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Towards Practical Multi-Object Manipulation using Relational Reinforcement Learning | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197468/ | [
"Richard Li",
"Allan Jabri",
"Trevor Darrell",
"Pulkit Agrawal",
"Richard Li",
"Allan Jabri",
"Trevor Darrell",
"Pulkit Agrawal"
] | Learning robotic manipulation tasks using reinforcement learning with sparse rewards is currently impractical due to the outrageous data requirements. Many practical tasks require manipulation of multiple objects, and the complexity of such tasks increases with the number of objects. Learning from a curriculum of increasingly complex tasks appears to be a natural solution, but unfortunately, does ... |
SwarmMesh: A Distributed Data Structure for Cooperative Multi-Robot Applications | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197403/ | [
"Nathalie Majcherczyk",
"Carlo Pinciroli",
"Nathalie Majcherczyk",
"Carlo Pinciroli"
] | We present an approach to the distributed storage of data across a swarm of mobile robots that forms a shared global memory. We assume that external storage infrastructure is absent, and that each robot is capable of devoting a quota of memory and bandwidth to distributed storage. Our approach is motivated by the insight that in many applications data is collected at the periphery of a swarm topol... |
Avalanche victim search via robust observers | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196646/ | [
"Nicola Mimmo",
"Pauline Bernard",
"Lorenzo Marconi",
"Nicola Mimmo",
"Pauline Bernard",
"Lorenzo Marconi"
] | This paper introduces a new approach for victim localization in avalanches that will be exploited by UAVs using the ARVA sensor. We show that the nominal ARVA measurement can be linearly related to a quantity that is sufficient to reconstruct the victim position. We explicitly deal with a robust scenario in which the measurement is actually perturbed by a noise that grows with the distance to the ... |
Reactive Control and Metric-Topological Planning for Exploration | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197381/ | [
"Michael T. Ohradzansky",
"Andrew B. Mills",
"Eugene R. Rush",
"Danny G. Riley",
"Eric W. Frew",
"J. Sean Humbert",
"Michael T. Ohradzansky",
"Andrew B. Mills",
"Eugene R. Rush",
"Danny G. Riley",
"Eric W. Frew",
"J. Sean Humbert"
] | Autonomous navigation in unknown environments with the intent of exploring all traversable areas is a significant challenge for robotic platforms. In this paper, a simple yet reliable method for exploring unknown environments is presented based on bio-inspired reactive control and metric-topological planning. The reactive control algorithm is modeled after the spatial decomposition of wide and sma... |
Information Theoretic Active Exploration in Signed Distance Fields | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196882/ | [
"Kelsey Saulnier",
"Nikolay Atanasov",
"George J. Pappas",
"Vijay Kumar",
"Kelsey Saulnier",
"Nikolay Atanasov",
"George J. Pappas",
"Vijay Kumar"
] | This paper focuses on exploration and occupancy mapping of unknown environments using a mobile robot. While a truncated signed distance field (TSDF) is a popular, efficient, and highly accurate representation of occupancy, few works have considered optimizing robot sensing trajectories for autonomous TSDF mapping. We propose an efficient approach for maintaining TSDF uncertainty and predicting its... |
Bayesian Learning-Based Adaptive Control for Safety Critical Systems | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196709/ | [
"David D. Fan",
"Jennifer Nguyen",
"Rohan Thakker",
"Nikhilesh Alatur",
"Ali-akbar Agha-mohammadi",
"Evangelos A. Theodorou",
"David D. Fan",
"Jennifer Nguyen",
"Rohan Thakker",
"Nikhilesh Alatur",
"Ali-akbar Agha-mohammadi",
"Evangelos A. Theodorou"
] | Deep learning has enjoyed much recent success, and applying state-of-the-art model learning methods to controls is an exciting prospect. However, there is a strong reluctance to use these methods on safety-critical systems, which have constraints on safety, stability, and real-time performance. We propose a framework which satisfies these constraints while allowing the use of deep neural networks ... |
Online LiDAR-SLAM for Legged Robots with Robust Registration and Deep-Learned Loop Closure | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196769/ | [
"Milad Ramezani",
"Georgi Tinchev",
"Egor Iuganov",
"Maurice Fallon",
"Milad Ramezani",
"Georgi Tinchev",
"Egor Iuganov",
"Maurice Fallon"
] | In this paper, we present a 3D factor-graph LiDAR-SLAM system which incorporates a state-of-the-art deeply learned feature-based loop closure detector to enable a legged robot to localize and map in industrial environments. Point clouds are accumulated using an inertial-kinematic state estimator before being aligned using ICP registration. To close loops we use a loop proposal mechanism which matc... |
Voxel Map for Visual SLAM | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197357/ | [
"Manasi Muglikar",
"Zichao Zhang",
"Davide Scaramuzza",
"Manasi Muglikar",
"Zichao Zhang",
"Davide Scaramuzza"
] | In modern visual SLAM systems, it is a standard practice to retrieve potential candidate map points from overlapping keyframes for further feature matching or direct tracking. In this work, we argue that keyframes are not the optimal choice for this task, due to several inherent limitations, such as weak geometric reasoning and poor scalability. We propose a voxel-map representation to efficiently... |
Adversarial Skill Networks: Unsupervised Robot Skill Learning from Video | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196582/ | [
"Oier Mees",
"Markus Merklinger",
"Gabriel Kalweit",
"Wolfram Burgard",
"Oier Mees",
"Markus Merklinger",
"Gabriel Kalweit",
"Wolfram Burgard"
] | Key challenges for the deployment of reinforcement learning (RL) agents in the real world are the discovery, representation and reuse of skills in the absence of a reward function. To this end, we propose a novel approach to learn a task-agnostic skill embedding space from unlabeled multi-view videos. Our method learns a general skill embedding independently from the task context by using an adver... |
Event-Based Angular Velocity Regression with Spiking Networks | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197133/ | [
"Mathias Gehrig",
"Sumit Bam Shrestha",
"Daniel Mouritzen",
"Davide Scaramuzza",
"Mathias Gehrig",
"Sumit Bam Shrestha",
"Daniel Mouritzen",
"Davide Scaramuzza"
] | Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) are bio-inspired networks that process information conveyed as temporal spikes rather than numeric values. An example of a sensor providing such data is the event-camera. It only produces an event when a pixel reports a significant brightness change. Similarly, the spiking neuron of an SNN only produces a spike whenever a significant number of spikes occur within a s... |
Visual Odometry Revisited: What Should Be Learnt? | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197374/ | [
"Huangying Zhan",
"Chamara Saroj Weerasekera",
"Jia-Wang Bian",
"Ian Reid",
"Huangying Zhan",
"Chamara Saroj Weerasekera",
"Jia-Wang Bian",
"Ian Reid"
] | In this work we present a monocular visual odometry (VO) algorithm which leverages geometry-based methods and deep learning. Most existing VO/SLAM systems with superior performance are based on geometry and have to be carefully designed for different application scenarios. Moreover, most monocular systems suffer from scale-drift issue. Some recent deep learning works learn VO in an end-to-end mann... |
3D Scene Geometry-Aware Constraint for Camera Localization with Deep Learning | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196940/ | [
"Mi Tian",
"Qiong Nie",
"Hao Shen",
"Mi Tian",
"Qiong Nie",
"Hao Shen"
] | Camera localization is a fundamental and key component of autonomous driving vehicles and mobile robots to localize themselves globally for further environment perception, path planning and motion control. Recently end-to-end approaches based on convolutional neural network have been much studied to achieve or even exceed 3D-geometry based traditional methods. In this work, we propose a compact ne... |
ACDER: Augmented Curiosity-Driven Experience Replay | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197421/ | [
"Boyao Li",
"Tao Lu",
"Jiayi Li",
"Ning Lu",
"Yinghao Cai",
"Shuo Wang",
"Boyao Li",
"Tao Lu",
"Jiayi Li",
"Ning Lu",
"Yinghao Cai",
"Shuo Wang"
] | Exploration in environments with sparse feed-back remains a challenging research problem in reinforcement learning (RL). When the RL agent explores the environment randomly, it results in low exploration efficiency, especially in robotic manipulation tasks with high dimensional continuous state and action space. In this paper, we propose a novel method, called Augmented Curiosity-Driven Experience... |
