Related papers: Cable-driven Continuum Robotics: Proprioception vi…

Controlling contact forces during interactions is critical for locomotion and manipulation tasks. While sim-to-real reinforcement learning (RL) has succeeded in many contact-rich problems, current RL methods achieve forceful interactions…

Continuum robots are flexible, thin manipulators capable of navigating confined or delicate environments making them well suited for surgical applications. Previous approaches to continuum robot state estimation typically rely on…

Flexible sensors are increasingly employed in soft robotics and wearable devices to provide proprioception of freeform deformations.Although supervised learning can train shape predictors from sensor signals, prediction accuracy strongly…

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…

Dense collections of movable objects are common in everyday spaces-from cabinets in a home to shelves in a warehouse. Safely retracting objects from such collections is difficult for robots, yet people do it frequently, leveraging learned…

Anthropomorphic underactuated hands are valued for their structural simplicity and inherent adaptability. However, the uncertainty arising from interdependent joint motions makes it challenging to capture various grasp states during…

Towards the goal of robots performing robust and intelligent physical interactions with people, it is crucial that robots are able to accurately sense the human body, follow trajectories around the body, and track human motion. This study…

We propose a sensory substitution device that communicates one-degree-of-freedom proprioceptive feedback via deep pressure stimulation on the arm. The design is motivated by the need for a feedback modality detectable by individuals with a…

Exploration of confined spaces, such as pipelines and ducts, remains challenging for conventional rigid robots due to limited space, irregular geometry, and restricted access. Inspired by caterpillar locomotion and sensing, this paper…

Robots built from cable-driven tensegrity (`tension-integrity') structures have many of the advantages of soft robots, such as flexibility and robustness, while still obeying simple statics and dynamics models. However, existing tensegrity…

Humans display the remarkable ability to sense the world through tools and other held objects. For example, we are able to pinpoint impact locations on a held rod and tell apart different textures using a rigid probe. In this work, we…

Recently, many humanoid robots have been increasingly deployed in various facilities, including hospitals and assisted living environments, where they are often remotely controlled by human operators. Their kinematic redundancy enhances…

Capacitive technology allows building sensors that are small, compact and have high sensitivity. For this reason it has been widely adopted in robotics. In a previous work we presented a compliant skin system based on capacitive technology…

Limitations in actuation, sensing, and computation have forced small legged robots to rely on carefully tuned, mechanically mediated leg trajectories for effective locomotion. Recent advances in manufacturing, however, have enabled the…

Most aerial manipulators use serial rigid-link designs, which results in large forces when initiating contacts during manipulation and could cause flight stability difficulty. This limitation could potentially be improved by the compliance…

Robots engaged in complex manipulation tasks require robust material property recognition to ensure adaptability and precision. Traditionally, visual data has been the primary source for object perception; however, it often proves…

Multisection continuum arms offer complementary characteristics to those of traditional rigid-bodied robots. Inspired by biological appendages, such as elephant trunks and octopus arms, these robots trade rigidity for compliance, accuracy…

Perception using whisker-inspired tactile sensors currently faces a major challenge: the lack of active control in robots based on direct contact information from the whisker. To accurately reconstruct object contours, it is crucial for the…

Robot-assisted dressing could profoundly enhance the quality of life of adults with physical disabilities. To achieve this, a robot can benefit from both visual and force sensing. The former enables the robot to ascertain human body pose…

Contact force is a natural way for humans to interact with the physical world around us. However, most of our interactions with the digital world are largely based on a simple binary sense of touch (contact or no contact). Similarly, when…