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Safety Correction from Baseline: Towards the Risk-aware Policy in Robotics via Dual-agent Reinforcement Learning | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981831/ | [
"Linrui Zhang",
"Zichen Yan",
"Li Shen",
"Shoujie Li",
"Xueqian Wang",
"Dacheng Tao",
"Linrui Zhang",
"Zichen Yan",
"Li Shen",
"Shoujie Li",
"Xueqian Wang",
"Dacheng Tao"
] | Learning a risk-aware policy is essential but rather challenging in unstructured robotic tasks. Safe reinforcement learning methods open up new possibilities to tackle this problem. However, the conservative policy updates make it intractable to achieve sufficient exploration and desirable performance in complex, sample-expensive environments. In this paper, we propose a dual-agent safe reinforcem... |
Multi-Objective Policy Gradients with Topological Constraints | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982278/ | [
"Kyle Hollins Wray",
"Stas Tiomkin",
"Mykel J. Kochenderfer",
"Pieter Abbeel",
"Kyle Hollins Wray",
"Stas Tiomkin",
"Mykel J. Kochenderfer",
"Pieter Abbeel"
] | Multi-objective optimization models that encode ordered sequential constraints provide a solution to model various challenging problems including encoding preferences, modeling a curriculum, and enforcing measures of safety. A recently developed theory of topological Markov decision processes (TMDPs) captures this range of problems for the case of discrete states and actions. In this work, we exte... |
Backward Imitation and Forward Reinforcement Learning via Bi-directional Model Rollouts | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981869/ | [
"Yuxin Pan",
"Fangzhen Lin",
"Yuxin Pan",
"Fangzhen Lin"
] | Traditional model-based reinforcement learning (RL) methods generate forward rollout traces using the learnt dynamics model to reduce interactions with the real environment. The recent model-based RL method considers the way to learn a backward model that specifies the conditional probability of the previous state given the previous action and the current state to additionally generate backward ro... |
BIMRL: Brain Inspired Meta Reinforcement Learning | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981250/ | [
"Seyed Roozbeh Razavi Rohani",
"Saeed Hedayatian",
"Mahdieh Soleymani Baghshah",
"Seyed Roozbeh Razavi Rohani",
"Saeed Hedayatian",
"Mahdieh Soleymani Baghshah"
] | Sample efficiency has been a key issue in reinforcement learning (RL). An efficient agent must be able to leverage its prior experiences to quickly adapt to similar, but new tasks and situations. Meta-RL is one attempt at formalizing and ad-dressing this issue. Inspired by recent progress in meta-RL, we introduce BIMRL, a novel multi-layer architecture along with a novel brain-inspired memory modu... |
Coordination With Humans Via Strategy Matching | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982277/ | [
"Michelle Zhao",
"Reid Simmons",
"Henny Admoni",
"Michelle Zhao",
"Reid Simmons",
"Henny Admoni"
] | Human and robot partners increasingly need to work together to perform tasks as a team. Robots designed for such collaboration must reason about how their task-completion strategies interplay with the behavior and skills of their human team members as they coordinate on achieving joint goals. Our goal in this work is to develop a computational framework for robot adaptation to human partners in hu... |
DULA and DEBA: Differentiable Ergonomic Risk Models for Postural Assessment and Optimization in Ergonomically Intelligent pHRI | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981528/ | [
"Amir Yazdani",
"Roya Sabbagh Novin",
"Andrew Merryweather",
"Tucker Hermans",
"Amir Yazdani",
"Roya Sabbagh Novin",
"Andrew Merryweather",
"Tucker Hermans"
] | Ergonomics and human comfort are essential concerns in physical human-robot interaction applications. Defining an accurate and easy-to-use ergonomic assessment model stands as an important step in providing feedback for postural correction to improve operator health and comfort. Common practical methods in the area suffer from inaccurate ergonomics models in performing postural optimization. In or... |
Towards Inclusive HRI: Using Sim2Real to Address Underrepresentation in Emotion Expression Recognition | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982252/ | [