TrueRMA: Learning Fast and Smooth Robot Trajectories with Recursive Midpoint Adaptations in Cartesian Space | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196711/ | [
"Jonas C. Kiemel",
"Pascal Meißner",
"Torsten Kröger",
"Jonas C. Kiemel",
"Pascal Meißner",
"Torsten Kröger"
] | We present TrueRMA, a data-efficient, model-free method to learn cost-optimized robot trajectories over a wide range of starting points and endpoints. The key idea is to calculate trajectory waypoints in Cartesian space by recursively predicting orthogonal adaptations relative to the midpoints of straight lines. We generate a differentiable path by adding circular blends around the waypoints, calc... |
Fog Robotics Algorithms for Distributed Motion Planning Using Lambda Serverless Computing | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196651/ | [
"Jeffrey Ichnowski",
"William Lee",
"Victor Murta",
"Samuel Paradis",
"Ron Alterovitz",
"Joseph E Gonzalez",
"Ion Stoica",
"Ken Goldberg",
"Jeffrey Ichnowski",
"William Lee",
"Victor Murta",
"Samuel Paradis",
"Ron Alterovitz",
"Joseph E Gonzalez",
"Ion Stoica",
"Ken Goldberg"
] | For robots using motion planning algorithms such as RRT and RRT*, the computational load can vary by orders of magnitude as the complexity of the local environment changes. To adaptively provide such computation, we propose Fog Robotics algorithms in which cloud-based serverless lambda computing provides parallel computation on demand. To use this parallelism, we propose novel motion planning algo... |
Exploration of 3D terrains using potential fields with elevation-based local distortions | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197577/ | [
"Renan Maffei",
"Marcos P. Souza",
"Mathias Mantelli",
"Diego Pittol",
"Mariana Kolberg",
"Vitor A. M. Jorge",
"Renan Maffei",
"Marcos P. Souza",
"Mathias Mantelli",
"Diego Pittol",
"Mariana Kolberg",
"Vitor A. M. Jorge"
] | Mobile robots can be used in numerous outdoor tasks such as patrolling, delivery and military applications. In order to deploy mobile robots in this kind of environment, where there are different challenges like slopes, elevations, or even holes, they should be able to detect such challenges and determine the best path to accomplish their tasks. In this paper, we are proposing an exploration appro... |
R3T: Rapidly-exploring Random Reachable Set Tree for Optimal Kinodynamic Planning of Nonlinear Hybrid Systems | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196802/ | [
"Albert Wu",
"Sadra Sadraddini",
"Russ Tedrake",
"Albert Wu",
"Sadra Sadraddini",
"Russ Tedrake"
] | We introduce R3T, a reachability-based variant of the rapidly-exploring random tree (RRT) algorithm that is suitable for (optimal) kinodynamic planning in nonlinear and hybrid systems. We developed tools to approximate reachable sets using polytopes and perform sampling-based planning with them. This method has a unique advantage in hybrid systems: different dynamic modes in the reachable set can ... |
DeepSemanticHPPC: Hypothesis-based Planning over Uncertain Semantic Point Clouds | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196828/ | [
"Yutao Han",
"Hubert Lin",
"Jacopo Banfi",
"Kavita Bala",
"Mark Campbell",
"Yutao Han",
"Hubert Lin",
"Jacopo Banfi",
"Kavita Bala",
"Mark Campbell"
] | Planning in unstructured environments is challenging - it relies on sensing, perception, scene reconstruction, and reasoning about various uncertainties. We propose DeepSemanticHPPC, a novel uncertainty-aware hypothesis-based planner for unstructured environments. Our algorithmic pipeline consists of: a deep Bayesian neural network which segments surfaces with uncertainty estimates; a flexible poi... |
Balancing Actuation and Computing Energy in Motion Planning | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197164/ | [
"Soumya Sudhakar",
"Sertac Karaman",
"Vivienne Sze",
"Soumya Sudhakar",
"Sertac Karaman",
"Vivienne Sze"
] | We study a novel class of motion planning problems, inspired by emerging low-energy robotic vehicles, such as insect-size flyers, chip-size satellites, and high-endurance autonomous blimps, for which the energy consumed by computing hardware during planning a path can be as large as the energy consumed by actuation hardware during the execution of the same path. We propose a new algorithm, called ... |
Posterior Sampling for Anytime Motion Planning on Graphs with Expensive-to-Evaluate Edges | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197014/ | [
"Brian Hou",
"Sanjiban Choudhury",
"Gilwoo Lee",
"Aditya Mandalika",
"Siddhartha S. Srinivasa",
"Brian Hou",
"Sanjiban Choudhury",
"Gilwoo Lee",
"Aditya Mandalika",
"Siddhartha S. Srinivasa"
] | Collision checking is a computational bottleneck in motion planning, requiring lazy algorithms that explicitly reason about when to perform this computation. Optimism in the face of collision uncertainty minimizes the number of checks before finding the shortest path. However, this may take a prohibitively long time to compute, with no other feasible paths discovered during this period. For many r... |
Upset Recovery Control for Quadrotors Subjected to a Complete Rotor Failure from Large Initial Disturbances | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197239/ | [
"Sihao Sun",
"Matthias Baert",
"Bram Strack van Schijndel",
"Coen de Visser",
"Sihao Sun",
"Matthias Baert",
"Bram Strack van Schijndel",
"Coen de Visser"
] | This study has developed a fault-tolerant controller that is able to recover a quadrotor from arbitrary initial orientations and angular velocities, despite the complete failure of a rotor. This cascaded control method includes a position/altitude controller, an almost-global convergence attitude controller, and a control allocation method based on quadratic programming. As a major novelty, a cons... |
Identification and evaluation of a force model for multirotor UAVs | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197317/ | [
"Alexandre Letalenet",
"Pascal Morin",
"Alexandre Letalenet",
"Pascal Morin"
] | This paper proposes a model identification method and evaluation of a force model for multirotor UAVs. The model incorporates propellers' aerodynamics derived from momentum and blade element theories, as well as aerodynamics of the UAV's structure and actuation dynamics. A two-steps identification approach of the model parameters is proposed. The model is identified and evaluated from outdoor expe... |
Preliminary Study of an Aerial Manipulator with Elastic Suspension | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196942/ | [
"Arda Yiğit",
"Gustave Grappe",
"Loïc Cuvillon",
"Sylvain Durand",
"Jacques Gangloff",
"Arda Yiğit",
"Gustave Grappe",
"Loïc Cuvillon",
"Sylvain Durand",
"Jacques Gangloff"
] | This paper presents a preliminary study of an Aerial Manipulator suspended by a spring to a robotic carrier. The suspended aerial manipulator is actuated by six pairs of contra-rotating propellers generating a 6-DoF wrench. Simulations show path following results using a computed torque (feedback linearization) control strategy. Active vibration canceling is validated experimentally on a first pro... |
Towards Low-Latency High-Bandwidth Control of Quadrotors using Event Cameras | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197530/ | [
"Rika Sugimoto Dimitrova",
"Mathias Gehrig",
"Dario Brescianini",
"Davide Scaramuzza",
"Rika Sugimoto Dimitrova",
"Mathias Gehrig",
"Dario Brescianini",
"Davide Scaramuzza"
] | Event cameras are a promising candidate to enable high speed vision-based control due to their low sensor latency and high temporal resolution. However, purely event-based feedback has yet to be used in the control of drones. In this work, a first step towards implementing low-latency high-bandwidth control of quadrotors using event cameras is taken. In particular, this paper addresses the problem... |
Perception-constrained and Motor-level Nonlinear MPC for both Underactuated and Tilted-propeller UAVS | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197281/ | [
"Martin Jacquet",
"Gianluca Corsini",
"Davide Bicego",
"Antonio Franchi",
"Martin Jacquet",
"Gianluca Corsini",
"Davide Bicego",
"Antonio Franchi"
] | In this paper, we present a Perception-constrained Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) framework for the real-time control of multi-rotor aerial vehicles. Our formulation considers both constraints from a perceptive sensor and realistic actuator limitations that are the rotor minimum and maximum speeds and accelerations. The formulation is meant to be generic and considers a large range of m... |
