Related papers: Robots that Evolve with Us: Modular Co-Design for …
Research on the co-optimization of soft robotic design and control requires rapid means for real-world validation. Existing creation pipelines do not allow for the swift prototyping of soft robots to quickly test various design…
How can we build generalist robot systems? Scale may not be enough due to the significant multimodality of robotics tasks, lack of easily accessible data and the challenges of deploying on physical hardware. Meanwhile, most deployed robotic…
The rapid evolution of wearable technology marks a transformative phase in human-computer interaction, seamlessly integrating digital functionality into daily life. This paper explores the historical trajectory, current advancements, and…
The robot development process is divided into several stages, which create barriers to the exchange of information between these different stages. We advocate for an interactive lifecycle representation, extending from robot morphology…
Participatory design has emerged as a popular approach to foreground ethical considerations in social robots by incorporating anticipated users and stakeholders as designers. Here we draw attention to the ethics of participatory design as a…
Advances in science and engineering often reveal the limitations of classical approaches initially used to understand, predict, and control phenomena. With progress, conceptual categories must often be re-evaluated to better track recently…
Robots are increasingly being deployed in public spaces. However, the general population rarely has the opportunity to nominate what they would prefer or expect a robot to do in these contexts. Since most people have little or no experience…
People who need robots are often not the same as people who can program them. This key observation in human-robot interaction (HRI) has lead to a number of challenges when developing robotic applications, since developers must understand…
In social robotics, robots needs to be able to be understood by humans. Especially in collaborative tasks where they have to share mutual knowledge. For instance, in an educative scenario, learners share their knowledge and they must adapt…
This position paper is part of a long-term research project on human-machine co-creativity with older adults. The goal is to investigate how robots and AI-generated content can contribute to older adults' creative experiences, with a focus…
Mutual adaptation can significantly enhance overall task performance in human-robot co-transportation by integrating both the robot's and human's understanding of the environment. While human modeling helps capture humans' subjective…
Humans have developed the capability to teach relevant aspects of new or adapted tasks to a social peer with very few task demonstrations by making use of scaffolding strategies that leverage prior knowledge and importantly prior joint…
Our goal is to make robotics more accessible to casual users by reducing the domain knowledge required in designing and building robots. Towards this goal, we present an interactive computational design system that enables users to design…
Sustainability is no longer a matter of choice but is invariably linked to the survival of the entire ecosystem of our planet Earth. As robotics technology is growing at an exponential rate, it is crucial to examine its implications for…
Industrial robots are designed as general-purpose hardware with limited ability to adapt to changing task requirements or environments. Modular robots, on the other hand, offer flexibility and can be easily customized to suit diverse needs.…
Co-designing autonomous robotic agents involves simultaneously optimizing the controller and physical design of the agent. Its inherent bi-level optimization formulation necessitates an outer loop design optimization driven by an inner loop…
Evolutionary algorithms offer great promise for the automatic design of robot bodies, tailoring them to specific environments or tasks. Most research is done on simplified models or virtual robots in physics simulators, which do not capture…
The integration of foundation models (FMs) into robotics has accelerated real-world deployment, while introducing new safety challenges arising from open-ended semantic reasoning and embodied physical action. These challenges require safety…
Soft-growing robots are innovative devices that feature plant-inspired growth to navigate environments. Thanks to their embodied intelligence of adapting to their surroundings and the latest innovation in actuation and manufacturing, it is…
We aim to design robotic educational support systems that can promote socially and intellectually meaningful learning experiences for students while they complete school work outside of class. To pursue this goal, we conducted participatory…