"Saba Akhyani",
"Mehryar Abbasi",
"Mo Chen",
"Angelica Lim",
"Saba Akhyani",
"Mehryar Abbasi",
"Mo Chen",
"Angelica Lim"
] | Robots and artificial agents that interact with humans should be able to do so without bias and inequity, but facial perception systems have notoriously been found to work more poorly for certain groups of people than others. In our work, we aim to build a system that can perceive humans in a more transparent and inclusive manner. Specifically, we focus on dynamic expressions on the human face, wh... |
Reasoning about Counterfactuals to Improve Human Inverse Reinforcement Learning | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982062/ | [
"Michael S. Lee",
"Henny Admoni",
"Reid Simmons",
"Michael S. Lee",
"Henny Admoni",
"Reid Simmons"
] | To collaborate well with robots, we must be able to understand their decision making. Humans naturally infer other agents' beliefs and desires by reasoning about their observable behavior in a way that resembles inverse reinforcement learning (IRL). Thus, robots can convey their beliefs and desires by providing demonstrations that are informative for a human learner's IRL. An informative demonstra... |
Proactive Robotic Assistance via Theory of Mind | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981627/ | [
"Maayan Shvo",
"Ruthrash Hari",
"Ziggy O'Reilly",
"Sophia Abolore",
"Sze-Yuh Nina Wang",
"Sheila A. McIlraith",
"Maayan Shvo",
"Ruthrash Hari",
"Ziggy O'Reilly",
"Sophia Abolore",
"Sze-Yuh Nina Wang",
"Sheila A. McIlraith"
] | Advanced social cognitive skills enhance the effectiveness of human-robot interactions. Research shows that an important precursor to the development of these abilities in humans is Theory of Mind (ToM) - the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and to others. In this work, we endow robots with ToM abilities and propose a ToM-based approach to proactive robotic assistance by appealing to ... |
A Novel Perceptive Robotic Cane with Haptic Navigation for Enabling Vision-Independent Participation in the Social Dynamics of Seat Choice | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981219/ | [
"Shivendra Agrawal",
"Mary Etta West",
"Bradley Hayes",
"Shivendra Agrawal",
"Mary Etta West",
"Bradley Hayes"
] | Goal-based navigation in public places is critical for independent mobility and for breaking barriers that exist for blind or visually impaired (BVI) people in a sight-centric society. Through this work we present a proof-of-concept system that autonomously leverages goal-based navigation assistance and perception to identify socially preferred seats and safely guide its user towards them in unkno... |
SESNO: Sample Efficient Social Navigation from Observation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981645/ | [
"Bobak H. Baghi",
"Abhisek Konar",
"Francois Hogan",
"Michael Jenkin",
"Gregory Dudek",
"Bobak H. Baghi",
"Abhisek Konar",
"Francois Hogan",
"Michael Jenkin",
"Gregory Dudek"
] | In this paper, we present the Sample Efficient Social Navigation from Observation (SESNO) algorithm that efficiently learns socially-compliant navigation policies from observations of human trajectories. SESNO is an inverse reinforcement learning (IRL)-based algorithm that learns from human trajectory observations without knowledge of their actions. We improve the sample-efficiency over previous I... |
Understanding Acoustic Patterns of Human Teachers Demonstrating Manipulation Tasks to Robots | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981053/ | [
"Akanksha Saran",
"Kush Desai",
"Mai Lee Chang",
"Rudolf Lioutikov",
"Andrea Thomaz",
"Scott Niekum",
"Akanksha Saran",
"Kush Desai",
"Mai Lee Chang",
"Rudolf Lioutikov",
"Andrea Thomaz",
"Scott Niekum"
] | Humans use audio signals in the form of spoken language or verbal reactions effectively when teaching new skills or tasks to other humans. While demonstrations allow humans to teach robots in a natural way, learning from trajectories alone does not leverage other available modalities including audio from human teachers. To effectively utilize audio cues accompanying human demonstrations, first it ... |
Optical flow-based branch segmentation for complex orchard environments | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982017/ | [
"Alexander You",
"Cindy Grimm",
"Joseph R. Davidson",
"Alexander You",
"Cindy Grimm",
