Related papers: Demonstrating the Octopi-1.5 Visual-Tactile-Langua…
Physical reasoning is important for effective robot manipulation. Recent work has investigated both vision and language modalities for physical reasoning; vision can reveal information about objects in the environment and language serves as…
Can a robot grasp an unknown object without seeing it? In this paper, we present a tactile-sensing based approach to this challenging problem of grasping novel objects without prior knowledge of their location or physical properties. Our…
While rule-based reinforcement learning has recently catalyzed explicit reasoning in multimodal models, tactile reasoning remains largely underexplored. Existing tactile-language models primarily rely on supervised or contrastive…
The development of tactile sensing and its fusion with computer vision is expected to enhance robotic systems in handling complex tasks like deformable object manipulation. However, readily available industrial grippers typically lack…
Endowing robots with tactile capabilities opens up new possibilities for their interaction with the environment, including the ability to handle fragile and/or soft objects. In this work, we equip the robot gripper with low-cost…
Accurate perception of object hardness is essential for safe and dexterous contact-rich robotic manipulation. Here, we present TactEx, an explainable multimodal robotic interaction framework that unifies vision, touch, and language for…
Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models have demonstrated significant advantages in robotic manipulation. However, their reliance on vision and language often leads to suboptimal performance in tasks involving visual occlusion, fine-grained…
Grasping assistance is essential for restoring autonomy in individuals with motor impairments, particularly in unstructured environments where object categories and user intentions are diverse and unpredictable. We present OVGrasp, a…
Equipping multi-fingered robots with tactile sensing is crucial for achieving the precise, contact-rich, and dexterous manipulation that humans excel at. However, relying solely on tactile sensing fails to provide adequate cues for…
Bringing tactile sensation to robotic hands will allow for more effective grasping, along with the wide range of benefits of human-like touch. Here we present a 3D-printed, three-fingered tactile robot hand comprising an OpenHand Model O…
We present TiPToP, an extensible modular system that combines pretrained vision foundation models with an existing Task and Motion Planner (TAMP) to solve multi-step manipulation tasks directly from input RGB images and natural-language…
Tactile sensing is a crucial capability for Vision-Language-Action (VLA) architectures, as it enables dexterous and safe manipulation in contact-rich tasks. However, reliance on dedicated tactile hardware increases cost and reduces…
The sense of touch plays a key role in enabling humans to understand and interact with surrounding environments. For robots, tactile sensing is also irreplaceable. While interacting with objects, tactile sensing provides useful information…
Robots which interact with the physical world will benefit from a fine-grained tactile understanding of objects and surfaces. Additionally, for certain tasks, robots may need to know the haptic properties of an object before touching it. To…
This paper presents a control scheme for force sensitive, gentle grasping with a Pisa/IIT anthropomorphic SoftHand equipped with a miniaturised version of the TacTip optical tactile sensor on all five fingertips. The tactile sensors provide…
Tactile feedback is generally recognized to be crucial for effective interaction with the physical world. However, state-of-the-art Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models lack the ability to interpret and use tactile signals, limiting their…
Tactile sensing is critical to fine-grained, contact-rich manipulation tasks, such as insertion and assembly. Prior research has shown the possibility of learning tactile-guided policy from teleoperated demonstration data. However, to…
Tactile gesture recognition systems play a crucial role in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) by enabling intuitive communication between humans and robots. The literature mainly addresses this problem by applying machine learning techniques to…
Tactile-aware robot learning faces critical challenges in data collection and representation due to data scarcity and sparsity, and the absence of force feedback in existing systems. To address these limitations, we introduce a tactile…
People with visual impairments face numerous challenges when interacting with their environment. Our objective is to develop a device that facilitates communication between individuals with visual impairments and their surroundings. The…