Related papers: PushingBots: Collaborative Pushing via Neural Acce…

This paper tackles the problem of robots collaboratively towing a load with cables to a specified goal location while avoiding collisions in real time. The introduction of cables (as opposed to rigid links) enables the robotic team to…

Multi-robot teams have attracted attention from industry and academia for their ability to perform collaborative tasks in unstructured environments, such as wilderness rescue and collaborative transportation.In this paper, we propose a…

Despite the potential benefits of collaborative robots, effective manipulation tasks with quadruped robots remain difficult to realize. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical control system that can handle real-world collaborative…

We present DisCo, a distributed algorithm for contact-rich, multi-robot tasks. DisCo is a distributed contact-implicit trajectory optimization algorithm, which allows a group of robots to optimize a time sequence of forces to objects and to…

This paper uses a mobile manipulator with a collaborative robotic arm to manipulate objects beyond the robot's maximum payload. It proposes a single-shot probabilistic roadmap-based method to plan and optimize manipulation motion with…

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…

We address prehensile pushing, the problem of manipulating a grasped object by pushing against the environment. Our solution is an efficient nonlinear trajectory optimization problem relaxed from an exact mixed integer non-linear trajectory…

Most object manipulation strategies for robots are based on the assumption that the object is rigid (i.e., with fixed geometry) and the goal's details have been fully specified (e.g., the exact target pose). However, there are many tasks…

Non-prehensile planar manipulation, including pushing and press-and-slide, is critical for diverse robotic tasks, but notoriously challenging due to hybrid contact mechanics, under-actuation, and asymmetric friction limits that…

Manipulation of objects by exploiting their contact with the environment can enhance both the dexterity and payload capability of robotic manipulators. A common way to manipulate heavy objects beyond the payload capability of a robot is to…

Robust motion planning is a well-studied problem in the robotics literature, yet current algorithms struggle to operate scalably and safely in the presence of other moving agents, such as humans. This paper introduces a novel framework for…

Complex manipulation tasks, such as rearrangement planning of numerous objects, are combinatorially hard problems. Existing algorithms either do not scale well or assume a great deal of prior knowledge about the environment, and few offer…

We focus on push-based multi-object rearrangement planning using a nonholonomically constrained mobile robot. The simultaneous geometric, kinematic, and physics constraints make this problem especially challenging. Prior work on…

A shared grasp is a grasp formed by contacts between the manipulated object and both the robot hand and the environment. By trading off hand contacts for environmental contacts, a shared grasp requires fewer contacts with the hand, and…

Trajectory generation in confined environment is crucial for wide adoption of intelligent robot manipulators. In this paper, we propose a novel motion planning approach for redundant robot arms that uses a hybrid optimization framework to…

This paper addresses non-prehensile rearrangement planning problems where a robot is tasked to rearrange objects among obstacles on a planar surface. We present an efficient planning algorithm that is designed to impose few assumptions on…

Cooperative transport, the simultaneous movement of an object by multiple agents, has been widely observed in biological systems such as ant colonies, which improve efficiency and adaptability in dynamic environments. Inspired by these…

It is of great challenge, though promising, to coordinate collective robots for hunting an evader in a decentralized manner purely in light of local observations. In this paper, this challenge is addressed by a novel hybrid cooperative…

Studies of human-robot interaction in dynamic and unstructured environments show that as more advanced robotic capabilities are deployed, the need for cooperative competencies to support collaboration with human problem-holders increases.…

Developing robot controllers capable of achieving dexterous nonprehensile manipulation, such as pushing an object on a table, is challenging. The underactuated and hybrid-dynamics nature of the problem, further complicated by the…