Related papers: TactAlign: Human-to-Robot Policy Transfer via Tact…

Inspired by the human ability to perform complex manipulation in the complete absence of vision (like retrieving an object from a pocket), the robotic manipulation field is motivated to develop new methods for tactile-based object…

Ambiguity and noise in natural language instructions create a significant barrier towards adopting autonomous systems into safety critical workflows involving humans and machines. In this paper, we propose to build on recent advances in…

Employing skin-like tactile sensors on robots enhances both the safety and usability of collaborative robots by adding the capability to detect human contact. Unfortunately, simple binary tactile sensors alone cannot determine the context…

In essence, successful grasp boils down to correct responses to multiple contact events between fingertips and objects. In most scenarios, tactile sensing is adequate to distinguish contact events. Due to the nature of high dimensionality…

In robots, nonprehensile manipulation operations such as pushing are a useful way of moving large, heavy or unwieldy objects, moving multiple objects at once, or reducing uncertainty in the location or pose of objects. In this study, we…

Robot-to-human object handover is an essential skill for robot assistants, from serving drinks at home to passing surgical tools in the operating room. We expect robots to perform handover robustly -- to release the object only after a firm…

In real-world industrial environments, modern robots often rely on human operators for crucial decision-making and mission synthesis from individual tasks. Effective and safe collaboration between humans and robots requires systems that can…

Assistive robotic arms enable users with physical disabilities to perform everyday tasks without relying on a caregiver. Unfortunately, the very dexterity that makes these arms useful also makes them challenging to teleoperate: the robot…

With the introduction of collaborative robots, humans and robots can now work together in close proximity and share the same workspace. However, this collaboration presents various challenges that need to be addressed to ensure seamless…

Camera-based tactile sensors provide robots with a high-performance tactile sensing approach for environment perception and dexterous manipulation. However, achieving comprehensive environmental perception still requires cooperation with…

To achieve a dexterous robotic manipulation, we need to endow our robot with tactile feedback capability, i.e. the ability to drive action based on tactile sensing. In this paper, we specifically address the challenge of tactile servoing,…

Object handover is a basic, but essential capability for robots interacting with humans in many applications, e.g., caring for the elderly and assisting workers in manufacturing workshops. It appears deceptively simple, as humans perform…

In the human hand, high-density contact information provided by afferent neurons is essential for many human grasping and manipulation capabilities. In contrast, robotic tactile sensors, including the state-of-the-art SynTouch BioTac, are…

Humans throw and catch objects all the time. However, such a seemingly common skill introduces a lot of challenges for robots to achieve: The robots need to operate such dynamic actions at high-speed, collaborate precisely, and interact…

Visuo-tactile sensors aim to emulate human tactile perception, enabling robots to precisely understand and manipulate objects. Over time, numerous meticulously designed visuo-tactile sensors have been integrated into robotic systems, aiding…

Human-robot object handovers have been an actively studied area of robotics over the past decade; however, very few techniques and systems have addressed the challenge of handing over diverse objects with arbitrary appearance, size, shape,…

For robots to seamlessly interact with humans, we first need to make sure that humans and robots understand one another. Diverse algorithms have been developed to enable robots to learn from humans (i.e., transferring information from…

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…

Robots are increasingly working alongside people, delivering food to patrons in restaurants or helping workers on assembly lines. These scenarios often involve object handovers between the person and the robot. To achieve safe and efficient…

Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models have recently emerged as powerful generalists for robotic manipulation. However, due to their predominant reliance on visual modalities, they fundamentally lack the physical intuition required for…