Related papers: An Open-Source, Reproducible Tensegrity Robot that…
Navigation and inspection in confined environments, such as tunnels and pipes, pose significant challenges for existing robots due to limitations in maneuverability and adaptability to varying geometries. Vine robots, which are soft growing…
The objective of this work is to expand upon previous works, considering socially acceptable behaviours within robot navigation and interaction, and allow a robot to closely approach static and dynamic individuals or groups. The space…
Stable locomotion in precipitous environments is an essential task for quadruped robots, requiring the ability to resist various external disturbances. Recent neural policies enhance robustness against disturbances by learning to resist…
We consider a problem called task ordering with path uncertainty (TOP-U) where multiple robots are provided with a set of task locations to visit in a bounded environment, but the length of the path between a pair of task locations is…
This paper focuses on robustness to disturbance forces and uncertain payloads. We present a novel formulation to optimize the robustness of dynamic trajectories. A straightforward transcription of this formulation into a nonlinear…
Navigating cluttered environments is a challenging task for any mobile system. Existing approaches for ground-based mobile systems primarily focus on small wheeled robots, which face minimal constraints with overhanging obstacles and cannot…
Legged robots have demonstrated remarkable agility on rigid, stationary ground, but their locomotion reliability remains limited in non-inertial environments, where the supporting ground moves, tilts, or accelerates. Such conditions arise…
Current control strategies for powered lower limb prostheses often lack awareness of the environment and the user's intended interactions with it. This limitation becomes particularly apparent in complex terrains. Obstacle negotiation, a…
Accurate traversability estimation is essential for safe and effective navigation of outdoor robots operating in complex environments. This paper introduces a novel experience-based method that allows robots to autonomously learn which…
Soft robots are well suited for contact-rich tasks due to their compliance, yet this property makes accurate and tractable modeling challenging. Planning motions with dynamically-feasible trajectories requires models that capture arbitrary…
In this paper, we present a robotic navigation algorithm with natural language interfaces, which enables a robot to safely walk through a changing environment with moving persons by following human instructions such as "go to the restaurant…
Through the implementation of reconfigurability to achieve flexibility and adaptation to tasks by morphology changes rather than by increasing the number of joints, malleable robots present advantages over traditional serial robot arms in…
Mobile robots operating in crowded environments require the ability to navigate among humans and surrounding obstacles efficiently while adhering to safety standards and socially compliant mannerisms. This scale of the robot navigation…
Mobile robots navigating in crowds trained using reinforcement learning are known to suffer performance degradation when faced with out-of-distribution scenarios. We propose that by properly accounting for the uncertainties of pedestrians,…
Many mechanical structures, both engineered and biological, combine heavy rigid elements such as bones and beams with lightweight flexible ones such as cables and membranes. These are referred to as tensegrities, reflecting that cables can…
In the design of tensegrity structures, traditional form-finding methods utilize kinematic and static approaches to identify geometric configurations that achieve equilibrium. However, these methods often fall short when applied to actual…
To achieve autonomy in unknown and unstructured environments, we propose a method for semantic-based planning under perceptual uncertainty. This capability is crucial for safe and efficient robot navigation in environment with…
Developing robotic technologies for use in human society requires ensuring the safety of robots' navigation behaviors while adhering to pedestrians' expectations and social norms. However, maintaining real-time communication between robots…
A new class of continuum robots has recently been explored, characterized by tip extension, significant length change, and directional control. Here, we call this class of robots "vine robots," due to their similar behavior to plants with…
Obstacle avoidance and path planning are essential for guiding unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) through environments that are densely populated with dynamic obstacles. This paper develops a novel approach that combines tangentbased path…