Coordinate-Free Dynamics and Differential Flatness of a Class of 6DOF Aerial Manipulators | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196705/ | [
"Jake Welde",
"Vijay Kumar",
"Jake Welde",
"Vijay Kumar"
] | In this work, we derive a coordinate-free formulation of the coupled dynamics of a class of 6DOF aerial manipulators consisting of an underactuated quadrotor equipped with a 2DOF articulated manipulator, and demonstrate that the system is differentially flat with respect to the end effector pose. In particular, we require the center of mass of the entire system to be fixed in the end effector fram... |
CMTS: A Conditional Multiple Trajectory Synthesizer for Generating Safety-Critical Driving Scenarios | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197145/ | [
"Wenhao Ding",
"Mengdi Xu",
"Ding Zhao",
"Wenhao Ding",
"Mengdi Xu",
"Ding Zhao"
] | Naturalistic driving trajectory generation is crucial for the development of autonomous driving algorithms. However, most of the data is collected in collision-free scenarios leading to the sparsity of the safety-critical cases. When considering safety, testing algorithms in near-miss scenarios that rarely show up in off-the-shelf datasets and are costly to accumulate is a vital part of the evalua... |
LiDAR Inertial Odometry Aided Robust LiDAR Localization System in Changing City Scenes | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196698/ | [
"Wendong Ding",
"Shenhua Hou",
"Hang Gao",
"Guowei Wan",
"Shiyu Song",
"Wendong Ding",
"Shenhua Hou",
"Hang Gao",
"Guowei Wan",
"Shiyu Song"
] | Environmental fluctuations pose crucial challenges to a localization system in autonomous driving. We present a robust LiDAR localization system that maintains its kinematic estimation in changing urban scenarios by using a dead reckoning solution implemented through a LiDAR inertial odometry. Our localization framework jointly uses information from complementary modalities such as global matching... |
Dynamic Interaction-Aware Scene Understanding for Reinforcement Learning in Autonomous Driving | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197086/ | [
"Maria Huegle",
"Gabriel Kalweit",
"Moritz Werling",
"Joschka Boedecker",
"Maria Huegle",
"Gabriel Kalweit",
"Moritz Werling",
"Joschka Boedecker"
] | The common pipeline in autonomous driving systems is highly modular and includes a perception component which extracts lists of surrounding objects and passes these lists to a high-level decision component. In this case, leveraging the benefits of deep reinforcement learning for high-level decision making requires special architectures to deal with multiple variable-length sequences of different o... |
Interacting Vehicle Trajectory Prediction with Convolutional Recurrent Neural Networks | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196807/ | [
"Saptarshi Mukherjee",
"Sen Wang",
"Andrew Wallace",
"Saptarshi Mukherjee",
"Sen Wang",
"Andrew Wallace"
] | Anticipating the future trajectories of surrounding vehicles is a crucial and challenging task in path planning for autonomy. We propose a novel Convolutional Long Short Term Memory (Conv-LSTM) based neural network architecture to predict the future positions of cars using several seconds of historical driving observations. This consists of three modules: 1) Interaction Learning to capture the eff... |
Navigation Command Matching for Vision-based Autonomous Driving | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196609/ | [
"Yuxin Pan",
"Jianru Xue",
"Pengfei Zhang",
"Wanli Ouyang",
"Jianwu Fang",
"Xingyu Chen",
"Yuxin Pan",
"Jianru Xue",
"Pengfei Zhang",
"Wanli Ouyang",
"Jianwu Fang",
"Xingyu Chen"
] | Learning an optimal policy for autonomous driving task to confront with complex environment is a long- studied challenge. Imitative reinforcement learning is accepted as a promising approach to learn a robust driving policy through expert demonstrations and interactions with environments. However, this model utilizes non-smooth rewards, which have a negative impact on matching between navigation c... |
GraphRQI: Classifying Driver Behaviors Using Graph Spectrums | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196751/ | [
"Rohan Chandra",
"Uttaran Bhattacharya",
"Trisha Mittal",
"Xiaoyu Li",
"Aniket Bera",
"Dinesh Manocha",
"Rohan Chandra",
"Uttaran Bhattacharya",
"Trisha Mittal",
"Xiaoyu Li",
"Aniket Bera",
"Dinesh Manocha"
] | We present a novel algorithm (GraphRQI) to identify driver behaviors from road-agent trajectories. Our approach assumes that the road-agents exhibit a range of driving traits, such as aggressive or conservative driving. Moreover, these traits affect the trajectories of nearby road-agents as well as the interactions between road-agents. We represent these inter-agent interactions using unweighted a... |
Kidnapped Radar: Topological Radar Localisation using Rotationally-Invariant Metric Learning | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196682/ | [
"Ştefan Săftescu",
"Matthew Gadd",
"Daniele De Martini",
"Dan Barnes",
"Paul Newman",
"Ştefan Săftescu",
"Matthew Gadd",
"Daniele De Martini",
"Dan Barnes",
"Paul Newman"
] | This paper presents a system for robust, large-scale topological localisation using Frequency-Modulated Continuous-Wave scanning radar which extends the state-of-the-art by an efficient, learning-based approach to handle radar data for localisation. We learn a metric space for embedding polar radar scans using CNN and NetVLAD architectures traditionally applied to the visual domain. However, we ta... |
Global visual localization in LiDAR-maps through shared 2D-3D embedding space | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196859/ | [
"D. Cattaneo",
"M. Vaghi",
"S. Fontana",
"A. L. Ballardini",
"D. G. Sorrenti",
"D. Cattaneo",
"M. Vaghi",
"S. Fontana",
"A. L. Ballardini",
"D. G. Sorrenti"
] | Global localization is an important and widely studied problem for many robotic applications. Place recognition approaches can be exploited to solve this task, e.g., in the autonomous driving field. While most vision-based approaches match an image w.r.t. an image database, global visual localization within LiDAR-maps remains fairly unexplored, even though the path toward high definition 3D maps, ... |
Unsupervised Learning Methods for Visual Place Recognition in Discretely and Continuously Changing Environments | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197044/ | [
"Stefan Schubert",
"Peer Neubert",
"Peter Protzel",
"Stefan Schubert",
"Peer Neubert",
"Peter Protzel"
] | Visual place recognition in changing environments is the problem of finding matchings between two sets of observations, a query set and a reference set, despite severe appearance changes. Recently, image comparison using CNNbased descriptors showed very promising results. However, the experiments in the literature typically assume a single distinctive condition within each set (e.g., reference ima... |
LOL: Lidar-only Odometry and Localization in 3D point cloud maps | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197450/ | [
"Dávid Rozenberszki",
"András L. Majdik",
"Dávid Rozenberszki",
"András L. Majdik"
] | In this paper we deal with the problem of odometry and localization for Lidar-equipped vehicles driving in urban environments, where a premade target map exists to localize against. In our problem formulation, to correct the accumulated drift of the Lidar-only odometry we apply a place recognition method to detect geometrically similar locations between the online 3D point cloud and the a priori o... |
Localising Faster: Efficient and precise lidar-based robot localisation in large-scale environments | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196708/ | [
"Li Sun",
"Daniel Adolfsson",
"Martin Magnusson",
"Henrik Andreasson",
"Ingmar Posner",
"Tom Duckett",
"Li Sun",
"Daniel Adolfsson",
"Martin Magnusson",
"Henrik Andreasson",
"Ingmar Posner",
"Tom Duckett"
] | This paper proposes a novel approach for global localisation of mobile robots in large-scale environments. Our method leverages learning-based localisation and filtering-based localisation, to localise the robot efficiently and precisely through seeding Monte Carlo Localisation (MCL) with a deeplearned distribution. In particular, a fast localisation system rapidly estimates the 6-DOF pose through... |
Set-membership state estimation by solving data association | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197039/ | [
"Simon Rohou",
"Benoît Desrochers",
"Luc Jaulin",
"Simon Rohou",
"Benoît Desrochers",
"Luc Jaulin"
