Related papers: A Contact-Driven Framework for Manipulating in the…
This paper addresses the problem of planning for a robot with a directional obstacle-detection sensor that must move through a cluttered environment. The planning objective is to remain safe by finding a path for the complete robot,…
This paper addresses the problem of controlling a continuum manipulator (CM) in free or obstructed environments with no prior knowledge about the deformation behavior of the CM and the stiffness and geometry of the interacting obstructed…
Robots are increasingly expected to manipulate objects in ever more unstructured environments where the object properties have high perceptual uncertainty from any single sensory modality. This directly impacts successful object…
The anticipation of human behavior is a crucial capability for robots to interact with humans safely and efficiently. We employ a smart edge sensor network to provide global observations, future predictions, and goal information to…
Navigating dense, lane-less traffic remains one of the most challenging scenarios for autonomous vehicles, especially in emerging regions where road structure and driver behavior are highly unpredictable. This paper presents a hybrid…
Many state-of-art robotics applications require fast and efficient motion planning algorithms. Existing motion planning methods become less effective as the dimensionality of the robot and its workspace increases, especially the…
Generalizable manipulation involving cross-type object interactions is a critical yet challenging capability in robotics. To reliably accomplish such tasks, robots must address two fundamental challenges: "where to manipulate" (contact…
Robotic grasping requires safe force interaction to prevent a grasped object from being damaged or slipping out of the hand. In this vein, this paper proposes an integrated framework for grasping with formal safety guarantees based on…
It is challenging for humans -- particularly those living with physical disabilities -- to control high-dimensional, dexterous robots. Prior work explores learning embedding functions that map a human's low-dimensional inputs (e.g., via a…
In robots, nonprehensile manipulation operations such as pushing are a useful way of moving large, heavy or unwieldy objects, moving multiple objects at once, or reducing uncertainty in the location or pose of objects. In this study, we…
The ability of a soft robot to perform specific tasks is determined by its contact configuration, and transitioning between configurations is often necessary to reach a desired position or manipulate an object. Based on this observation, we…
Robots are increasingly operating in indoor environments designed for and shared with people. However, robots working safely and autonomously in uneven and unstructured environments still face great challenges. Many modern indoor…
Non-prehensile manipulation such as pushing is typically subject to uncertain, non-smooth dynamics. However, modeling the uncertainty of the dynamics typically results in intractable belief dynamics, making data-efficient planning under…
Despite a slow neuromuscular system, humans easily outperform modern robot technology, especially in physical contact tasks. How is this possible? Biological evidence indicates that motor control of biological systems is achieved by a…
Daily tasks require us to use our whole body to manipulate objects, for instance when our hands are unavailable. We consider the issue of providing humanoid robots with the ability to autonomously perform similar whole-body manipulation…
Recognizing objects in dense clutter accurately plays an important role to a wide variety of robotic manipulation tasks including grasping, packing, rearranging and many others. However, conventional visual recognition models usually miss…
The transition to agile manufacturing, Industry 4.0, and high-mix-low-volume tasks require robot programming solutions that are flexible. However, most deployed robot solutions are still statically programmed and use stiff position control,…
Magnetic microrobots can be navigated by an external magnetic field to autonomously move within living organisms with complex and unstructured environments. Potential applications include drug delivery, diagnostics, and therapeutic…
Real-time control is an essential aspect of safe robot operation in the real world with dynamic objects. We present a framework for the analysis of object-aware controllers, methods for altering a robot's motion to anticipate and avoid…
This work addresses the challenge of a robot using real-time feedback from contact sensors to reliably manipulate a movable object on a cluttered tabletop. We formulate contact manipulation as a partially observable Markov decision process…