Related papers: Proprioceptive Shape Estimation of Tensegrity Mani…

Tensegrity structures are lightweight, can undergo large deformations, and have outstanding robustness capabilities. These unique properties inspired roboticists to investigate their use. However, the morphological design, control,…

Differentiable simulation has become a powerful tool for system identification. While prior work has focused on identifying robot properties using robot-specific data or object properties using object-specific data, our approach calibrates…

Ergonomic assessment of human posture plays a vital role in understanding work-related safety and health. Current posture estimation approaches face occlusion challenges in teleoperation and physical human-robot interaction. We investigate…

In contrast to conventional robots, accurately modeling the kinematics and statics of continuum robots is challenging due to partially unknown material properties, parasitic effects, or unknown forces acting on the continuous body.…

This paper proposes a unified approach for dynamic modeling and simulations of general tensegrity structures with rigid bars and rigid bodies of arbitrary shapes. The natural coordinates are adopted as a non-minimal description in terms of…

State estimation for legged robots remains challenging because legged odometry generally suffers from limited observability and therefore depends critically on measurement constraints to suppress drift. When exteroceptive sensors are…

For in-hand manipulation, estimation of the object pose inside the hand is one of the important functions to manipulate objects to the target pose. Since in-hand manipulation tends to cause occlusions by the hand or the object itself, image…

This paper considers a combination of actuation tendons and measurement strings to achieve accurate shape sensing and direct kinematics of continuum robots. Assuming general string routing, a methodical Lie group formulation for the shape…

Hyper-redundant tendon-driven manipulators offer greater flexibility and compliance over traditional manipulators. A common way of controlling such manipulators relies on adjusting tendon lengths, which is an accessible control parameter.…

Tensegrities synergistically combine tensile (cable) and rigid (link) elements to achieve structural integrity, making them lightweight, packable, and impact resistant. Consequently, they have high potential for locomotion in unstructured…

This work proposes an adaptive framework to solve a robust structural shape optimization problem governed by linear elasticity models that account for uncertainties in the loading and material inputs. A posteriori error estimators are…

Continuum robots, made from flexible materials with continuous backbones, have several advantages over traditional rigid robots. Some of them are the ability to navigate through narrow or confined spaces, adapt to irregular or changing…

State estimation is one of the fundamental problems in robotics. For soft continuum robots, this task is particularly challenging because their states (poses, strains, internal wrenches, and velocities) are inherently infinite-dimensional…

Shape completion, i.e., predicting the complete geometry of an object from a partial observation, is highly relevant for several downstream tasks, most notably robotic manipulation. When basing planning or prediction of real grasps on…

This paper addresses the problem of estimating the attitude of a rigid body, which is subject to high accelerations and equipped with inertial measurement unit (IMU) and sensors providing the body velocity (expressed in the reference frame…

Underactuated soft robot hands offer inherent safety and adaptability advantages over rigid systems, but developing dexterous manipulation skills remains challenging. While imitation learning shows promise for complex manipulation tasks,…

Tendon-driven musculoskeletal humanoids typically have complex structures similar to those of human beings, such as ball joints and the scapula, in which encoders cannot be installed. Therefore, joint angles cannot be directly obtained and…

Robotic manipulation has made significant advancements, with systems demonstrating high precision and repeatability. However, this remarkable precision often fails to translate into efficient manipulation of thin deformable objects. Current…

Controlling illumination can generate high quality information about object surface normals and depth discontinuities at a low computational cost. In this work we demonstrate a robot workspace-scaled controlled illumination approach that…

Pneumatic soft robots present many advantages in manipulation tasks. Notably, their inherent compliance makes them safe and reliable in unstructured and fragile environments. However, full-body shape sensing for pneumatic soft robots is…