Related papers: Unified Complementarity-Based Contact Modeling and…
Safety-critical whole-body robot control demands reactive methods that ensure collision avoidance in real-time. Complementarity constraints and control barrier functions (CBF) have emerged as core tools for ensuring such safety constraints,…
This work considers the path planning problem for a team of identical robots evolving in a known environment. The robots should satisfy a global specification given as a Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) formula over a set of regions of interest.…
Formal verification of robotic tasks requires a simple yet conformant model of the used robot. We present the first work on generating reachset conformant models for robotic contact tasks considering hybrid (mixed continuous and discrete)…
Multi-robot systems enhance efficiency and productivity across various applications, from manufacturing to surveillance. While single-robot motion planning has improved by using databases of prior solutions, extending this approach to…
Frictional contact has been extensively studied as the core underlying behavior of legged locomotion and manipulation, and its nearly-discontinuous nature makes planning and control difficult even when an accurate model of the robot is…
This paper presents a motion planning algorithm for quadruped locomotion based on density functions. We decompose the locomotion problem into a high-level density planner and a model predictive controller (MPC). Due to density functions…
Ensuring symmetric stiffness in impedance-controlled robots is crucial for physically meaningful and stable interaction in contact-rich manipulation. Conventional approaches neglect the change of basis vectors in curved spaces, leading to…
It is desired to equip robots with the capability of interacting with various soft materials as they are ubiquitous in the real world. While physics simulations are one of the predominant methods for data collection and robot training,…
Uncertainties in contact dynamics and object geometry remain significant barriers to robust robotic manipulation. Caging mitigates these uncertainties by constraining an object's mobility without requiring precise contact modeling. However,…
Balancing safety and efficiency when planning in crowded scenarios with uncertain dynamics is challenging where it is imperative to accomplish the robot's mission without incurring any safety violations. Typically, chance constraints are…
Reinforcement learning (RL) approaches based on Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are predominantly applied in the robot joint space, often relying on limited task-specific information and partial awareness of the 3D environment. In…
Magnetic soft robots embedded with hard magnetic particles enable untethered actuation via external magnetic fields, offering remote, rapid, and precise control, which is highly promising for biomedical applications. However, designing such…
Soft robots offer adaptability and safe interaction with complex environments. Rapid prototyping kits that allow soft robots to be assembled easily will allow different geometries to be explored quickly to suit different environments or to…
Multi-robot systems offer enhanced capability over their monolithic counterparts, but they come at a cost of increased complexity in coordination. To reduce complexity and to make the problem tractable, multi-robot motion planning (MRMP)…
We present a unifying theoretical result that connects two foundational principles in robotics: the Signorini law for point contacts, which underpins many simulation methods for preventing object interpenetration, and the center of pressure…
Safety and stability are common requirements for robotic control systems; however, designing safe, stable controllers remains difficult for nonlinear and uncertain models. We develop a model-based learning approach to synthesize robust…
This paper presents a novel trajectory optimization formulation to solve the robotic assembly of the belt drive unit. Robotic manipulations involving contacts and deformable objects are challenging in both dynamic modeling and trajectory…
Humanoid robots maintain balance and navigate by controlling the contact wrenches applied to the environment. While it is possible to plan dynamically-feasible motion that applies appropriate wrenches using existing methods, a humanoid may…
Accurately modeling contact behaviors for real-world, near-rigid materials remains a grand challenge for existing rigid-body physics simulators. This paper introduces a data-augmented contact model that incorporates analytical solutions…
Navigation strategies that intentionally incorporate contact with humans (i.e. "contact-based" social navigation) in crowded environments are largely unexplored even though collision-free social navigation is a well studied problem.…