Related papers: Emergency Stopping for Liquid-manipulating Robots
Autonomous navigation is a fundamental task for robot vacuum cleaners in indoor environments. Since their core function is to clean entire areas, robots inevitably encounter dead zones in cluttered and narrow scenarios. Existing planning…
Identifying and controlling an unstable, underactuated robot to enable reference tracking is a challenging control problem. In this paper, a ballbot (robot balancing on a ball) is used as an experimental setup to demonstrate and test…
In recent years, impressive results have been achieved in robotic manipulation. While many efforts focus on generating collision-free reference signals, few allow safe contact between the robot bodies and the environment. However, in…
Efficient navigation in dynamic environments is crucial for autonomous robots interacting with moving agents and static obstacles. We present a novel deep reinforcement learning approach that improves robot navigation and interaction with…
What is considered safe for a robot operator during physical human-robot collaboration (HRC) is specified in corresponding HRC standards (e.g., ISO/TS 15066). The regime that allows collisions between the moving robot and the operator,…
Robots interacting with humans must be safe, reactive and adapt online to unforeseen environmental and task changes. Achieving these requirements concurrently is a challenge as interactive planners lack formal safety guarantees, while safe…
Maintaining stability in feedback systems, from aircraft and autonomous robots to biological and physiological systems, relies on monitoring their behavior and continuously adjusting their inputs. Incremental damage can make such control…
The safety of mobile robots in dynamic environments is predicated on making sure that they do not collide with obstacles. In support of such safety arguments, we analyze and formally verify a series of increasingly powerful safety…
We develop methods to solve general optimal stopping problems with opportunities to stop that arrive randomly. Such problems occur naturally in applications with market frictions. Pivotal to our approach is that our methods operate on…
Floating-base multi-link robots can change their shape during flight, making them well-suited for applications in confined environments such as autonomous inspection and search and rescue. However, trajectory planning for such systems…
We present a new application of model checking which achieves real-time multi-step planning and obstacle avoidance on a real autonomous robot. We have developed a small, purpose-built model checking algorithm which generates plans in situ…
Assistive robot manipulators must be able to autonomously pick and place a wide range of novel objects to be truly useful. However, current assistive robots lack this capability. Additionally, assistive systems need to have an interface…
Mobile robots can fail before they collide: a velocity that is safe now may commit the robot to a passage that moving obstacles will soon close. We study this predictive near-miss commitment problem and propose Risk-Sensitive Conjectural…
Manoeuvring in the presence of emergency vehicles is still a major issue for vehicle autonomy systems. Most studies that address this topic are based on rule-based methods, which cannot cover all possible scenarios that can take place in…
In the real world, robots with embodiment face various issues such as dynamic continuous changes of the environment and input/output disturbances. The key to solving these issues can be found in daily life; people `do actions associated…
Reactive collision avoidance is essential for agile robots navigating complex and dynamic environments, enabling real-time obstacle response. However, this task is inherently challenging because it requires a tight integration of…
Multi-task learning ideally allows robots to acquire a diverse repertoire of useful skills. However, many multi-task reinforcement learning efforts assume the robot can collect data from all tasks at all times. In reality, the tasks that…
Bolting operations are critical in industrial assembly and in the maintenance of scientific facilities, requiring high precision and robustness to faults. Although robotic solutions have the potential to improve operational safety and…
The need to increase the flexibility of production lines is calling for robots to collaborate with human workers. However, existing interactive industrial robots only guarantee intrinsic safety (reduce collision impact), but not interactive…
We study the snapping instability of a spherical elastic shell induced by a viscous flow, the umbrella flipping problem when life is at low Reynolds numbers. We combine precision desktop-scale experiments, fluid-structure simulations, shell…