Related papers: Data-Driven Terramechanics Approach Towards a Real…
Planetary exploration using aerial assets has the potential for unprecedented scientific discoveries on Mars. While NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity proved flight in Martian atmosphere is possible, future Mars rotorcraft will require…
Computations have helped elucidate the dynamics of Earth's mantle for several decades already. The numerical methods that underlie these simulations have greatly evolved within this time span, and today include dynamically changing and…
Reconstructing objects from real world data and rendering them at novel views is critical to bringing realism, diversity and scale to simulation for robotics training and testing. In this work, we present NeuSim, a novel approach that…
Adaptive morphogenetic robots adapt their morphology and control policies to meet changing tasks and environmental conditions. Many such systems leverage soft components, which enable shape morphing but also introduce simulation and control…
This paper proposes a novel methodology for addressing the simulation-reality gap for multi-robot swarm systems. Rather than immediately try to shrink or `bridge the gap' anytime a real-world experiment failed that worked in simulation, we…
Deep reinforcement learning provides a promising approach for vision-based control of real-world robots. However, the generalization of such models depends critically on the quantity and variety of data available for training. This data can…
Off-road navigation on vertically challenging terrain, involving steep slopes and rugged boulders, presents significant challenges for wheeled robots both at the planning level to achieve smooth collision-free trajectories and at the…
A multiscale model for real-time simulation of terrain dynamics is explored. To represent the dynamics on different scales the model combines the description of soil as a continuous solid, as distinct particles and as rigid multibodies. The…
Highly accurate real-time localization is of fundamental importance for the safety and efficiency of planetary rovers exploring the surface of Mars. Mars rover operations rely on vision-based systems to avoid hazards as well as plan safe…
High-fidelity physics simulation is essential for scalable robotic learning, but the sim-to-real gap persists, especially for tasks involving complex, dynamic, and discontinuous interactions like physical contacts. Explicit system…
Safely handling objects and avoiding slippage are fundamental challenges in robotic manipulation, yet traditional techniques often oversimplify the issue by treating slippage as a binary occurrence. Our research presents a framework that…
This work tackles the challenging task of achieving real-time novel view synthesis for reflective surfaces across various scenes. Existing real-time rendering methods, especially those based on meshes, often have subpar performance in…
Proprioceptive sensors on planetary rovers serve for state estimation and for understanding terrain and locomotion performance. While inertial measurement units (IMUs) are widely used to this effect, force-torque sensors are less explored…
Data-driven approaches to tactile sensing aim to overcome the complexity of accurately modeling contact with soft materials. However, their widespread adoption is impaired by concerns about data efficiency and the capability to generalize…
In this paper, we introduce the notion of simulation-gap functions to formally quantify the potential gap between an approximate nominal mathematical model and the high-fidelity simulator representation of a real system. Given a nominal…
Across many domains of science, stochastic models are an essential tool to understand the mechanisms underlying empirically observed data. Models can be of different levels of detail and accuracy, with models of high-fidelity (i.e., high…
Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) provides valuable information about the Earth's surface under all weather and illumination conditions. However, the inherent phenomenon of speckle and the presence of sidelobes around bright targets pose…
Accurate physical simulation is crucial for the development and validation of control algorithms in robotic systems. Recent works in Reinforcement Learning (RL) take notably advantage of extensive simulations to produce efficient robot…
Deep-sea robot operations demand a high level of safety, efficiency and reliability. As a consequence, measures within the development stage have to be implemented to extensively evaluate and benchmark system components ranging from data…
Model-based reinforcement learning (RL) has proven to be a data efficient approach for learning control tasks but is difficult to utilize in domains with complex observations such as images. In this paper, we present a method for learning…