"Joseph R. Davidson"
] | Machine vision is a critical subsystem for enabling robots to be able to perform a variety of tasks in orchard environments. However, orchards are highly visually complex environments, and computer vision algorithms operating in them must be able to contend with variable lighting conditions and background noise. Past work on enabling deep learning algorithms to operate in these environments has ty... |
Near Real-Time Vineyard Downy Mildew Detection and Severity Estimation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981404/ | [
"Ertai Liu",
"Kaitlin Gold",
"Lance Cadle-Davidson",
"David Combs",
"Yu Jiang",
"Ertai Liu",
"Kaitlin Gold",
"Lance Cadle-Davidson",
"David Combs",
"Yu Jiang"
] | The global grape and wine industry has been considerably impacted by diseases such as downy mildew (DM). Agricultural robots have demonstrated great potential to accurately and rapidly map DM infection for precision applications. Although the robots can autonomously acquire high-resolution images in the vineyard, data processing is mostly performed offline because of network infrastructure and onb... |
View Planning Using Discrete Optimization for 3D Reconstruction of Row Crops | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981209/ | [
"Athanasios Bacharis",
"Henry J. Nelson",
"Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos",
"Athanasios Bacharis",
"Henry J. Nelson",
"Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos"
] | In view planning, the position and orientation of the cameras have been a major contributing factor to the quality of the resulting 3D model. In applications such as precision agriculture, a dense and accurate reconstruction must be obtained quickly while the data is still actionable. Instead of using an arbitrarily large number of images taken from every possible position and orientation in order... |
BonnBot-I: A Precise Weed Management and Crop Monitoring Platform | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981304/ | [
"Alireza Ahmadi",
"Michael Halstead",
"Chris McCool",
"Alireza Ahmadi",
"Michael Halstead",
"Chris McCool"
] | Cultivation and weeding are two of the primary tasks performed by farmers today. A recent challenge for weeding is the desire to reduce herbicide and pesticide treatments while maintaining crop quality and quantity. In this paper we introduce BonnBot-I a precise weed management platform which can also performs field monitoring. Driven by crop monitoring approaches which can accurately locate and c... |
An Integrated Actuation-Perception Framework for Robotic Leaf Retrieval: Detection, Localization, and Cutting | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981118/ | [
"Merrick Campbell",
"Amel Dechemi",
"Konstantinos Karydis",
"Merrick Campbell",
"Amel Dechemi",
"Konstantinos Karydis"
] | Contemporary robots in precision agriculture focus primarily on automated harvesting or remote sensing to monitor crop health. Comparatively less work has been performed with respect to collecting physical leaf samples in the field and retaining them for further analysis. Typically, orchard growers manually collect sample leaves and utilize them for stem water potential measurements to analyze tre... |
Algorithm Design and Integration for a Robotic Apple Harvesting System | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981417/ | [
"Kaixiang Zhang",
"Kyle Lammers",
"Pengyu Chu",
"Nathan Dickinson",
"Zhaojian Li",
"Renfu Lu",
"Kaixiang Zhang",
"Kyle Lammers",
"Pengyu Chu",
"Nathan Dickinson",
"Zhaojian Li",
"Renfu Lu"
] | Due to labor shortage and rising labor cost for the apple industry, there is an urgent need for the development of robotic systems to efficiently and autonomously harvest apples. In this paper, we present a system overview and algorithm design of our recently developed robotic apple harvester prototype. Our robotic system is enabled by the close integration of several core modules, including visua... |
Predicting fruit-pick success using a grasp classifier trained on a physical proxy | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981716/ | [
"Alejandro Velasquez",
"Nigel Swenson",
"Miranda Cravetz",
"Cindy Grimm",
"Joseph R. Davidson",
"Alejandro Velasquez",
"Nigel Swenson",
"Miranda Cravetz",
"Cindy Grimm",
"Joseph R. Davidson"
