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Autonomous aerial robots are increasingly being deployed in real-world scenarios, where transparent glass obstacles present significant challenges to reliable navigation. Researchers have investigated the use of non-contact sensors and…
In order to enable physical human-robot interaction where humans and (mobile) manipulators share their workspace and work together, robots have to be equipped with important capabilities to guarantee human safety. The robots have to…
Efficient exploration strategies are vital in tasks such as search-and-rescue missions and disaster surveying. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become particularly popular in such applications, promising to cover large areas at high…
This paper presents a novel strategy for autonomous teamed exploration of subterranean environments using legged and aerial robots. Tailored to the fact that subterranean settings, such as cave networks and underground mines, often involve…
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…
Human-robot interactions have been recognized to be a key element of future industrial collaborative robots (co-robots). Unlike traditional robots that work in structured and deterministic environments, co-robots need to operate in highly…
Leader-follower navigation is a popular class of multi-robot algorithms where a leader robot leads the follower robots in a team. The leader has specialized capabilities or mission-critical information (e.g. goal location) that the…
Multi-robot teams have attracted attention from industry and academia for their ability to perform collaborative tasks in unstructured environments, such as wilderness rescue and collaborative transportation.In this paper, we propose a…
This paper presents a novel decentralized control strategy for a multi-robot system that enables parallel multi-target exploration while ensuring a time-varying connected topology in cluttered 3D environments. Flexible continuous…
A robot guide dog has compelling advantages over animal guide dogs for its cost-effectiveness, potential for mass production, and low maintenance burden. However, despite the long history of guide dog robot research, previous studies were…
Collaborative multiple robots for unknown environment exploration have become mainstream due to their remarkable performance and efficiency. However, most existing methods assume perfect robots' communication during exploration, which is…
Robotic fleets such as unmanned aerial and ground vehicles have been widely used for routine inspections of static environments, where the areas of interest are known and planned in advance. However, in many applications, such areas of…
Coordinated multi-robot navigation is essential for robots to operate as a team in diverse environments. During navigation, robot teams usually need to maintain specific formations, such as circular formations to protect human teammates at…
Multiple levels of safety measures are required by multiple interaction modes which collaborative robots need to perform industrial tasks with human co-workers. We develop three independent modules to account for safety in different types…
Many robots are not equipped with a manipulator and many objects are not suitable for prehensile manipulation (such as large boxes and cylinders). In these cases, pushing is a simple yet effective non-prehensile skill for robots to interact…
Heterogeneous robots equipped with multi-modal sensors (e.g., UAV, wheeled and legged terrestrial robots) provide rich and complementary functions that may help human operators to accomplish complex tasks in unknown environments. However,…
This paper addresses a critical aerial defense challenge in contested airspace, involving three autonomous aerial vehicles -- a hostile drone (the pursuer), a high-value drone (the evader), and a protective drone (the defender). We present…
This work addresses the coordination problem of multiple robots with the goal of finding specific hazardous targets in an unknown area and dealing with them cooperatively. The desired behaviour for the robotic system entails multiple…
Nowadays, robots are increasingly operated in environments shared with humans, where conflicts between human and robot behaviors may compromise safety. This paper presents a proactive behavioral conflict avoidance framework based on the…
In communication restricted environments, a multi-robot system can be deployed to either: i) maintain constant communication but potentially sacrifice operational efficiency due to proximity constraints or ii) allow disconnections to…