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The dynamical properties of tensegrity robots give them appealing ruggedness and adaptability, but present major challenges with respect to locomotion control. Due to high-dimensionality and complex contact responses, data-driven approaches…

Tactile sensors have been introduced to a wide range of robotic tasks such as robot manipulation to mimic the sense of human touch. However, there has only been a few works that integrate tactile sensing into robot navigation. This paper…

Achieving success in agricultural activities heavily relies on precise navigation in row crop fields. Recently, segmentation-based navigation has emerged as a reliable technique when GPS-based localization is unavailable or higher accuracy…

We consider the problem of developing robots that navigate like pedestrians on sidewalks through city centers for performing various tasks including delivery and surveillance. One particular challenge for such robots is crossing streets…

Legged robots must exhibit robust and agile locomotion across diverse, unstructured terrains, a challenge exacerbated under blind locomotion settings where terrain information is unavailable. This work introduces a hierarchical…

Navigation functions provide both path and motion planning, which can be used to ensure obstacle avoidance and convergence in the sphere world. When dealing with complex and realistic scenarios, constructing a transformation to the sphere…

As more robots are implemented for contact-rich tasks, tactile sensors are in increasing demand. For many circumstances, the contact is required to be compliant, and soft sensors are in need. This paper introduces a novelly designed soft…

This paper presents a novel approach for robot navigation in environments containing deformable obstacles. By integrating Learning from Demonstration (LfD) with Dynamical Systems (DS), we enable adaptive and efficient navigation in complex…

To perform complex tasks, robots must be able to interact with and manipulate their surroundings. One of the key challenges in accomplishing this is robust state estimation during physical interactions, where the state involves not only the…

Being able to estimate the traversability of the area surrounding a mobile robot is a fundamental task in the design of a navigation algorithm. However, the task is often complex, since it requires evaluating distances from obstacles, type…

This paper shows the achievement of a sensing and navigation system of aerial robot for measuring location and size of trees in a forest environment autonomously. Although forestry is an important industry in Japan, the working population…

Contact force is a natural way for humans to interact with the physical world around us. However, most of our interactions with the digital world are largely based on a simple binary sense of touch (contact or no contact). Similarly, when…

This paper introduces the Terrain Recognition And Contact Force Estimation Paw, a compact and sensorized shoe designed for legged robots. The paw end-effector is made of silicon that deforms upon the application of contact forces, while an…

Efficient point-to-point navigation in the presence of a background flow field is important for robotic applications such as ocean surveying. In such applications, robots may only have knowledge of their immediate surroundings or be faced…

Entanglements like vines and branches in natural settings or cords and pipes in human spaces prevent mobile robots from accessing many environments. Legged robots should be effective in these settings, and more so than wheeled or tracked…

To proactively navigate and traverse various terrains, active use of visual perception becomes indispensable. We aim to investigate the feasibility and performance of using sparse visual observations to achieve perceptual locomotion over a…

Mobile robots operating in crowded environments require the ability to navigate among humans and surrounding obstacles efficiently while adhering to safety standards and socially compliant mannerisms. This scale of the robot navigation…

Grasp force estimation can help prevent robots from damaging delicate objects during manipulation and improve learning-based robotic control. Integrating force sensing into deformable grippers negotiates trade-offs in cost, complexity,…

Some of the most challenging environments on our planet are accessible to quadrupedal animals but remain out of reach for autonomous machines. Legged locomotion can dramatically expand the operational domains of robotics. However,…

Vision sensors are extensively used for localizing a robot's pose, particularly in environments where global localization tools such as GPS or motion capture systems are unavailable. In many visual navigation systems, localization is…