] | Apple picking is a challenging manipulation task, but it is difficult to test solutions due to the limited window of time that apples are in season. Previous methods have built simulations of apple trees, but simulations rarely capture soft contact and deformation well, both of which are common in fruit picking. In this paper we present and validate a physical proxy that replicates the mechanics o... |
Beyond mAP: Towards practical object detection for weed spraying in precision agriculture | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982139/ | [
"Adrian Salazar-Gomez",
"Madeleine Darbyshire",
"Junfeng Gao",
"Elizabeth I Sklar",
"Simon Parsons",
"Adrian Salazar-Gomez",
"Madeleine Darbyshire",
"Junfeng Gao",
"Elizabeth I Sklar",
"Simon Parsons"
] | The evolution of smaller and more powerful GPUs over the last 2 decades has vastly increased the opportunity to apply robust deep learning-based machine vision approaches to real-time use cases in practical environments. One exciting application domain for such technologies is precision agriculture, where the ability to integrate on-board machine vision with data-driven actuation means that farmer... |
Audio-Visual Depth and Material Estimation for Robot Navigation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981549/ | [
"Justin Wilson",
"Nicholas Rewkowski",
"Ming C. Lin",
"Justin Wilson",
"Nicholas Rewkowski",
"Ming C. Lin"
] | Reflective and textureless surfaces such as windows, mirrors, and walls can be a challenge for scene reconstruction, due to depth discontinuities and holes. We propose an audio-visual method that uses the reflections of sound to aid in depth estimation and material classification for 3D scene reconstruction in robot navigation and AR/VR applications. The mobile phone prototype emits pulsed audio, ... |
Design of a low-cost passive acoustic monitoring system for animal localisation from calls | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981127/ | [
"Benjamin Yen",
"Jemima Prins",
"Gian Schmid",
"Yusuke Hioka",
"Susan Ellis",
"Stephen Marsland",
"Benjamin Yen",
"Jemima Prins",
"Gian Schmid",
"Yusuke Hioka",
"Susan Ellis",
"Stephen Marsland"
] | The field of bioacoustics is concerned with monitoring wild animals based on their vocalisations. Passive acoustic recorders are now commonly used to collect data of the soundscapes of our wild places. While the data they collect is extremely useful, the majority of the recorders use a single omnidirectional microphone, and thus cannot independently perform localisation of a calling animal. Locali... |
Spotforming by NMF Using Multiple Microphone Arrays | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981808/ | [
"Yasuhiro Kagimoto",
"Katsutoshi Itoyama",
"Kenji Nishida",
"Kazuhiro Nakadai",
"Yasuhiro Kagimoto",
"Katsutoshi Itoyama",
"Kenji Nishida",
"Kazuhiro Nakadai"
] | Sound source separation is a method to extract a target sound source from a mixture of various sound sources and noises. One of the typical sound source separation methods is beamforming, which can separate sound sources by direction based on the phase difference between channels from the recorded signal of a microphone array, a multi-channel recording system. However, beamforming is a direction-b... |
Noisy Agents: Self-supervised Exploration by Predicting Auditory Events | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981614/ | [
"Chuang Gan",
"Xiaoyu Chen",
"Phillip Isola",
"Antonio Torralba",
"Joshua B. Tenenbaum",
"Chuang Gan",
"Xiaoyu Chen",
"Phillip Isola",
"Antonio Torralba",
"Joshua B. Tenenbaum"
] | Humans integrate multiple sensory modalities (e.g., visual and audio) to build a causal understanding of the physical world. In this work, we propose a novel type of intrinsic motivation for Reinforcement Learning (RL) that encourages the agent to understand the causal effect of its actions through auditory event prediction. First, we allow the agent to collect a small amount of acoustic data and ... |
Direction-Aware Adaptive Online Neural Speech Enhancement with an Augmented Reality Headset in Real Noisy Conversational Environments | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981659/ | [
"Kouhei Sekiguchi",
"Aditya Arie Nugraha",
"Yicheng Du",
"Yoshiaki Bando",
"Mathieu Fontaine",
"Kazuyoshi Yoshii",
"Kouhei Sekiguchi",
"Aditya Arie Nugraha",
"Yicheng Du",
"Yoshiaki Bando",
"Mathieu Fontaine",
"Kazuyoshi Yoshii"
