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Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models have demonstrated significant advantages in robotic manipulation. However, their reliance on vision and language often leads to suboptimal performance in tasks involving visual occlusion, fine-grained…
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…
Humans commonly work with multiple objects in daily life and can intuitively transfer manipulation skills to novel objects by understanding object functional regularities. However, existing technical approaches for analyzing and…
Tactile sensing is crucial for embodied intelligence, providing fine-grained perception and control in complex environments. However, efficient tactile data compression, which is essential for real-time robotic applications under strict…
Effective human-robot interaction requires emotionally rich multimodal expressions, yet most humanoid robots lack coordinated speech, facial expressions, and gestures. Meanwhile, real-world deployment demands on-device solutions that can…
Robotics research has long sought to give robots the ability to perceive the physical world through touch in an analogous manner to many biological systems. Developing such tactile capabilities is important for numerous emerging…
For both humans and robots, the sense of touch, known as tactile sensing, is critical for performing contact-rich manipulation tasks. Three key challenges in robotic tactile sensing are 1) interpreting sensor signals, 2) generating sensor…
Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models have shown remarkable achievements, driven by the rich implicit knowledge of their vision-language components. However, achieving generalist robotic agents demands precise grounding into physical…
Reproducing the capabilities of the human sense of touch in machines is an important step in enabling robot manipulation to have the ease of human dexterity. A combination of robotic technologies will be needed, including soft robotics,…
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…
Recent advancements in integrating tactile sensing with vision-language models (VLMs) have demonstrated remarkable potential for robotic multimodal perception. However, existing tactile descriptions remain limited to superficial attributes…
Tactile sensing is a crucial capability for Vision-Language-Action (VLA) architectures, as it enables dexterous and safe manipulation in contact-rich tasks. However, reliance on dedicated tactile hardware increases cost and reduces…
The integration of visual-tactile stimulus is common while humans performing daily tasks. In contrast, using unimodal visual or tactile perception limits the perceivable dimensionality of a subject. However, it remains a challenge to…
Tactile sensing is critical for humans to perform everyday tasks. While significant progress has been made in analyzing object grasping from vision, it remains unclear how we can utilize tactile sensing to reason about and model the…
Robotic disassembly involves contact-rich interactions in which successful manipulation depends not only on geometric alignment but also on force-dependent state transitions. While vision-based policies perform well in structured settings,…
Industrial robot applications require increasingly flexible systems that non-expert users can easily adapt for varying tasks and environments. However, different adaptations benefit from different interaction modalities. We present an…
Compared to rigid hands, underactuated compliant hands offer greater adaptability to object shapes, provide stable grasps, and are often more cost-effective. However, they introduce uncertainties in hand-object interactions due to their…
Tactile sensing is significant for robotics since it can obtain physical contact information during manipulation. To capture multimodal contact information within a compact framework, we designed a novel sensor called ViTacTip, which…
Robots in many real-world settings have access to force/torque sensors in their gripper and tactile sensing is often necessary in tasks that involve contact-rich motion. In this work, we leverage surprise from mismatches in touch feedback…
Robust object pose estimation is essential for manipulation and interaction tasks in robotics, particularly in scenarios where visual data is limited or sensitive to lighting, occlusions, and appearances. Tactile sensors often offer limited…