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Navigating densely vegetated environments poses significant challenges for autonomous ground vehicles. Learning-based systems typically use prior and in-situ data to predict terrain traversability but often degrade in performance when…
This paper describes a method of online refinement of a scene recognition model for robot navigation considering traversable plants, flexible plant parts which a robot can push aside while moving. In scene recognition systems that consider…
Mechanically characterizing the human-machine interface is essential to understanding user behavior and optimizing wearable robot performance. This interface has been challenging to sensorize due to manufacturing complexity and non-linear…
As both legged robots and embedded compute have become more capable, researchers have started to focus on field deployment of these robots. Robust autonomy in unstructured environments requires perception of the world around the robot in…
Dynamics modeling in outdoor and unstructured environments is difficult because different elements in the environment interact with the robot in ways that can be hard to predict. Leveraging multiple sensors to perceive maximal information…
This work tackles scene understanding for outdoor robotic navigation, solely relying on images captured by an on-board camera. Conventional visual scene understanding interprets the environment based on specific descriptive categories.…
We propose a method to tackle the problem of mapless collision-avoidance navigation where humans are present using 2D laser scans. Our proposed method uses ego-safety to measure collision from the robot's perspective while social-safety to…
This paper brings together the concepts of navigation transformation and harmonic functions to form navigation functions that are correct-by-construction in the sense that no tuning is required. The form of the navigation function is…
It is challenging for a mobile robot to navigate through human crowds. Existing approaches usually assume that pedestrians follow a predefined collision avoidance strategy, like social force model (SFM) or optimal reciprocal collision…
Muddy terrains present significant challenges for terrestrial robots, as subtle changes in composition and water content can lead to large variations in substrate strength and force responses, causing the robot to slip or get stuck. This…
This paper introduces mathematical models of \sensors\ for mobile robots based on visibility. Serving a purpose similar to the pinhole camera model for computer vision, the introduced models are expected to provide a useful, idealized…
Tactile sensing is a widely-studied means of implicit communication between robot and human. In this paper, we investigate how tactile sensing can help bridge differences between robotic embodiments in the context of collaborative…
Real-world applications require a robot operating in the physical world with awareness of potential risks besides accomplishing the task. A large part of risky behaviors arises from interacting with objects in ignorance of affordance. To…
Model-based control is a popular paradigm for robot navigation because it can leverage a known dynamics model to efficiently plan robust robot trajectories. However, it is challenging to use model-based methods in settings where the…
Uncertainty in control and perception poses challenges for autonomous vehicle navigation in unstructured environments, leading to navigation failures and potential vehicle damage. This paper introduces a framework that minimizes control and…
The perception and recognition of the surroundings is one of the essential tasks for a robot. With preliminary knowledge about a target object, it can perform various manipulation tasks such as rolling motion, palpation, and force control.…
For the safe and successful navigation of autonomous vehicles in unstructured environments, the traversability of terrain should vary based on the driving capabilities of the vehicles. Actual driving experience can be utilized in a…
Robots must be able to understand their surroundings to perform complex tasks in challenging environments and many of these complex tasks require estimates of physical properties such as friction or weight. Estimating such properties using…
Sociability is essential for modern robots to increase their acceptability in human environments. Traditional techniques use manually engineered utility functions inspired by observing pedestrian behaviors to achieve social navigation.…
Enabling reaching capabilities in highly redundant continuum robot arms is an active area of research. Existing solutions comprise of task-space controllers, whose proper functioning is still limited to laboratory environments. In contrast,…