Related papers: Parallel Simulation of Contact and Actuation for S…
Enhancing robot navigation efficiency is a crucial objective in modern robotics. Robots relying on external navigation systems are often susceptible to electromagnetic interference (EMI) and encounter environmental disturbances, resulting…
Optimizing the body and brain of a robot is a coupled challenge: the morphology determines what control strategies are effective, while the control parameters influence how well the morphology performs. This joint optimization can be done…
Dynamic control of a soft-body robot to deliver complex behaviors with low-dimensional actuation inputs is challenging. In this paper, we present a computational approach to automatically generate versatile, underactuated control policies…
The emergence of vision catalysed a pivotal evolutionary advancement, enabling organisms not only to perceive but also to interact intelligently with their environment. This transformation is mirrored by the evolution of robotic systems,…
Modular robotics research has long been preoccupied with perfecting the modules themselves -- their actuation methods, connectors, controls, communication, and fabrication. This inward focus results, in part, from the complexity of the task…
We present an efficient spacetime optimization method to automatically generate animations for a general volumetric, elastically deformable body. Our approach can model the interactions between the body and the environment and automatically…
Mechanical compliance is a key design parameter for dynamic contact-rich manipulation, affecting task success and safety robustness over contact geometry variation. Design of soft robotic structures, such as compliant fingers, requires…
Soft robotic manipulators offer operational advantage due to their compliant and deformable structures. However, their inherently nonlinear dynamics presents substantial challenges. Traditional analytical methods often depend on simplifying…
Soft robots have drawn great interest due to their ability to take on a rich range of shapes and motions, compared to traditional rigid robots. However, the motions, and underlying statics and dynamics, pose significant challenges to…
Exploring the design and control strategies of soft robots through simulation is highly attractive due to its cost-effectiveness. Although many existing models (e.g., finite element analysis) are effective for simulating soft robotic…
As in the car industry for quite some time, dynamic simulation of complete vehicles is being practiced more and more in the development of off-road machinery. However, specific questions arise due not only to company structure and size, but…
Mobile robots have gained increased importance within industrial tasks such as commissioning, delivery or operation in hazardous environments. The ability to autonomously navigate safely especially within dynamic environments, is paramount…
Robots with internal visual self-models promise unprecedented adaptability, yet existing autonomous modeling pipelines remain fragile under realistic sensing conditions such as noisy imagery and cluttered backgrounds. This paper presents…
The automatic design of robots has existed for 30 years but has been constricted by serial non-differentiable design evaluations, premature convergence to simple bodies or clumsy behaviors, and a lack of sim2real transfer to physical…
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…
We present a computational framework for simulating filaments interacting with rigid bodies through contact. Filaments are challenging to simulate due to their codimensionality, i.e., they are one-dimensional structures embedded in…
Objects rarely sit in isolation in everyday human environments. If we want robots to operate and perform tasks in our human environments, they must understand how the objects they manipulate will interact with structural elements of the…
Multi-robot rendezvous and exploration are fundamental challenges in the domain of mobile robotic systems. This paper addresses multi-robot rendezvous within an initially unknown environment where communication is only possible after the…
Living organisms intertwine soft (e.g., muscle) and hard (e.g., bones) materials, giving them an intrinsic flexibility and resiliency often lacking in conventional rigid robots. The emerging field of soft robotics seeks to harness these…
Humanoid robots dynamically navigate an environment by interacting with it via contact wrenches exerted at intermittent contact poses. Therefore, it is important to consider dynamics when planning a contact sequence. Traditional contact…