] | This paper describes the practical response- and performance-aware development of online speech enhancement for an augmented reality (AR) headset that helps a user understand conversations made in real noisy echoic environments (e.g., cocktail party). One may use a state-of-the-art blind source separation method called fast multichannel nonnegative matrix factorization (FastMNMF) that works well i... |
Object Surface Recognition using Microphone Array by Acoustic Standing Wave | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981386/ | [
"Tomoya Manabe",
"Rikuto Fukunaga",
"Kei Nakatsuma",
"Makoto Kumon",
"Tomoya Manabe",
"Rikuto Fukunaga",
"Kei Nakatsuma",
"Makoto Kumon"
] | This paper proposes a microphone array with a speaker to recognize the shape of the surface of the target object by using the standing wave between the transmitted and the reflected acoustic signals. Because the profile of the distance spectrum encodes both the distance to the target and the distance to the edges of the target's surface, this paper proposes to fuse distance spectra using a microph... |
Recognizing object surface material from impact sounds for robot manipulation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981578/ | [
"Mariella Dimiccoli",
"Shubhan Patni",
"Matej Hoffmann",
"Francesc Moreno-Noguer",
"Mariella Dimiccoli",
"Shubhan Patni",
"Matej Hoffmann",
"Francesc Moreno-Noguer"
] | We investigated the use of impact sounds generated during exploratory behaviors in a robotic manipulation setup as cues for predicting object surface material and for recognizing individual objects. We collected and make available the YCB-impact sounds dataset which includes over 3,000 impact sounds for the YCB set of everyday objects lying on a table. Impact sounds were generated in three modes: ... |
Controlling the Impression of Robots via GAN-based Gesture Generation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981535/ | [
"Bowen Wu",
"Jiaqi Shi",
"Chaoran Liu",
"Carlos T. Ishi",
"Hiroshi Ishiguro",
"Bowen Wu",
"Jiaqi Shi",
"Chaoran Liu",
"Carlos T. Ishi",
"Hiroshi Ishiguro"
] | As a type of body language, gestures can largely affect the impressions of human-like robots perceived by users. Recent data-driven approaches to the generation of co-speech gestures have successfully promoted the naturalness of produced gestures. These approaches also possess greater generalizability to work under various contexts than rule-based methods. However, most have no direct control over... |
Outdoor evaluation of sound source localization for drone groups using microphone arrays | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982039/ | [
"Taiki Yamada",
"Katsutoshi Itoyama",
"Kenji Nishida",
"Kazuhiro Nakadai",
"Taiki Yamada",
"Katsutoshi Itoyama",
"Kenji Nishida",
"Kazuhiro Nakadai"
] | For robot and drone auditions, microphone arrays have been used for estimating sound source directions and sound source locations. By using sound source localization techniques, for example, drones can detect people calling for help even if the target person is not visible. Most sound source localization methods are based on estimated sound source directions and triangulation. However, when it com... |
Reactive Stepping for Humanoid Robots using Reinforcement Learning: Application to Standing Push Recovery on the Exoskeleton Atalante | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982234/ | [
"Alexis Duburcq",
"Fabian Schramm",
"Guilhem Boéris",
"Nicolas Bredeche",
"Yann Chevaleyre",
"Alexis Duburcq",
"Fabian Schramm",
"Guilhem Boéris",
"Nicolas Bredeche",
"Yann Chevaleyre"
] | State-of-the-art reinforcement learning is now able to learn versatile locomotion, balancing and push-recovery capabilities for bipedal robots in simulation. Yet, the reality gap has mostly been overlooked and the simulated results hardly transfer to real hardware. Either it is unsuccessful in practice because the physics is over-simplified and hardware limitations are ignored, or regularity is no... |
Hybrid Approach for Stabilizing Large Time Delays in Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control with Reduced Performance Penalties | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981245/ | [
"Kuei-Fang Hsueh",
"Ayleen Farnood",
"Mohammad Al Janaideh",
"Deepa Kundur",
"Kuei-Fang Hsueh",
"Ayleen Farnood",
"Mohammad Al Janaideh",