] | This paper deals with the localization problem of a robot in an environment made of indistinguishable landmarks, and assuming the initial position of the vehicle is unknown. This scenario is typically encountered in underwater applications for which landmarks such as rocks all look alike. Furthermore, the position of the robot may be lost during a diving phase, which obliges us to consider unknown... |
A Linearly Constrained Nonparametric Framework for Imitation Learning | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196821/ | [
"Yanlong Huang",
"Darwin G. Caldwell",
"Yanlong Huang",
"Darwin G. Caldwell"
] | In recent years, a myriad of advanced results have been reported in the community of imitation learning, ranging from parametric to non-parametric, probabilistic to non-probabilistic and Bayesian to frequentist approaches. Meanwhile, ample applications (e.g., grasping tasks and humanrobot collaborations) further show the applicability of imitation learning in a wide range of domains. While numerou... |
An Energy-based Approach to Ensure the Stability of Learned Dynamical Systems | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196978/ | [
"Matteo Saveriano",
"Matteo Saveriano"
] | Non-linear dynamical systems represent a compact, flexible, and robust tool for reactive motion generation. The effectiveness of dynamical systems relies on their ability to accurately represent stable motions. Several approaches have been proposed to learn stable and accurate motions from demonstration. Some approaches work by separating accuracy and stability into two learning problems, which in... |
IRIS: Implicit Reinforcement without Interaction at Scale for Learning Control from Offline Robot Manipulation Data | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196935/ | [
"Ajay Mandlekar",
"Fabio Ramos",
"Byron Boots",
"Silvio Savarese",
"Li Fei-Fei",
"Animesh Garg",
"Dieter Fox",
"Ajay Mandlekar",
"Fabio Ramos",
"Byron Boots",
"Silvio Savarese",
"Li Fei-Fei",
"Animesh Garg",
"Dieter Fox"
] | Learning from offline task demonstrations is a problem of great interest in robotics. For simple short-horizon manipulation tasks with modest variation in task instances, offline learning from a small set of demonstrations can produce controllers that successfully solve the task. However, leveraging a fixed batch of data can be problematic for larger datasets and longer-horizon tasks with greater ... |
Geometry-aware Dynamic Movement Primitives | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196952/ | [
"Fares J. Abu-Dakka",
"Ville Kyrki",
"Fares J. Abu-Dakka",
"Ville Kyrki"
] | In many robot control problems, factors such as stiffness and damping matrices and manipulability ellipsoids are naturally represented as symmetric positive definite (SPD) matrices, which capture the specific geometric characteristics of those factors. Typical learned skill models such as dynamic movement primitives (DMPs) can not, however, be directly employed with quantities expressed as SPD mat... |
Learning a Pile Loading Controller from Demonstrations | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196907/ | [
"Wenyan Yang",
"Nataliya Strokina",
"Nikolay Serbenyuk",
"Reza Ghabcheloo",
"Joni Kämäräinen",
"Wenyan Yang",
"Nataliya Strokina",
"Nikolay Serbenyuk",
"Reza Ghabcheloo",
"Joni Kämäräinen"
] | This work introduces a learning-based pile loading controller for autonomous robotic wheel loaders. Controller parameters are learnt from a small number of demonstrations for which low level sensor (boom angle, bucket angle and hydrostatic driving pressure), egocentric video frames and control signals are recorded. Application specific deep visual features are learnt from demonstrations using a Si... |
Learning Navigation Costs from Demonstration in Partially Observable Environments | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197199/ | [
"Tianyu Wang",
"Vikas Dhiman",
"Nikolay Atanasov",
"Tianyu Wang",
"Vikas Dhiman",
"Nikolay Atanasov"
] | This paper focuses on inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) to enable safe and efficient autonomous navigation in unknown partially observable environments. The objective is to infer a cost function that explains expert-demonstrated navigation behavior while relying only on the observations and state-control trajectory used by the expert. We develop a cost function representation composed of two pa... |
Towards Bimanual Vein Cannulation: Preliminary Study of a Bimanual Robotic System With a Dual Force Constraint Controller | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196889/ | [
"Changyan He",
"Ali Ebrahimi",
"Emily Yang",
"Muller Urias",
"Yang Yang",
"Peter Gehlbach",
"Iulian Iordachita",
"Changyan He",
"Ali Ebrahimi",
"Emily Yang",
"Muller Urias",
"Yang Yang",
"Peter Gehlbach",
"Iulian Iordachita"
] | Retinal vein cannulation is a promising approach for treating retinal vein occlusion that involves injecting medicine into the occluded vessel to dissolve the clot. The approach remains largely unexploited clinically due to surgeon limitations in detecting interaction forces between surgical tools and retinal tissue. In this paper, a dual force constraint controller for robot-assisted retinal surg... |
Evaluation of a combined grip of pinch and power grips in manipulating a master manipulator | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196547/ | [
"Solmon Jeong",
"Kotaro Tadano",
"Solmon Jeong",
"Kotaro Tadano"
] | In conventional robotic surgery, the manipulating methods exhibit limitations that are strongly related to the advantages and disadvantages of a pinch grip and power grip. The context of this study is focused on the introduction of a combined grip to compensate for such restraints. In particular, this study proposed the combined-grip-handle scheme on a master manipulator. In this framework, the po... |
Contact Stability Analysis of Magnetically-Actuated Robotic Catheter Under Surface Motion | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196951/ | [
"Ran Hao",
"Tipakorn Greigarn",
"M. Cenk Çavuşoğlu",
"Ran Hao",
"Tipakorn Greigarn",
"M. Cenk Çavuşoğlu"
] | Contact force quality is one of the most critical factors for safe and effective lesion formation during cardiac ablation. The contact force and contact stability plays important roles in determining the lesion size and creating a gap-free lesion. In this paper, the contact stability of a novel magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-actuated robotic catheter under tissue surface motion is studied. The r... |
Fast and accurate intracorporeal targeting through an anatomical orifice exhibiting unknown behavior | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196950/ | [
"Rémi Chalard",
"David Reversat",
"Guillaume Morel",
"Marie-Aude Vitrani",
"Rémi Chalard",
"David Reversat",
"Guillaume Morel",
"Marie-Aude Vitrani"
] | Surgery may involve precise instrument tip positioning in a minimally invasive way. During these operations, the instrument is inserted in the body through an orifice. The movements of the instrument are constrained by interaction forces arising at the orifice level. The physical constraints may drastically vary depending on the patient’s anatomy. This introduces uncertainties that challenge the p... |
Robotic Swarm Control for Precise and On-Demand Embolization | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197009/ | [
"Mengxi Luo",
"Junhui Law",
"Xian Wang",
"Liming Xin",
"Guanqiao Shan",
"Mitesh Badiwala",
"Xi Huang",
"Yu Sun",
"Mengxi Luo",
"Junhui Law",
"Xian Wang",
"Liming Xin",
"Guanqiao Shan",
"Mitesh Badiwala",
"Xi Huang",
"Yu Sun"
] | Existing approaches for robotic control of magnetic swarms are not capable of generating magnetic aggregates precisely in an arbitrarily specified target region in a fluidic flow environment. Such a swarm control capability is demanded by medical applications such as clinical embolization (i.e., localized clogging of blood vessels). This paper presents a new magnetic swarm control strategy to gene... |
Bilateral Teleoperation Control of a Redundant Manipulator with an RCM Kinematic Constraint | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197267/ | [
"Hang Su",
"Yunus Schmirander",
"Zhijun Li",
"Xuanyi Zhou",
"Giancarlo Ferrigno",
"Elena De Momi",
"Hang Su",
"Yunus Schmirander",
"Zhijun Li",
"Xuanyi Zhou",
"Giancarlo Ferrigno",
"Elena De Momi"
] | In this paper, a bilateral teleoperation control of a serial robot manipulator, which guarantees a Remote Center of Motion (RCM) constraint in its kinematic level, is developed. A two-layered approach based on the energy tank model is proposed to achieve haptic feedback on the end effector with a pedal switch. The redundancy of the manipulator is exploited to maintain the RCM constraint using the ... |
