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State estimation from measured data is crucial for robotic applications as autonomous systems rely on sensors to capture the motion and localize in the 3D world. Among sensors that are designed for measuring a robot's pose, or for soft…

The precise control of soft and continuum robots requires knowledge of their shape, which has, in contrast to classical rigid robots, infinite degrees of freedom. To partially reconstruct the shape, proprioceptive techniques use built-in…

We present a zero-shot deformation reconstruction framework for soft robots that operates without any visual supervision at inference time. In this work, zero-shot deformation reconstruction is defined as the ability to infer object-wide…

Minimally invasive procedures have been advanced rapidly by the robotic laparoscopic surgery. The latter greatly assists surgeons in sophisticated and precise operations with reduced invasiveness. Nevertheless, it is still safety critical…

This paper presents a correspondence-free, function-based sim-to-real learning method for controlling deformable freeform surfaces. Unlike traditional sim-to-real transfer methods that strongly rely on marker points with full…

Continuum robots have emerged as a promising technology in the medical field due to their potential of accessing deep sited locations of the human body with low surgical trauma. When deriving physics-based models for these robots,…

Surface reconstruction with preservation of geometric features is a challenging computer vision task. Despite significant progress in implicit shape reconstruction, state-of-the-art mesh extraction methods often produce aliased,…

Many robotic tasks involving some form of 3D visual perception greatly benefit from a complete knowledge of the working environment. However, robots often have to tackle unstructured environments and their onboard visual sensors can only…

Robotic perception in unstructured environments remains challenging despite the zero-shot capabilities of foundation models such as SAM. This work attributes performance degradation to non-uniform representation shifts across transformer…

Non-flat surfaces pose difficulties for robots operating in unstructured environments. Reconstructions of uneven surfaces may only be partially possible due to non-compliant end-effectors and limitations on vision systems such as…

In this paper, we propose a novel vision-based control algorithm for regulating the whole body shape of extensible multisection soft continuum manipulators. Contrary to existing vision-based control algorithms in the literature that…

Continuum robots possess high flexibility and redundancy, making them well suited for safe interaction in complex environments, yet their continuous deformation and nonlinear dynamics pose fundamental challenges to perception, modeling, and…

Real-time proprioception is a challenging problem for soft robots, which have almost infinite degrees-of-freedom in body deformation. When multiple actuators are used, it becomes more difficult as deformation can also occur on actuators…

We address the problem of 3D shape completion from sparse and noisy point clouds, a fundamental problem in computer vision and robotics. Recent approaches are either data-driven or learning-based: Data-driven approaches rely on a shape…

Object reconstruction and inspection tasks play a crucial role in various robotics applications. Identifying paths that reveal the most unknown areas of the object is paramount in this context, as it directly affects reconstruction…

Sensory feedback is essential for the control of soft robotic systems and to enable deployment in a variety of different tasks. Proprioception refers to sensing the robot's own state and is of crucial importance in order to deploy soft…

Obtaining dynamic models of continuum soft robots is central to the analysis and control of soft robots, and researchers have devoted much attention to the challenge of proposing both data-driven and first-principle solutions. Both avenues…

Accurate reconstruction of arbitrary-shaped long slender continuum bodies, such as guidewires, catheters and other soft continuum manipulators, is essential for accurate mechanical simulation. However, existing image-based reconstruction…

Interest in soft continuum arms has increased as their inherent material elasticity enables safe and adaptive interactions with the environment. However to achieve full autonomy in these arms, accurate three-dimensional shape sensing is…

Training general-purpose robots requires learning from large and diverse data sources. Current approaches rely heavily on teleoperated demonstrations which are difficult to scale. We present a scalable framework for training manipulation…