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Soft robots have a myriad of potentials because of their intrinsically compliant bodies, enabling safe interactions with humans and adaptability to unpredictable environments. However, most of them have limited actuation speeds, require…
Object manipulation is a basic element in everyday human lives. Robotic manipulation has progressed from maneuvering single-rigid-body objects with firm grasping to maneuvering soft objects and handling contact-rich actions. Meanwhile,…
Soft robots, compared to rigid robots, possess inherent advantages, including higher degrees of freedom, compliance, and enhanced safety, which have contributed to their increasing application across various fields. Among these benefits,…
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…
Cutting is a common form of manipulation when working with divisible objects such as food, rope, or clay. Cooking in particular relies heavily on cutting to divide food items into desired shapes. However, cutting food is a challenging task…
We propose a framework to enable multipurpose assistive mobile robots to autonomously wipe tables to clean spills and crumbs. This problem is challenging, as it requires planning wiping actions while reasoning over uncertain latent dynamics…
Soft growing robots are proposed for use in applications such as complex manipulation tasks or navigation in disaster scenarios. Safe interaction and ease of production promote the usage of this technology, but soft robots can be…
In robotic grasping, objects are often occluded in ungraspable configurations such that no pregrasp pose can be found, eg large flat boxes on the table that can only be grasped from the side. Inspired by humans' bimanual manipulation, eg…
Imitation learning offers a pathway for robots to perform repetitive tasks, allowing humans to focus on more engaging and meaningful activities. However, challenges arise from the need for extensive demonstrations and the disparity between…
Robotic arms are essential to modern industries, however, their adaptability to unstructured environments remains limited. Soft robotic arms, particularly those actuated pneumatically, offer greater adaptability in unstructured environments…
Robot grasping is subject to an inherent tradeoff: Grippers with a large span typically take a longer time to close, and fast grippers usually cover a small span. However, many practical applications of soft grippers require the ability to…
Advanced machine learning algorithms require platforms that are extremely robust and equipped with rich sensory feedback to handle extensive trial-and-error learning without relying on strong inductive biases. Traditional robotic designs,…
A vacuum lifter is widely used to hold and pick up large, heavy, and flat objects. Conventionally, when using a vacuum lifter, a human worker watches the state of a running vacuum lifter and adjusts the object's pose to maintain balance. In…
Object manipulation in robotics faces challenges due to diverse object shapes, sizes, and fragility. Gripper-based methods offer precision and low degrees of freedom (DOF) but the gripper limits the kind of objects to grasp. On the other…
Robots can influence people to accomplish their tasks more efficiently: autonomous cars can inch forward at an intersection to pass through, and tabletop manipulators can go for an object on the table first. However, a robot's ability to…
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…
Grasping objects with diverse mechanical properties, such as heavy, slippery, or fragile items, remains a significant challenge in robotics. Conventional rigid grippers typically rely on increasing the normal forces to secure an object,…
Robotic grasping in cluttered environments is often infeasible due to obstacles preventing possible grasps. Then, pre-grasping manipulation like shifting or pushing an object becomes necessary. We developed an algorithm that can learn, in…
Robot-to-human object handover is an essential skill for robot assistants, from serving drinks at home to passing surgical tools in the operating room. We expect robots to perform handover robustly -- to release the object only after a firm…
Physical interaction between humans and robots can help robots learn to perform complex tasks. The robot arm gains information by observing how the human kinesthetically guides it throughout the task. While prior works focus on how the…