From Bipedal Walking to Quadrupedal Locomotion: Full-Body Dynamics Decomposition for Rapid Gait Generation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196841/ | [
"Wen-Loong Ma",
"Aaron D. Ames",
"Wen-Loong Ma",
"Aaron D. Ames"
] | This paper systematically decomposes a quadrupedal robot into bipeds to rapidly generate walking gaits and then recomposes these gaits to obtain quadrupedal locomotion. We begin by decomposing the full-order, nonlinear and hybrid dynamics of a three-dimensional quadrupedal robot, including its continuous and discrete dynamics, into two bipedal systems that are subject to external forces. Using the... |
Posture Control for a Low-Cost Commercially-Available Hexapod Robot | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197147/ | [
"Mayur Tikam",
"Daniel Withey",
"Nicolaas J. Theron",
"Mayur Tikam",
"Daniel Withey",
"Nicolaas J. Theron"
] | Posture control for legged robots has been widely developed on custom-designed robotic platforms, with little work being done on commercially-available robots despite their potential as low-cost research platforms. This paper presents the implementation of a Walking Posture Control system on a commercially-available hexapod robot which utilizes low-cost joint actuators without torque control capab... |
Collaborative Multi-Robot Localization in Natural Terrain | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197576/ | [
"Adam Wiktor",
"Stephen Rock",
"Adam Wiktor",
"Stephen Rock"
] | This paper presents a novel filter architecture that allows a team of vehicles to collaboratively localize using Terrain Relative Navigation (TRN). The work explores several causes of measurement correlation that preclude the use of traditional estimators, and proposes an estimator structure that eliminates one source of measurement correlation while properly incorporating others through the use o... |
Multi-Robot Control Using Coverage Over Time-Varying Non-Convex Domains | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196630/ | [
"Xiaotian Xu",
"Yancy Diaz-Mercado",
"Xiaotian Xu",
"Yancy Diaz-Mercado"
] | This paper addresses the problem of a domain becoming non-convex while using coverage control of a multirobot system over time-varying domains. When the domain moves around in the workspace, its motion and the presence of obstacles might cause it to deform into some non-convex shape, and the robot team should act in a coordinating manner to maintain coverage. The proposed solution is based on a fr... |
Efficient Large-Scale Multi-Drone Delivery Using Transit Networks | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197313/ | [
"Shushman Choudhury",
"Kiril Solovey",
"Mykel J. Kochenderfer",
"Marco Pavone",
"Shushman Choudhury",
"Kiril Solovey",
"Mykel J. Kochenderfer",
"Marco Pavone"
] | We consider the problem of controlling a large fleet of drones to deliver packages simultaneously across broad urban areas. To conserve energy, drones hop between public transit vehicles (e.g., buses and trams). We design a comprehensive algorithmic framework that strives to minimize the maximum time to complete any delivery. We address the multifaceted complexity of the problem through a two-laye... |
Resilience in multi-robot target tracking through reconfiguration | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196961/ | [
"Ragesh K. Ramachandran",
"Nicole Fronda",
"Gaurav S. Sukhatme",
"Ragesh K. Ramachandran",
"Nicole Fronda",
"Gaurav S. Sukhatme"
] | We address the problem of maintaining resource availability in a networked multi-robot system performing distributed target tracking. In our model, robots are equipped with sensing and computational resources enabling them to track a target's position using a Distributed Kalman Filter (DKF). We use the trace of each robot's sensor measurement noise covariance matrix as a measure of sensing quality... |
Teleoperation of Multi-Robot Systems to Relax Topological Constraints | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197254/ | [
"Lorenzo Sabattini",
"Beatrice Capelli",
"Cesare Fantuzzi",
"Cristian Secchi",
"Lorenzo Sabattini",
"Beatrice Capelli",
"Cesare Fantuzzi",
"Cristian Secchi"
] | Multi-robot systems are able to achieve common objectives exchanging information among each other. This is possible exploiting a communication structure, usually modeled as a graph, whose topological properties (such as connectivity) are very relevant in the overall performance of the multirobot system. When considering mobile robots, such properties can change over time: robots are then controlle... |
Eciton robotica: Design and Algorithms for an Adaptive Self-Assembling Soft Robot Collective | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196565/ | [
"Melinda Malley",
"Bahar Haghighat",
"Lucie Houel",
"Radhika Nagpal",
"Melinda Malley",
"Bahar Haghighat",
"Lucie Houel",
"Radhika Nagpal"
] | Social insects successfully create bridges, rafts, nests and other structures out of their own bodies and do so with no centralized control system, simply by following local rules. For example, while traversing rough terrain, army ants (genus Eciton) build bridges which grow and dissolve in response to local traffic. Because these self-assembled structures incorporate smart, flexible materials (i.... |
Stable Tool-Use with Flexible Musculoskeletal Hands by Learning the Predictive Model of Sensor State Transition | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197188/ | [
"Kento Kawaharazuka",
"Kei Tsuzuki",
"Moritaka Onitsuka",
"Yuki Asano",
"Kei Okada",
"Koji Kawasaki",
"Masayuki Inaba",
"Kento Kawaharazuka",
"Kei Tsuzuki",
"Moritaka Onitsuka",
"Yuki Asano",
"Kei Okada",
"Koji Kawasaki",
"Masayuki Inaba"
] | The flexible under-actuated musculoskeletal hand is superior in its adaptability and impact resistance. On the other hand, since the relationship between sensors and actuators cannot be uniquely determined, almost all its controls are based on feedforward controls. When grasping and using a tool, the contact state of the hand gradually changes due to the inertia of the tool or impact of action, an... |
Learning to Transfer Dynamic Models of Underactuated Soft Robotic Hands | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197300/ | [
"Liam Schramm",
"Avishai Sintov",
"Abdeslam Boularias",
"Liam Schramm",
"Avishai Sintov",
"Abdeslam Boularias"
] | Transfer learning is a popular approach to bypassing data limitations in one domain by leveraging data from another domain. This is especially useful in robotics, as it allows practitioners to reduce data collection with physical robots, which can be time-consuming and cause wear and tear. The most common way of doing this with neural networks is to take an existing neural network, and simply trai... |
Periodic movement learning in a soft-robotic arm | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197035/ | [
"Paris Oikonomou",
"Mehdi Khamassi",
"Costas S. Tzafestas",
"Paris Oikonomou",
"Mehdi Khamassi",
"Costas S. Tzafestas"
] | In this paper we introduce a novel technique that aims to dynamically control a modular bio-inspired soft-robotic arm in order to perform cyclic rhythmic patterns. Oscillatory signals are produced at the actuator's level by a central pattern generator (CPG), resulting in the generation of a periodic motion by the robot's end-effector. The proposed controller is based on a model-free neurodynamic s... |
Mechanism and Model of a Soft Robot for Head Stabilization in Cancer Radiation Therapy | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197007/ | [
"Olalekan Ogunmolu",
"Xinmin Liu",
"Nicholas Gans",
"Rodney D. Wiersma",
"Olalekan Ogunmolu",
"Xinmin Liu",
"Nicholas Gans",
"Rodney D. Wiersma"
] | We present a parallel robot mechanism and the constitutive laws that govern the deformation of its constituent soft actuators. Our ultimate goal is the real-time motion-correction of a patient's head deviation from a target pose where the soft actuators control the position of the patient's cranial region on a treatment machine. We describe the mechanism, derive the stress-strain constitutive laws... |
Learning Precise 3D Manipulation from Multiple Uncalibrated Cameras | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197181/ | [
"Iretiayo Akinola",
"Jacob Varley",
"Dmitry Kalashnikov",
"Iretiayo Akinola",
"Jacob Varley",
"Dmitry Kalashnikov"
] | In this work, we present an effective multi-view approach to closed-loop end-to-end learning of precise manipulation tasks that are 3D in nature. Our method learns to accomplish these tasks using multiple statically placed but uncalibrated RGB camera views without building an explicit 3D representation such as a pointcloud or voxel grid. This multi-camera approach achieves superior task performanc... |
