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Deformable object manipulation (DOM) is an emerging research problem in robotics. The ability to manipulate deformable objects endows robots with higher autonomy and promises new applications in the industrial, services, and healthcare…
Flexible object manipulation of paper and cloth is a major research challenge in robot manipulation. Although there have been efforts to develop hardware that enables specific actions and to realize a single action of paper folding using…
Moving a module in a modular robot is a very complex and error-prone process. Unlike in swarm, in the modular robots we are targeting, the moving module must keep the connection to, at least, one other module. In order to miniaturize each…
Manipulation planning and control are relevant building blocks of a robotic system and their tight integration is a key factor to improve robot autonomy and allows robots to perform manipulation tasks of increasing complexity, such as those…
Active metasurfaces enable dynamic control of light for applications in beam steering, pixelated holography, and adaptive optics, but demonstrations of two-dimensional (2D) electrically addressable arrays have so far been limited. Here we…
Modular small-scale robots offer the potential for on-demand assembly and disassembly, enabling task-specific adaptation in dynamic and constrained environments. However, existing modular magnetic platforms often depend on workspace…
Rigid-bodied robots often lack compliance needed to adapt to unstructured environments, while fully soft robots, though highly adaptable, struggle with scalability and load capacity. In nature, musculoskeletal systems balance strength and…
Many robot manipulation tasks require the robot to make and break contact with objects and surfaces. The dynamics of such changing-contact robot manipulation tasks are discontinuous when contact is made or broken, and continuous elsewhere.…
Manipulation of deformable linear objects (DLOs) in constrained environments is a challenging task. This paper describes a two-layered approach for placing DLOs on a flat surface using a single robot hand. The high-level layer is a novel…
This paper describes a 2D and 3D simulation engine that quantitatively models the statics, dynamics, and non-linear deformation of heterogeneous soft bodies in a computationally efficient manner. There is a large body of work simulating…
Collaborative transport of objects via pushing by multiple robots has many applications, ranging from construction and warehouse environments to post disaster debris clean-up. Achieving collaborative transport over surfaces with different…
There is a growing need for robots that can change their shape, size and mechanical properties to adapt to evolving tasks and environments. However, current shape-changing systems generally utilize bespoke, system-specific mechanisms that…
Manipulating a deformable linear object (DLO) such as wire, cable, and rope is a common yet challenging task due to their high degrees of freedom and complex deformation behaviors, especially in an environment with obstacles. Existing local…
Consider the problem of planning collision-free motion of $n$ objects in the plane movable through contact with a robot that can autonomously translate in the plane and that can move a maximum of $m \leq n$ objects simultaneously. This…
Cloth manipulation is a category of deformable object manipulation of great interest to the robotics community, from applications of automated laundry-folding and home organizing and cleaning to textiles and flexible manufacturing. Despite…
The logistics of transporting a package from a storage facility to the consumer's front door usually employs highly specialized robots often times splitting sub-tasks up to different systems, e.g., manipulator arms to sort and wheeled…
We present a multi-robot task and motion planning method that, when applied to the rearrangement of objects by manipulators, results in solution times up to three orders of magnitude faster than existing methods and successfully plans for…
Intelligent surfaces that reshape electromagnetic waves are regarded as disruptive technologies for wireless networks. However, existing designs sit at two costly extremes: dynamic reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) offer fine beam…
A kitchen assistant needs to operate human-scale objects, such as cabinets and ovens, in unmapped environments with dynamic obstacles. Autonomous interactions in such environments require integrating dexterous manipulation and fluid…
Multiple mobile manipulators show superiority in the tasks requiring mobility and dexterity compared with a single robot, especially when manipulating/transporting bulky objects. However, closed-chain of the system, redundancy of each…