Related papers: Time-Optimal Transport of Loosely Placed Liquid Fi…
In everyday life, we often find that we can maintain an object's equilibrium on a tray by adjusting its orientation. Building upon this observation and extending the method we previously proposed to suppress sloshing in a moving vessel,…
This paper studies the time-optimal path tracking problem for a team of cooperating robotic manipulators carrying an object. Considering the problem for rigidly grasped objects, we show that it can be cast as a convex optimization problem…
Understanding the complex patterns in space-time exhibited by active systems has been the subject of much interest in recent times. Complementing this forward problem is the inverse problem of controlling active matter. Here we use optimal…
Torque-driven microscale swimming robots, or microrotors, hold significant potential in biomedical applications such as targeted drug delivery, minimally invasive surgery, and micromanipulation. This paper addresses the challenge of…
This paper addresses an optimal control problem for a robot that has to find and collect a finite number of objects and move them to a depot in minimum time. The robot has fourth-order dynamics that change instantaneously at any pick-up or…
We present an optimization-based motion planning algorithm to compute a smooth, collision-free trajectory for a manipulator used to transfer a liquid from a source to a target container. We take into account fluid dynamics constraints as…
Recent progress in robotic manipulation has dealt with the case of previously unknown objects in the context of relatively simple tasks, such as bin-picking. Existing methods for more constrained problems, however, such as deliberate…
Recent low-thrust space missions have highlighted the importance of designing trajectories that are robust against uncertainties. In its complete form, this process is formulated as a nonlinear constrained stochastic optimal control…
We present an optimization strategy to reduce the execution time of liquid handling operations in the context of an automated chemical laboratory. By formulating the task as a capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP), we leverage…
Direct collocation methods are powerful tools to solve trajectory optimization problems in robotics. While their resulting trajectories tend to be dynamically accurate, they may also present large kinematic errors in the case of constrained…
We present a unified approach for constraint displacement problems in which a robot finds a feasible path by displacing constraints or obstacles. To this end, we propose a two stage process that returns locally optimal obstacle…
Planning a time-optimal trajectory for aerial robots is critical in many drone applications, such as rescue missions and package delivery, which have been widely researched in recent years. However, it still involves several challenges,…
The manipulation of a collection of fluid particles in a low Reynolds number environment has several important applications. As we demonstrate in this paper, this manipulation problem is related to the scientific question of how fluid flow…
Recent progress in the field of robotic manipulation has generated interest in fully automatic object packing in warehouses. This paper proposes a formulation of the packing problem that is tailored to the automated warehousing domain.…
This work presents an efficient method to solve a class of continuous-time, continuous-space stochastic optimal control problems of robot motion in a cluttered environment. The method builds upon a path integral representation of the…
In this work, we present a novel algorithm to perform spill-free handling of open-top liquid-filled containers that operates in cluttered environments. By allowing liquid-filled containers to be tilted at higher angles and enabling motion…
We address the problem of motion planning for a robotic manipulator with the task to place a grasped object in a cluttered environment. In this task, we need to locate a collision-free pose for the object that a) facilitates the stable…
Fast robotics pick-and-place with suction cups is a crucial component in the current development of automation in logistics (factory lines, e-commerce, etc.). By "critically fast" we mean the fastest possible movement for transporting an…
This paper presents a trajectory optimization and control approach for the guidance of an orbital four-arm robot in extravehicular activities. The robot operates near the target spacecraft, enabling its arm's end-effectors to reach the…
We introduce a modeling framework for manipulation planning based on the formulation of the dynamics as a projected dynamical system. This method uses implicit signed distance functions and their gradients to formulate an equivalent…