Surfing on an uncertain edge: Precision cutting of soft tissue using torque-based medium classification | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196623/ | [
"Artūras Straižys",
"Michael Burke",
"Subramanian Ramamoorthy",
"Artūras Straižys",
"Michael Burke",
"Subramanian Ramamoorthy"
] | Precision cutting of soft-tissue remains a challenging problem in robotics, due to the complex and unpredictable mechanical behaviour of tissue under manipulation. Here, we consider the challenge of cutting along the boundary between two soft mediums, a problem that is made extremely difficult due to visibility constraints, which means that the precise location of the cutting trajectory is typical... |
Dynamic Cloth Manipulation with Deep Reinforcement Learning | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196659/ | [
"Rishabh Jangir",
"Guillem Alenyà",
"Carme Torras",
"Rishabh Jangir",
"Guillem Alenyà",
"Carme Torras"
] | In this paper we present a Deep Reinforcement Learning approach to solve dynamic cloth manipulation tasks. Differing from the case of rigid objects, we stress that the followed trajectory (including speed and acceleration) has a decisive influence on the final state of cloth, which can greatly vary even if the positions reached by the grasped points are the same. We explore how goal positions for ... |
Learning to combine primitive skills: A step towards versatile robotic manipulation § | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196619/ | [
"Robin Strudel",
"Alexander Pashevich",
"Igor Kalevatykh",
"Ivan Laptev",
"Josef Sivic",
"Cordelia Schmid",
"Robin Strudel",
"Alexander Pashevich",
"Igor Kalevatykh",
"Ivan Laptev",
"Josef Sivic",
"Cordelia Schmid"
] | Manipulation tasks such as preparing a meal or assembling furniture remain highly challenging for robotics and vision. Traditional task and motion planning (TAMP) methods can solve complex tasks but require full state observability and are not adapted to dynamic scene changes. Recent learning methods can operate directly on visual inputs but typically require many demonstrations and/or task-specif... |
Learning Affordance Space in Physical World for Vision-based Robotic Object Manipulation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196783/ | [
"Huadong Wu",
"Zhanpeng Zhang",
"Hui Cheng",
"Kai Yang",
"Jiaming Liu",
"Ziying Guo",
"Huadong Wu",
"Zhanpeng Zhang",
"Hui Cheng",
"Kai Yang",
"Jiaming Liu",
"Ziying Guo"
] | What is a proper representation for objects in manipulation? What would human try to perceive when manipulating a new object in a new environment? In fact, instead of focusing on the texture and illumination, human can infer the "affordance" [36] of the objects from vision. Here "affordance" describes the object's intrinsic property that affords a particular type of manipulation. In this work, we ... |
Observability Analysis of Flight State Estimation for UAVs and Experimental Validation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196635/ | [
"Peng Huang",
"Heinrich Meyr",
"Meik Dörpinghaus",
"Gerhard Fettweis",
"Peng Huang",
"Heinrich Meyr",
"Meik Dörpinghaus",
"Gerhard Fettweis"
] | UAVs require reliable, cost-efficient onboard flight state estimation that achieves high accuracy and robustness to perturbation. We analyze a multi-sensor extended Kalman filter (EKF) based on the work by Leutenegger. The EKF uses measurements from a MEMS-based inertial system, static and dynamic pressure sensors as well as GPS. As opposed to other implementations we do not use a magnetic sensor ... |
OpenVINS: A Research Platform for Visual-Inertial Estimation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196524/ | [
"Patrick Geneva",
"Kevin Eckenhoff",
"Woosik Lee",
"Yulin Yang",
"Guoquan Huang",
"Patrick Geneva",
"Kevin Eckenhoff",
"Woosik Lee",
"Yulin Yang",
"Guoquan Huang"
] | In this paper, we present an open platform, termed OpenVINS, for visual-inertial estimation research for both the academic community and practitioners from industry. The open sourced codebase provides a foundation for researchers and engineers to quickly start developing new capabilities for their visual-inertial systems. This codebase has out of the box support for commonly desired visual-inertia... |
Decentralized Collaborative State Estimation for Aided Inertial Navigation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197178/ | [
"Roland Jung",
"Christian Brommer",
"Stephan Weiss",
"Roland Jung",
"Christian Brommer",
"Stephan Weiss"
] | In this paper, we present a Quaternion-based Error-State Extended Kalman Filter (Q-ESEKF) based on IMU propagation with an extension for Collaborative State Estimation (CSE) and a communication complexity of O(1) (in terms of required communication links). Our approach combines a versatile filter formulation with the concept of CSE, allowing independent state estimation on each of the agents and a... |
Analytic Combined IMU Integration (ACI2) For Visual Inertial Navigation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197280/ | [
"Yulin Yang",
"Benzun Pious Wisely Babu",
"Chuchu Chen",
"Guoquan Huang",
"Liu Ren",
"Yulin Yang",
"Benzun Pious Wisely Babu",
"Chuchu Chen",
"Guoquan Huang",
"Liu Ren"
] | Batch optimization based inertial measurement unit (IMU) and visual sensor fusion enables high rate localization for many robotic tasks. However, it remains a challenge to ensure that the batch optimization is computationally efficient while being consistent for high rate IMU measurements without marginalization. In this paper, we derive inspiration from maximum likelihood estimation with partial-... |
Second-order Kinematics for Floating-base Robots using the Redundant Acceleration Feedback of an Artificial Sensory Skin | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197169/ | [
"Quentin Leboutet",
"J. Rogelio Guadarrama-Olvera",
"Florian Bergner",
"Gordon Cheng",
"Quentin Leboutet",
"J. Rogelio Guadarrama-Olvera",
"Florian Bergner",
"Gordon Cheng"
] | In this work, we propose a new estimation method for second-order kinematics for floating-base robots, based on highly redundant distributed inertial feedback. The linear acceleration of each robot link is measured at multiple points using a multimodal, self-configuring and self-calibrating artificial skin. The proposed algorithm is two-fold: i) the skin acceleration data is fused at the link leve... |
Clock-based time synchronization for an event-based camera dataset acquisition platform | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197303/ | [
"Vitalijs Osadcuks",
"Mihails Pudzs",
"Andrejs Zujevs",
"Aldis Pecka",
"Arturs Ardavs",
"Vitalijs Osadcuks",
"Mihails Pudzs",
"Andrejs Zujevs",
"Aldis Pecka",
"Arturs Ardavs"
] | The Dynamic Visual Sensor is considered to be a next-generation vision sensor. Since event-based vision is in its early stage of development, a small number of datasets has been created during the last decade. Dataset creation is motivated by the need for real data from one or many sensors. Temporal accuracy of data in such datasets is crucially important since the events have high temporal resolu... |
Model Predictive Impedance Control | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196969/ | [
"Maciej Bednarczyk",
"Hassan Omran",
"Bernard Bayle",
"Maciej Bednarczyk",
"Hassan Omran",
"Bernard Bayle"
] | Robots are more and more often designed in order to perform tasks in synergy with human operators. In this context, a current research focus for collaborative robotics lies in the design of high-performance control solutions, which ensure security in spite of unmodeled external forces. The present work provides a method based on Model Predictive Control (MPC) to allow compliant behavior when inter... |
Kinematic Modeling and Compliance Modulation of Redundant Manipulators Under Bracing Constraints | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197387/ | [
"Garrison L.H. Johnston",
"Andrew L. Orekhov",
"Nabil Simaan",
"Garrison L.H. Johnston",
"Andrew L. Orekhov",
"Nabil Simaan"
] | Collaborative robots should ideally use low torque actuators for passive safety reasons. However, some applications require these collaborative robots to reach deep into confined spaces while assisting a human operator in physically demanding tasks. In this paper, we consider the use of in-situ collaborative robots (ISCRs) that balance the conflicting demands of passive safety dictating low torque... |
Successive Stiffness Increment and Time Domain Passivity Approach for Stable and High Bandwidth Control of Series Elastic Actuator | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196995/ | [
"ChanIl Lee",
"Do-Hyeong Kim",
"Harsimran Singh",
"Jee-Hwan Ryu",
"ChanIl Lee",
"Do-Hyeong Kim",
"Harsimran Singh",
"Jee-Hwan Ryu"
