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Recent advances in digital avatar technology have enabled the generation of compelling virtual characters, but deploying these avatars on compute-constrained devices poses significant challenges for achieving realistic garment deformations.…
Robotic sensorimotor extensions (supernumerary limbs, prosthesis, handheld tools) are worn devices used to interact with the nearby environment, whether to assist the capabilities of impaired users or to enhance the dexterity of industrial…
This paper presents a novel approach for exploring diverse and expressive motions that are physically correct and interactive. The approach combining user participation in with the animation development process using crowdsourcing to remove…
As entertainment robots gain popularity, the demand for natural and expressive motion, particularly in dancing, continues to rise. Traditionally, dancing motions have been manually designed by artists, a process that is both labor-intensive…
As robots increasingly coexist with humans, they must navigate complex, dynamic environments rich in visual information and implicit social dynamics, like when to yield or move through crowds. Addressing these challenges requires…
Reinforcement learning (RL) has significantly advanced the control of physics-based and robotic characters that track kinematic reference motion. However, methods typically rely on a weighted sum of conflicting reward functions, requiring…
Handing objects to humans is an essential capability for collaborative robots. Previous research works on human-robot handovers focus on facilitating the performance of the human partner and possibly minimising the physical effort needed to…
Accurately simulating real world object dynamics is essential for various applications such as robotics, engineering, graphics, and design. To better capture complex real dynamics such as contact and friction, learned simulators based on…
Reusing the tactile knowledge of some previously-explored objects helps us humans to easily recognize the tactual properties of new objects. In this master thesis, we enable arobotic arm equipped with multi-modal artificial skin, like…
Pedipulation leverages the feet of legged robots for mobile manipulation, eliminating the need for dedicated robotic arms. While previous works have showcased blind and task-specific pedipulation skills, they fail to account for static and…
While deep reinforcement learning techniques have recently produced considerable achievements on many decision-making problems, their use in robotics has largely been limited to simulated worlds or restricted motions, since unconstrained…
Legged robots have the potential to traverse complex terrain and access confined spaces beyond the reach of traditional platforms thanks to their ability to carefully select footholds and flexibly adapt their body posture while walking.…
Untethered soft robots that locomote using electrothermally-responsive materials like shape memory alloy (SMA) face challenging design constraints for sensing actuator states. At the same time, modeling of actuator behaviors faces steep…
Towards the role of humanoid robots as squad mates in urban operations and other domains, we identified doors as a major area lacking capability development. In this paper, we focus on the ability of humanoid robots to navigate and deal…
In this paper, an approach for gait assistance with a lower body exoskeleton is described. Two concepts, transparency and motion assistance, are combined. The transparent mode, where the system is following the user's free motion with a…
The quality of high-level AI of non-player characters (NPCs) in commercial open-world games (OWGs) has been increasing during the past years. However, due to constraints specific to the game industry, this increase has been slow and it has…
Simulators of animal movements play a valuable role in studying behavior. Advances in imitation learning for robotics have expanded possibilities for reproducing human and animal movements. A key challenge for realistic multi-animal…
In recent years, legged and wheeled-legged robots have gained prominence for tasks in environments predominantly created for humans across various domains. One significant challenge faced by many of these robots is their limited capability…
We present a simple and intuitive approach for interactive control of physically simulated characters. Our work builds upon generative adversarial networks (GAN) and reinforcement learning, and introduces an imitation learning framework…
Affective touch offers positive psychological and physiological benefits such as the mitigation of stress and pain. If a robot could realize human-like affective touch, it would open up new application areas, including supporting care work.…