation in cluttered environments is an important challenge for autonomous systems. Robots navigating through obstacle ridden scenarios need to be able to navigate safely in the presence of obstacles, goals, and ego objects of…
Collision detection via visual fences can significantly enhance the safety of collaborative robotic arms. Existing work typically performs such detection based on pre-deployed stationary cameras outside the robotic arm's workspace. These…
We present a task-centered formal analysis of the relative power of several robot designs, inspired by the unique properties and constraints of micro-scale robotic systems. Our task of interest is object manipulation because it is a…
This paper introduces a real-time algorithm for navigating complex unknown environments cluttered with movable obstacles. Our algorithm achieves fast, adaptable routing by actively attempting to manipulate obstacles during path planning and…
Robust dynamic interactions are required to move robots in daily environments alongside humans. Optimisation and learning methods have been used to mimic and reproduce human movements. However, they are often not robust and their…
Many manipulation tasks require the robot to control the contact between a grasped compliant tool and the environment, e.g. scraping a frying pan with a spatula. However, modeling tool-environment interaction is difficult, especially when…