Related papers: Learning Contact Dynamics through Touching: Action…

Tactile feedback is critical for understanding the dynamics of both rigid and deformable objects in many manipulation tasks, such as non-prehensile manipulation and dense packing. We introduce an approach that combines visual and tactile…

The advent of tactile sensors in robotics has sparked many ideas on how robots can leverage direct contact measurements of their environment interactions to improve manipulation tasks. An important line of research in this regard is that of…

Tactile perception is important for robotic systems that interact with the world through touch. Touch is an active sense in which tactile measurements depend on the contact properties of an interaction--e.g., velocity, force,…

Learning predictive models from interaction with the world allows an agent, such as a robot, to learn about how the world works, and then use this learned model to plan coordinated sequences of actions to bring about desired outcomes.…

Robust and adaptive robotic peg-in-hole assembly under tight tolerances is critical to various industrial applications. However, it remains an open challenge due to perceptual and physical uncertainties from contact-rich interactions that…

The Finite Element Method (FEM) is a powerful modeling tool for predicting the behavior of soft robots. However, its use for control can be difficult for non-specialists of numerical computation: it requires an optimization of the…

We study active object tracking, where a tracker takes visual observations (i.e., frame sequences) as input and produces the corresponding camera control signals as output (e.g., move forward, turn left, etc.). Conventional methods tackle…

Perception is essential for the active interaction of physical agents with the external environment. The integration of multiple sensory modalities, such as touch and vision, enhances this perceptual process, creating a more comprehensive…

Robot simulation has been an essential tool for data-driven manipulation tasks. However, most existing simulation frameworks lack either efficient and accurate models of physical interactions with tactile sensors or realistic tactile…

We present the design of a learning-based compliance controller for assembly operations for industrial robots. We propose a solution within the general setting of learning from demonstration (LfD), where a nominal trajectory is provided…

Endowing continuum robots with compliance while it is interacting with the internal environment of the human body is essential to prevent damage to the robot and the surrounding tissues. Compared with passive compliance, active compliance…

Controlling fine-grained forces during manipulation remains a core challenge in robotics. While robot policies learned from robot-collected data or simulation show promise, they struggle to generalize across the diverse range of real-world…

Robot-to-human object handover is an essential skill for robot assistants, from serving drinks at home to passing surgical tools in the operating room. We expect robots to perform handover robustly -- to release the object only after a firm…

Learning the dynamics of a physical system wherein an autonomous agent operates is an important task. Often these systems present apparent geometric structures. For instance, the trajectories of a robotic manipulator can be broken down into…

Compliant robot behavior is crucial for the realization of contact-rich manipulation tasks. In such tasks, it is important to ensure a high stiffness and force tracking accuracy during normal task execution as well as rapid adaptation and…

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has shown great promise for efficiently learning force control policies in peg-in-hole tasks. However, robots often face difficulties due to visual occlusions by the gripper and uncertainties in the initial…

The factor graph framework is a convenient modeling technique for robotic state estimation where states are represented as nodes, and measurements are modeled as factors. When designing a sensor fusion framework for legged robots, one often…

Reorienting diverse objects with a multi-fingered hand is a challenging task. Current methods in robotic in-hand manipulation are either object-specific or require permanent supervision of the object state from visual sensors. This is far…

Intelligent service robots require the ability to perform a variety of tasks in dynamic environments. Despite the significant progress in robotic grasping, it is still a challenge for robots to decide grasping position when given different…

There is growing interest in automating agricultural tasks that require intricate and precise interaction with specialty crops, such as trees and vines. However, developing robotic solutions for crop manipulation remains a difficult…