Related papers: Unified Complementarity-Based Contact Modeling and…
Robotic manipulation in unstructured environments requires planners to reason jointly about free-space motion and sustained, frictional contact with the environment. Existing (local) planning and simulation frameworks typically separate…
Whether rigid or compliant, contact interactions are inherent to robot motions, enabling them to move or manipulate things. Contact interactions result from complex physical phenomena, that can be mathematically cast as Nonlinear…
We present a general approach for controlling robotic systems that make and break contact with their environments. Contact-implicit model predictive control (CI-MPC) generalizes linear MPC to contact-rich settings by utilizing a bi-level…
Fluidically actuated soft robots have promising capabilities such as inherent compliance and user safety. The control of soft robots needs to properly handle nonlinear actuation dynamics, motion constraints, workspace limitations, and…
Soft robots achieve functionality through tight coupling among geometry, material composition, and actuation. As a result, effective design optimization requires these three aspects to be considered jointly rather than in isolation. This…
This paper presents a novel contact-implicit trajectory optimization method using an analytically solvable contact model to enable planning of interactions with hard, soft, and slippery environments. Specifically, we propose a novel contact…
Continuum robots are well suited for navigating confined and fragile environments, such as vascular or endoluminal anatomy, where contact with surrounding structures is often unavoidable. While controlled contact can assist motion,…
Soft slender robots have attracted more and more research attentions in these years due to their continuity and compliance natures. However, mechanics modeling for soft robots interacting with environment is still an academic challenge…
This manuscript presents a model of compliant contacts for time-critical humanoid robot motion control. The proposed model considers the environment as a continuum of spring-damper systems, which allows us to compute the equivalent contact…
The paper proposes an approach for the efficient model order reduction of dynamic contact problems in linear elasticity. Instead of the augmented Lagrangian method that is widely used for mechanical contact problems, we prefer here the…
In recent years, soft robotics simulators have evolved to offer various functionalities, including the simulation of different material types (e.g., elastic, hyper-elastic) and actuation methods (e.g., pneumatic, cable-driven, servomotor).…
As robots move from the laboratory into the real world, motion planning will need to account for model uncertainty and risk. For robot motions involving intermittent contact, planning for uncertainty in contact is especially important, as…
Contact-implicit motion planning-embedding contact sequencing as implicit complementarity constraints-holds the promise of leveraging continuous optimization to discover new contact patterns online. Nevertheless, the resulting optimization,…
Designing trajectories for manipulation through contact is challenging as it requires reasoning of object \& robot trajectories as well as complex contact sequences simultaneously. In this paper, we present a novel framework for…
Soft robot are celebrated for their propensity to enable compliant and complex robot-environment interactions. Soft robotic manipulators, or slender continuum structure robots have the potential to exploit these interactions to enable new…
Soft robots are distinguished by their flexibility and adaptability, allowing them to perform nearly impossible tasks for rigid robots. However, controlling their behavior is challenging due to their nonlinear material response and infinite…
Contact-rich manipulation is challenging due to dynamically-changing physical constraints by the contact mode changes undergone during manipulation. This paper proposes a versatile local planning and control framework for contact-rich…
Humanoid robots rely on multi-contact planners to navigate a diverse set of environments, including those that are unstructured and highly constrained. To synthesize stable multi-contact plans within a reasonable time frame, most planners…
Soft robots promise inherent safety via their material compliance for seamless interactions with humans or delicate environments. Yet, their development is challenging because it requires integrating materials, geometry, actuation, and…
Navigation and motion control of a robot to a destination are tasks that have historically been performed with the assumption that contact with the environment is harmful. This makes sense for rigid-bodied robots where obstacle collisions…