"Deepa Kundur"
] | Cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) is a smart transportation solution that can mitigate traffic jams and improve road safety. CACC performance is heavily impacted by communication time delay; moreover, control theory solutions generally compromise control performance by tuning control gains in order to maintain plant stability. We propose a control-machine learning hybrid approach called d... |
Leveraging Multi-Level Modelling to Automatically Design Behavioral Arbitrators in Robotic Controllers | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981817/ | [
"Cyrill Baumann",
"Hugo Birch",
"Alcherio Martinoli",
"Cyrill Baumann",
"Hugo Birch",
"Alcherio Martinoli"
] | Automatic control design for robotic systems is becoming more and more popular. However, this usually involves a significant computational cost, due to the expensive and noisy evaluation of candidate solutions through high-fidelity simulation or even real hardware. This work aims at reducing the computational cost of automatic design of behavioral arbitrators through the introduction of a two-step... |
Federated Learning from Demonstration for Active Assistance to Smart Wheelchair Users | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981998/ | [
"Fernando E. Casado",
"Yiannis Demiris",
"Fernando E. Casado",
"Yiannis Demiris"
] | Learning from Demonstration (LfD) is a very appealing approach to empower robots with autonomy. Given some demonstrations provided by a human teacher, the robot can learn a policy to solve the task without explicit programming. A promising use case is to endow smart robotic wheelchairs with active assistance to navigation. By using LfD, it is possible to learn to infer short-term destinations anyw... |
PourNet: Robust Robotic Pouring Through Curriculum and Curiosity-based Reinforcement Learning | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981195/ | [
"Edwin Babaians",
"Tapan Sharma",
"Mojtaba Karimi",
"Sahand Sharifzadeh",
"Eckehard Steinbach",
"Edwin Babaians",
"Tapan Sharma",
"Mojtaba Karimi",
"Sahand Sharifzadeh",
"Eckehard Steinbach"
] | Pouring liquids accurately into containers is one of the most challenging tasks for robots as they are unaware of the complex fluid dynamics and the behavior of liquids when pouring. Therefore, it is not possible to formulate a generic pouring policy for real-time applications. In this paper, we propose PourNet, as a generalized solution to pouring different liquids into containers. PourNet is a h... |
Simulation-based Learning of the Peg-in-Hole Process Using Robot-Skills | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982212/ | [
"Arik Lämmle",
"Philipp Tenbrock",
"Balázs Bálint",
"Frank Nägele",
"Werner Kraus",
"József Váncza",
"Marco F. Huber",
"Arik Lämmle",
"Philipp Tenbrock",
"Balázs Bálint",
"Frank Nägele",
"Werner Kraus",
"József Váncza",
"Marco F. Huber"
] | Increasingly volatile markets challenge companies and demand flexible production systems that can be quickly adapted to new conditions. Machine Learning has proven to show significant potential in supporting the human operator during the time-consuming and complex task of robot pro-gramming by identifying relevant parameters of the underlying robot control program. We present a solution to learn t... |
Hybrid LMC: Hybrid Learning and Model-based Control for Wheeled Humanoid Robot via Ensemble Deep Reinforcement Learning | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981913/ | [
"Donghoon Baek",
"Amartya Purushottam",
"Joao Ramos",
"Donghoon Baek",
"Amartya Purushottam",
"Joao Ramos"
] | Control of wheeled humanoid locomotion is a challenging problem due to the nonlinear dynamics and under-actuated characteristics of these robots. Traditionally, feedback controllers have been utilized for stabilization and locomotion. However, these methods are often limited by the fidelity of the underlying model used, choice of controller, and environmental variables considered (surface type, gr... |
Active Exploration for Robotic Manipulation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982061/ | [
"Tim Schneider",
"Boris Belousov",
"Georgia Chalvatzaki",
"Diego Romeres",
"Devesh K. Jha",
"Jan Peters",
"Tim Schneider",
"Boris Belousov",
"Georgia Chalvatzaki",
"Diego Romeres",
"Devesh K. Jha",
"Jan Peters"