] | For safe human-robot interaction, various type of flexible manipulators have been developed. Especially series elastic actuator (SEA) based manipulators have been getting huge attention since the elastic element of SEA prevents people from injury when undesirable collision happens. Moreover, it improves system durability by absorbing impact force, which could damage actuators. However, the elastic... |
Arm-hand motion-force coordination for physical interactions with non-flat surfaces using dynamical systems: Toward compliant robotic massage | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196593/ | [
"Mahdi Khoramshahi",
"Gustav Henriks",
"Aileen Naef",
"Seyed Sina Mirrazavi Salehian",
"Joonyoung Kim",
"Aude Billard",
"Mahdi Khoramshahi",
"Gustav Henriks",
"Aileen Naef",
"Seyed Sina Mirrazavi Salehian",
"Joonyoung Kim",
"Aude Billard"
] | Many manipulation tasks require coordinated motions for arm and fingers. Complexity increases when the task requires to control for the force at contact against a non-flat surface; This becomes even more challenging when this contact is done on a human. All these challenges are regrouped when one, for instance, massages a human limb. When massaging, the robotic arm is required to continuously adap... |
A Bio-Signal Enhanced Adaptive Impedance Controller for Lower Limb Exoskeleton | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196774/ | [
"Linqing Xia",
"Yachun Feng",
"Fan Chen",
"Xinyu Wu",
"Linqing Xia",
"Yachun Feng",
"Fan Chen",
"Xinyu Wu"
] | The problem of human-exoskeleton interaction with uncertain dynamical parameters remains an open-ended research area. It requires an elaborate control strategy design of the exoskeleton to accommodate complex and unpredictable human body movements. In this paper, we proposed a novel control approach for the lower limb exoskeleton to realize its task of assisting the human operator walking. The mai... |
Differentiable Mapping Networks: Learning Structured Map Representations for Sparse Visual Localization | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197452/ | [
"Peter Karkus",
"Anelia Angelova",
"Vincent Vanhoucke",
"Rico Jonschkowski",
"Peter Karkus",
"Anelia Angelova",
"Vincent Vanhoucke",
"Rico Jonschkowski"
] | Mapping and localization, preferably from a small number of observations, are fundamental tasks in robotics. We address these tasks by combining spatial structure (differentiable mapping) and end-to-end learning in a novel neural network architecture: the Differentiable Mapping Network (DMN). The DMN constructs a spatially structured view-embedding map and uses it for subsequent visual localizatio... |
Attentive Task-Net: Self Supervised Task-Attention Network for Imitation Learning using Video Demonstration | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197544/ | [
"Kartik Ramachandruni",
"Madhu Babu V.",
"Anima Majumder",
"Samrat Dutta",
"Swagat Kumar",
"Kartik Ramachandruni",
"Madhu Babu V.",
"Anima Majumder",
"Samrat Dutta",
"Swagat Kumar"
] | This paper proposes an end-to-end self-supervised feature representation network named Attentive Task-Net or AT-Net for video-based task imitation. The proposed AT-Net incorporates a novel multi-level spatial attention module to highlight spatial features corresponding to the intended task demonstrated by the expert. The neural connections in AT-Net ensure the relevant information in the demonstra... |
OpenLORIS-Object: A Robotic Vision Dataset and Benchmark for Lifelong Deep Learning | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196887/ | [
"Qi She",
"Fan Feng",
"Xinyue Hao",
"Qihan Yang",
"Chuanlin Lan",
"Vincenzo Lomonaco",
"Xuesong Shi",
"Zhengwei Wang",
"Yao Guo",
"Yimin Zhang",
"Fei Qiao",
"Rosa H. M. Chan",
"Qi She",
"Fan Feng",
"Xinyue Hao",
"Qihan Yang",
"Chuanlin Lan",
"Vincenzo Lomonaco",
"Xuesong Shi",
"Zhengwei Wang",
"Yao Guo",
"Yimin Zhang",
"Fei Qiao",
"Rosa H. M. Chan"
] | The recent breakthroughs in computer vision have benefited from the availability of large representative datasets (e.g. ImageNet and COCO) for training. Yet, robotic vision poses unique challenges for applying visual algorithms developed from these standard computer vision datasets due to their implicit assumption over non-varying distributions for a fixed set of tasks. Fully retraining models eac... |
Geometric Pretraining for Monocular Depth Estimation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196847/ | [
"Kaixuan Wang",
"Yao Chen",
"Hengkai Guo",
"Linfu Wen",
"Shaojie Shen",
"Kaixuan Wang",
"Yao Chen",
"Hengkai Guo",
"Linfu Wen",
"Shaojie Shen"
] | ImageNet-pretrained networks have been widely used in transfer learning for monocular depth estimation. These pretrained networks are trained with classification losses for which only semantic information is exploited while spatial information is ignored. However, both semantic and spatial information is important for per-pixel depth estimation. In this paper, we design a novel self-supervised geo... |
Joint Rotation Angle Sensing of Flexible Endoscopic Surgical Robots | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196549/ | [
"Wenjie Lai",
"Lin Cao",
"Phuoc Thien Phan",
"I-Wen Wu",
"Swee Chuan Tjin",
"Soo Jay Phee",
"Wenjie Lai",
"Lin Cao",
"Phuoc Thien Phan",
"I-Wen Wu",
"Swee Chuan Tjin",
"Soo Jay Phee"
] | Accurate motion control of surgical robots is critical for the efficiency and safety of both state-of-the-art teleoperated robotic surgery and the ultimate autonomous robotic surgery. However, fine motion control for a flexible endoscopic surgical robot is highly challenging because of the shape-dependent and speed-dependent motion hysteresis of tendon-sheath mechanisms (TSMs) in the long, tortuou... |
Soft, Round, High Resolution Tactile Fingertip Sensors for Dexterous Robotic Manipulation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196909/ | [
"Branden Romero",
"Filipe Veiga",
"Edward Adelson",
"Branden Romero",
"Filipe Veiga",
"Edward Adelson"
] | High resolution tactile sensors are often bulky and have shape profiles that make them awkward for use in manipulation. This becomes important when using such sensors as fingertips for dexterous multi-fingered hands, where boxy or planar fingertips limit the available set of smooth manipulation strategies. High resolution optical based sensors such as GelSight have until now been constrained to re... |
FootTile: a Rugged Foot Sensor for Force and Center of Pressure Sensing in Soft Terrain | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197466/ | [
"Felix Ruppert",
"Alexander Badri-Spröwitz",
"Felix Ruppert",
"Alexander Badri-Spröwitz"
] | In this paper, we present FootTile, a foot sensor for reaction force and center of pressure sensing in challenging terrain. We compare our sensor design to standard biomechanical devices, force plates and pressure plates. We show that FootTile can accurately estimate force and pressure distribution during legged locomotion. FootTile weighs 0.9 g, has a sampling rate of 330 Hz, a footprint of 10×10... |
Learning a Control Policy for Fall Prevention on an Assistive Walking Device | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196798/ | [
"Visak C.V. Kumar",
"Sehoon Ha",
"Gregory Sawicki",
"C. Karen Liu",
"Visak C.V. Kumar",
"Sehoon Ha",
"Gregory Sawicki",
"C. Karen Liu"
] | Fall prevention is one of the most important components in senior care. We present a technique to augment an assistive walking device with the ability to prevent falls. Given an existing walking device, our method develops a fall predictor and a recovery policy by utilizing the onboard sensors and actuators. The key component of our method is a robust human walking policy that models realistic hum... |
Assistive Force of a Belt-type Hip Assist Suit for Lifting the Swing Leg during Walking | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196788/ | [
"Shijie Guo",
"Qian Xiang",
"Kazunobu Hashimoto",
"Shanhai Jin",
"Shijie Guo",
"Qian Xiang",
"Kazunobu Hashimoto",
"Shanhai Jin"
] | This paper proposes a relatively simple function of assistive force for a belt-type hip assist suit developed by the authors' group. The function, which is inspired by the muscle force of the rectus femoris, contains only two parameters, the magnitude and a phase shift factor. Thus, it can reduce the amount of calculation in generating the desired assistive force during walking. Tests were perform... |
Soft Pneumatic System for Interface Pressure Regulation and Automated Hands-Free Donning in Robotic Prostheses | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197405/ | [
"Alexander B. Ambrose",
"Frank L. Hammond",
"Alexander B. Ambrose",
"Frank L. Hammond"
