Related papers: Pushing Blocks without Fixed Walls via Checkable G…
We prove computational intractability of variants of checkers: (1) deciding whether there is a move that forces the other player to win in one move is NP-complete; (2) checkers where players must always be able to jump on their turn is…
Multi-robot motion planning is a hard problem. We investigate restricted variants of the problem where square robots are allowed to slide over an arbitrary curve to a new position only a constant number of times each. We show that the…
Perceptive locomotion for legged robots requires anticipating and adapting to complex, dynamic environments. Model Predictive Control (MPC) serves as a strong baseline, providing interpretable motion planning with constraint enforcement,…
Model predictive control (MPC) has shown great success for controlling complex systems such as legged robots. However, when closing the loop, the performance and feasibility of the finite horizon optimal control problem (OCP) solved at each…
We study valence systems, finite-control programs over infinite-state memories modeled in terms of graph monoids. Our contribution is a notion of bounded context switching (BCS). Valence systems generalize pushdowns, concurrent pushdowns,…
This article is about one feature which was partly introduced 30 years ago with the development of multi windows operating systems. It is about the movability of screen objects not according to some predetermined algorithm but by the direct…
We settle the theoretical ground for the study of automata networks under block-parallel update schedules, which are somehow dual to the block-sequential ones, but allow for repetitions of automaton updates. This gain in expressivity brings…
We present a number of breakthroughs for coordinated motion planning, in which the objective is to reconfigure a swarm of labeled convex objects by a combination of parallel, continuous, collision-free translations into a given target…
Soft robotics has advanced rapidly, yet its control methods remain fragmented: different morphologies and actuation schemes still require task-specific controllers, hindering theoretical integration and large-scale deployment. A generic…
How do we move a robot efficiently from one position to another? To answer this question, we need to understand its configuration space, a 'map' where we can find every possible position of the robot. Unfortunately, these maps are very…
Programmable packet scheduling allows the deployment of scheduling algorithms into existing switches without need for hardware redesign. Scheduling algorithms are programmed by tagging packets with ranks, indicating their desired priority.…
We consider the problem of connected coordinated motion planning for a large collective of simple, identical robots: From a given start grid configuration of robots, we need to reach a desired target configuration via a sequence of…
We consider algorithmic problems motivated by modular robotic reconfiguration in the sliding square model, in which we are given $n$ square-shaped modules in a (labeled or unlabeled) start configuration and need to find a schedule of…
The safety of mobile robots in dynamic environments is predicated on making sure that they do not collide with obstacles. In support of such safety arguments, we analyze and formally verify a series of increasingly powerful safety…
Push recovery during locomotion will facilitate the deployment of humanoid robots in human-centered environments. In this paper, we present a unified framework for walking control and push recovery for humanoid robots, leveraging the arms…
Differentiable physics is a powerful approach to learning and control problems that involve physical objects and environments. While notable progress has been made, the capabilities of differentiable physics solvers remain limited. We…
In warehouse and manufacturing environments, manipulation platforms are frequently deployed at conveyor belts to perform pick and place tasks. Because objects on the conveyor belts are moving, robots have limited time to pick them up. This…
This paper deals with sliding games, which are a variant of the better known pushpush game. On a given structure (grid, torus...), a robot can move in a specific set of directions, and stops when it hits a block or boundary of the…
Shape formation is a basic distributed problem for systems of computational mobile entities. Intensively studied for systems of autonomous mobile robots, it has recently been investigated in the realm of programmable matter. Namely, it has…
Skilled robotic manipulation benefits from complex synergies between non-prehensile (e.g. pushing) and prehensile (e.g. grasping) actions: pushing can help rearrange cluttered objects to make space for arms and fingers; likewise, grasping…