] | Robotic manipulation stands as a largely unsolved problem despite significant advances in robotics and machine learning in recent years. One of the key challenges in manipulation is the exploration of the dynamics of the environment when there is continuous contact between the objects being manipulated. This paper proposes a model-based active exploration approach that enables efficient learning i... |
Cloud-Edge Training Architecture for Sim-to-Real Deep Reinforcement Learning | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981565/ | [
"Hongpeng Cao",
"Mirco Theile",
"Federico G. Wyrwal",
"Marco Caccamo",
"Hongpeng Cao",
"Mirco Theile",
"Federico G. Wyrwal",
"Marco Caccamo"
] | Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is a promising approach to solve complex control tasks by learning policies through interactions with the environment. However, the training of DRL policies requires large amounts of training experiences, making it impractical to learn the policy directly on physical systems. Sim-to-real approaches leverage simulations to pretrain DRL policies and then deploy them... |
Towards accurate modeling of modular soft pneumatic robots: from volume FEM to Cosserat rod | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981628/ | [
"Mats Wiese",
"Benjamin-Hieu Cao",
"Annika Raatz",
"Mats Wiese",
"Benjamin-Hieu Cao",
"Annika Raatz"
] | Compared to their rigid counterparts, soft material robotic systems offer great advantages when it comes to flexibility and adaptability. Despite their advantages, modeling of soft systems is still a challenging task, due to the continuous and often highly nonlinear nature of deformation these systems exhibit. Tasks like motion planning or design optimization of soft robots require computationally... |
A Proprioceptive Method for Soft Robots Using Inertial Measurement Units | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982185/ | [
"Yves J. Martin",
"Daniel Bruder",
"Robert J. Wood",
"Yves J. Martin",
"Daniel Bruder",
"Robert J. Wood"
] | Proprioception, or the perception of the configuration of one's body, is challenging to achieve with soft robots due to their infinite degrees of freedom and incompatibility with most off-the-shelf sensors. This work explores the use of inertial measurement units (IMUs), sensors that output orientation with respect to the direction of gravity, to achieve soft robot proprioception. A simple method ... |
A Unified and Modular Model Predictive Control Framework for Soft Continuum Manipulators under Internal and External Constraints | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981702/ | [
"Filippo A. Spinelli",
"Robert K. Katzschmann",
"Filippo A. Spinelli",
"Robert K. Katzschmann"
] | Fluidically actuated soft robots have promising capabilities such as inherent compliance and user safety. The control of soft robots needs to properly handle nonlinear actuation dynamics, motion constraints, workspace limitations, and variable shape stiffness, so having a unique algorithm for all these issues would be extremely beneficial. In this work, we adapt Model Predictive Control (MPC), pop... |
Contact-implicit Trajectory and Grasp Planning for Soft Continuum Manipulators | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981044/ | [
"Moritz A. Graule",
"Clark B. Teeple",
"Robert J. Wood",
"Moritz A. Graule",
"Clark B. Teeple",
"Robert J. Wood"
] | As robots begin to move from structured industrial environments to the real world, they must be equipped to not only safely interact with the environment, but also reason about how to leverage contact to perform tasks. In this work, we develop a modeling and motion planning framework for continuum robots that accounts for contact anywhere along the robot. We first present an analytical model for c... |
Planar Modeling and Sim-to-Real of a Tethered Multimaterial Soft Swimmer Driven by Peano-HASELs | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981192/ | [
"Stephan-Daniel Gravert",
"Mike Y. Michelis",
"Simon Rogler",
"Dario Tscholl",
"Thomas Buchner",
"Robert K. Katzschmann",
"Stephan-Daniel Gravert",
"Mike Y. Michelis",
"Simon Rogler",
"Dario Tscholl",
"Thomas Buchner",
"Robert K. Katzschmann"