] | This paper discusses the design and preliminary evaluation of a soft pneumatic socket (SPS) with real-time pressure regulation and an automated underactuated donning mechanism (UDM). The ability to modulate the pressure at the human-socket interface of a prosthesis or wearable device to accommodate user's activities has the potential to make the user more comfortable. Furthermore, a hands-free, un... |
Automated detection of soleus concentric contraction in variable gait conditions for improved exosuit control | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197428/ | [
"Richard W. Nuckols",
"Krithika Swaminathan",
"Sangjun Lee",
"Louis Awad",
"Conor J. Walsh",
"Robert D. Howe",
"Richard W. Nuckols",
"Krithika Swaminathan",
"Sangjun Lee",
"Louis Awad",
"Conor J. Walsh",
"Robert D. Howe"
] | Exosuits can reduce metabolic demand and improve gait. Controllers explicitly derived from biological mechanisms that reflect the user's joint or muscle dynamics should in theory allow for individualized assistance and enable adaptation to changing gait. With the goal of developing an exosuit control strategy based on muscle power, we present an approach for estimating, at real time rates, when th... |
Soft Sensing Shirt for Shoulder Kinematics Estimation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196586/ | [
"Yichu Jin",
"Christina M. Glover",
"Haedo Cho",
"Oluwaseun A. Araromi",
"Moritz A. Graule",
"Na Li",
"Robert J. Wood",
"Conor J. Walsh",
"Yichu Jin",
"Christina M. Glover",
"Haedo Cho",
"Oluwaseun A. Araromi",
"Moritz A. Graule",
"Na Li",
"Robert J. Wood",
"Conor J. Walsh"
] | Soft strain sensors have been explored as an unobtrusive approach for wearable motion tracking. However, accurate tracking of multi degree-of-freedom (DOF) noncyclic joint movements remains a challenge. This paper presents a soft sensing shirt for tracking shoulder kinematics of both cyclic and random arm movements in 3 DOFs: adduction/abduction, horizontal flexion/extension, and internal/external... |
Motion Reasoning for Goal-Based Imitation Learning | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197172/ | [
"De-An Huang",
"Yu-Wei Chao",
"Chris Paxton",
"Xinke Deng",
"Li Fei-Fei",
"Juan Carlos Niebles",
"Animesh Garg",
"Dieter Fox",
"De-An Huang",
"Yu-Wei Chao",
"Chris Paxton",
"Xinke Deng",
"Li Fei-Fei",
"Juan Carlos Niebles",
"Animesh Garg",
"Dieter Fox"
] | We address goal-based imitation learning, where the aim is to output the symbolic goal from a third-person video demonstration. This enables the robot to plan for execution and reproduce the same goal in a completely different environment. The key challenge is that the goal of a video demonstration is often ambiguous at the level of semantic actions. The human demonstrators might unintentionally a... |
Flexible online adaptation of learning strategy using EEG-based reinforcement signals in real-world robotic applications | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197538/ | [
"Su Kyoung Kim",
"Elsa Andrea Kirchner",
"Frank Kirchner",
"Su Kyoung Kim",
"Elsa Andrea Kirchner",
"Frank Kirchner"
] | Flexible adaptation of learning strategy depending on online changes of the user's current intents have a high relevance in human-robot collaboration. In our previous study, we proposed an intrinsic interactive reinforcement learning approach for human-robot interaction, in which a robot learns his/her action strategy based on intrinsic human feedback that is generated in the human's brain as neur... |
Object-oriented Semantic Graph Based Natural Question Generation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196563/ | [
"Jiyoun Moon",
"Beom-Hee Lee",
"Jiyoun Moon",
"Beom-Hee Lee"
] | Generating a natural question can enable autonomous robots to propose problems according to their surroundings. However, recent studies on question generation rarely consider semantic graph mapping, which is widely used to understand environments. In this paper, we introduce a method to generate natural questions using object-oriented semantic graphs. First, a graph convolutional network extracts ... |
Towards Safe Human-Robot Collaboration Using Deep Reinforcement Learning | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196924/ | [
"Mohamed El-Shamouty",
"Xinyang Wu",
"Shanqi Yang",
"Marcel Albus",
"Marco F. Huber",
"Mohamed El-Shamouty",
"Xinyang Wu",
"Shanqi Yang",
"Marcel Albus",
"Marco F. Huber"
] | Safety in Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) is a bottleneck to HRC-productivity in industry. With robots being the main source of hazards, safety engineers use over-emphasized safety measures, and carry out lengthy and expensive risk assessment processes on each HRC-layout reconfiguration. Recent advances in deep Reinforcement Learning (RL) offer solutions to add intelligence and comprehensibility o... |
Deep compositional robotic planners that follow natural language commands | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197464/ | [
"Yen-Ling Kuo",
"Boris Katz",
"Andrei Barbu",
"Yen-Ling Kuo",
"Boris Katz",
"Andrei Barbu"
] | We demonstrate how a sampling-based robotic planner can be augmented to learn to understand a sequence of natural language commands in a continuous configuration space to move and manipulate objects. Our approach combines a deep network structured according to the parse of a complex command that includes objects, verbs, spatial relations, and attributes, with a sampling-based planner, RRT. A recur... |
Learning User Preferences from Corrections on State Lattices | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197040/ | [
"Nils Wilde",
"Dana Kulić",
"Stephen L. Smith",
"Nils Wilde",
"Dana Kulić",
"Stephen L. Smith"
] | Enabling a broader range of users to efficiently deploy autonomous mobile robots requires intuitive frameworks for specifying a robot's task and behaviour. We present a novel approach using learning from corrections (LfC), where a user is iteratively presented with a solution to a motion planning problem. Users might have preferences about parts of a robot's environment that are suitable for robot... |
Visual Servoing-based Navigation for Monitoring Row-Crop Fields | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197114/ | [
"Alireza Ahmadi",
"Lorenzo Nardi",
"Nived Chebrolu",
"Cyrill Stachniss",
"Alireza Ahmadi",
"Lorenzo Nardi",
"Nived Chebrolu",
"Cyrill Stachniss"
] | Autonomous navigation is a pre-requisite for field robots to carry out precision agriculture tasks. Typically, a robot has to navigate along a crop field multiple times during a season for monitoring the plants, for applying agrochemicals, or for performing targeted interventions. In this paper, we propose a visual-based navigation framework tailored to row-crop fields that exploits the regular cr... |
Optimal Routing Schedules for Robots Operating in Aisle-Structures | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197579/ | [
"Francesco Betti Sorbelli",
"Stefano Carpin",
"Federico Corò",
"Alfredo Navarra",
"Cristina M. Pinotti",
"Francesco Betti Sorbelli",
"Stefano Carpin",
"Federico Corò",
"Alfredo Navarra",
"Cristina M. Pinotti"
] | In this paper, we consider the Constant-cost Orienteering Problem (COP) where a robot, constrained by a limited travel budget, aims at selecting a path with the largest reward in an aisle-graph. The aisle-graph consists of a set of loosely connected rows where the robot can change lane only at either end, but not in the middle. Even when considering this special type of graphs, the orienteering pr... |
Time Optimal Motion Planning with ZMP Stability Constraint for Timber Manipulation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9196836/ | [
"Jiazhi Song",
"Inna Sharf",
"Jiazhi Song",
"Inna Sharf"
] | This paper presents a dynamic stability-constrained optimal motion planning algorithm developed for a timber harvesting machine working on rough terrain. First, the kinematics model of the machine, and the Zero Moment Point (ZMP) stability measure is presented. Then, an approach to simplify the model to gain insight and achieve a fast solution of the optimization problem is introduced. The perform... |
Push and Drag: An Active Obstacle Separation Method for Fruit Harvesting Robots | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9197469/ | [
"Ya Xiong",
"Yuanyue Ge",
"Pål Johan From",
"Ya Xiong",
"Yuanyue Ge",
"Pål Johan From"
] | Selectively picking a target fruit surrounded by obstacles is one of the major challenges for fruit harvesting robots. Different from traditional obstacle avoidance methods, this paper presents an active obstacle separation strategy that combines push and drag motions. The separation motion and trajectory are generated based on the 3D visual perception of the obstacle information around the target... |
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