Related papers: Beyond Binary: Sim-to-Real Dexterous Manipulation …
Simulating optical tactile sensors presents significant challenges due to their high deformability and intricate optical properties. To address these issues and enable a physically accurate simulation, we propose DOT-Sim: Differentiable…
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…
Tactile sensing is a widely-studied means of implicit communication between robot and human. In this paper, we investigate how tactile sensing can help bridge differences between robotic embodiments in the context of collaborative…
This work presents reinforcement learning (RL)-driven data augmentation to improve the generalization of vision-action (VA) models for dexterous grasping. While real-to-sim-to-real frameworks, where a few real demonstrations seed…
This study addresses contact-rich object insertion tasks under unstructured environments using a robot with a soft wrist, enabling safe contact interactions. For the unstructured environments, we assume that there are uncertainties in…
Dexterous robotic hands have the capability to interact with a wide variety of household objects to perform tasks like grasping. However, learning robust real world grasping policies for arbitrary objects has proven challenging due to the…
Contact-rich manipulation involves kinematic constraints on the task motion, typically with discrete transitions between these constraints during the task. Allowing the robot to detect and reason about these contact constraints can support…
The ability to manipulate tools significantly expands the set of tasks a robot can perform. Yet, tool manipulation represents a challenging class of dexterity, requiring grasping thin objects, in-hand object rotations, and forceful…
Many contact-rich tasks humans perform, such as box pickup or rolling dough, rely on force feedback for reliable execution. However, this force information, which is readily available in most robot arms, is not commonly used in…
Current research directions in deep reinforcement learning include bridging the simulation-reality gap, improving sample efficiency of experiences in distributed multi-agent reinforcement learning, together with the development of robust…
Sim-and-real training is a promising alternative to sim-to-real training for robot manipulations. However, the current sim-and-real training is neither efficient, i.e., slow convergence to the optimal policy, nor effective, i.e., sizeable…
The main challenge in learning image-conditioned robotic policies is acquiring a visual representation conducive to low-level control. Due to the high dimensionality of the image space, learning a good visual representation requires a…
The integration of unmanned platforms equipped with advanced sensors promises to enhance situational awareness and mitigate the "fog of war" in military operations. However, managing the vast influx of data from these platforms poses a…
Contact-rich manipulation is crucial for robots to perform tasks requiring precise force control, such as insertion, assembly, and in-hand manipulation. However, most imitation learning (IL) policies remain position-centric and lack…
Robotic assembly is a longstanding challenge, requiring contact-rich interaction and high precision and accuracy. Many applications also require adaptivity to diverse parts, poses, and environments, as well as low cycle times. In other…
Deep learning and reinforcement learning methods have been shown to enable learning of flexible and complex robot controllers. However, the reliance on large amounts of training data often requires data collection to be carried out in…
Accurate deformable object manipulation (DOM) is essential for achieving autonomy in robotic surgery, where soft tissues are being displaced, stretched, and dissected. Many DOM methods can be powered by simulation, which ensures realistic…
Learning a generalist control policy for dexterous manipulation typically relies on large-scale datasets. Given the high cost of real-world data collection, a practical alternative is to generate synthetic data through simulation. However,…
A significant barrier preventing model-based methods from achieving real-time and versatile dexterous robotic manipulation is the inherent complexity of multi-contact dynamics. Traditionally formulated as complementarity models,…
Simulations are attractive environments for training agents as they provide an abundant source of data and alleviate certain safety concerns during the training process. But the behaviours developed by agents in simulation are often…