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We propose a new technique for pushing an unknown object from an initial configuration to a goal configuration with stability constraints. The proposed method leverages recent progress in differentiable physics models to learn unknown…

Legged robots have shown remarkable advantages in navigating uneven terrain. However, realizing effective locomotion and manipulation tasks on quadruped robots is still challenging. In addition, object and terrain parameters are generally…

This paper presents a fixturing strategy for regrasping that does not require a physical fixture. To regrasp an object in a gripper, a robot pushes the object against external contact/s in the environment such that the external contact…

We study here the semi-supervised $k$-clustering problem where information is available on whether pairs of objects are in the same or in different clusters. This information is either available with certainty or with a limited level of…

This paper presents a novel simulation platform, ZeMa, designed for robotic manipulation tasks concerning soft objects. Such simulation ideally requires three properties: two-way soft-rigid coupling, intersection-free guarantees, and…

We focus on the problem of rearranging a set of objects with a team of car-like robot pushers built using off-the-shelf components. Maintaining control of pushed objects while avoiding collisions in a tight space demands highly coordinated…

Pushing is a fundamental robotic skill. Existing work has shown how to exploit models of pushing to achieve a variety of tasks, including grasping under uncertainty, in-hand manipulation and clearing clutter. Such models, however, are…

This paper develops a hierarchical learning and optimization framework that can learn and achieve well-coordinated multi-skill locomotion. The learned multi-skill policy can switch between skills automatically and naturally in tracking…

We present a new framework for motion planning that wraps around existing kinodynamic planners and guarantees recursive feasibility when operating in a priori unknown, static environments. Our approach makes strong guarantees about overall…

This paper presents RichMap, a high-precision reachability map representation designed to balance efficiency and flexibility for versatile robot manipulation tasks. By refining the classic grid-based structure, we propose a streamlined…

Recent advancements in reinforcement learning (RL) have led to significant progress in humanoid robot locomotion, simplifying the design and training of motion policies in simulation. However, the numerous implementation details make…

Climbing robots face significant challenges when navigating unstructured environments, where reliable attachment to irregular surfaces is critical. We present a novel mobile climbing robot equipped with compliant pin-array structured…

Nonprehensile actions such as pushing are crucial for addressing multi-object rearrangement problems. Many traditional methods generate robot-centric actions, which differ from intuitive human strategies and are typically inefficient. To…

We study pushdown systems where control states, stack alphabet, and transition relation, instead of being finite, are first-order definable in a fixed countably-infinite structure. We show that the reachability analysis can be addressed…

A planar framework -- a graph together with a map of its vertices to the plane -- is flexible if it allows a continuous deformation preserving the distances between adjacent vertices. Extending a recent previous result, we prove that a…

In this paper, we propose a notion of high-order (zeroing) barrier functions that generalizes the concept of zeroing barrier functions and guarantees set forward invariance by checking their higher order derivatives. The proposed…

Object rearrangement is a widely-applicable and challenging task for robots. Geometric constraints must be carefully examined to avoid collisions and combinatorial issues arise as the number of objects increases. This work studies the…

This paper investigates Path planning Among Movable Obstacles (PAMO), which seeks a minimum cost collision-free path among static obstacles from start to goal while allowing the robot to push away movable obstacles (i.e., objects) along its…

We present the design and implementation of a taskable reactive mobile manipulation system. In contrary to related work, we treat the arm and base degrees of freedom as a holistic structure which greatly improves the speed and fluidity of…

Games on recursive game graphs can be used to reason about the control flow of sequential programs with recursion. In games over recursive game graphs, the most natural notion of strategy is the modular strategy, i.e., a strategy that is…