] | Soft robotics has the potential to revolutionize robotic locomotion, in particular, soft robotic swimmers offer a minimally invasive and adaptive solution to explore and preserve our oceans. Unfortunately, current soft robotic swimmers are vastly inferior to evolved biological swimmers, especially in terms of controllability, efficiency, maneuverability, and longevity. Additionally, the tedious it... |
Model-Based Disturbance Estimation for a Fiber-Reinforced Soft Manipulator using Orientation Sensing | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981637/ | [
"Barnabas Gavin Cangan",
"Stefan Escaida Navarro",
"Bai Yang",
"Yu Zhang",
"Christian Duriez",
"Robert K. Katzschmann",
"Barnabas Gavin Cangan",
"Stefan Escaida Navarro",
"Bai Yang",
"Yu Zhang",
"Christian Duriez",
"Robert K. Katzschmann"
] | To aid in real-world situations, soft robots need to be able to estimate their state and external interactions based on proprioceptive sensors. Estimating disturbances allows a soft robot to perform desirable force control. However, even in the case of rigid manipulators, force estimation at the end-effector is seen as a non-trivial problem. And indeed, current approaches to address this challenge... |
Variable Stiffness Object Recognition with Bayesian Convolutional Neural Network on a Soft Gripper | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982051/ | [
"Jinyue Cao",
"Jingyi Huang",
"Andre Rosendo",
"Jinyue Cao",
"Jingyi Huang",
"Andre Rosendo"
] | From a medical standpoint, detecting the size and shape of hard inclusions hidden in soft three-dimensional objects is of great significance for early detection of cancer through palpation. Soft robots, especially soft grippers, substantially broaden robots' palpation capabilities from soft to hard materials without the assistance of a camera. We have recently introduced a CNN-Bayes approach which... |
Fast and Safe Exploration via Adaptive Semantic Perception in Outdoor Environments | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981640/ | [
"Zhihao Wang",
"Lingxu Chen",
"Hongjin Chen",
"Haoyao Chen",
"Xin Jiang",
"Zhihao Wang",
"Lingxu Chen",
"Hongjin Chen",
"Haoyao Chen",
"Xin Jiang"
] | Autonomous exploration in unknown environments is a fundamental task for robots. Existing approaches mostly were concentrated on the efficiency of the exploration with the assumption of perfect state estimation, but the drift of pose estimation in visual SLAM occurs frequently and is detrimental to robot's localization and exploration performance. In this paper, a perception-aware exploration(PAE)... |
Towards Robust Visual-Inertial Odometry with Multiple Non-Overlapping Monocular Cameras | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981664/ | [
"Yao He",
"Huai Yu",
"Wen Yang",
"Sebastian Scherer",
"Yao He",
"Huai Yu",
"Wen Yang",
"Sebastian Scherer"
] | We present a Visual-Inertial Odometry (VIO) algorithm with multiple non-overlapping monocular cameras aiming at improving the robustness of the VIO algorithm. An initialization scheme and tightly-coupled bundle adjustment for multiple non-overlapping monocular cameras are proposed. With more stable features captured by multiple cameras, VIO can maintain stable state estimation, especially when one... |
Scalable probabilistic gas distribution mapping using Gaussian belief propagation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981901/ | [
"Callum Rhodes",
"Cunjia Liu",
"Wen-Hua Chen",
"Callum Rhodes",
"Cunjia Liu",
"Wen-Hua Chen"
] | This paper advocates the Gaussian belief propagation solver for factor graphs in the case of gas distribution mapping to support an olfactory sensing robot. The local message passing of belief propagation moves away from the standard Cholesky decomposition technique, which avoids solving the entire factor graph at once and allows for only areas of interest to be updated more effectively. Implement... |
WiSARD: A Labeled Visual and Thermal Image Dataset for Wilderness Search and Rescue | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981298/ | [
"Daniel Broyles",
"Christopher R. Hayner",
"Karen Leung",
"Daniel Broyles",
"Christopher R. Hayner",
"Karen Leung"
] | Sensor-equipped unoccupied aerial vehicles (UAVs) have the potential to help reduce search times and alleviate safety risks for first responders carrying out Wilderness Search and Rescue (WiSAR) operations, the process of finding and rescuing person(s) lost in wilderness areas. Unfortunately, visual sensors alone do not address the need for robustness across all the possible terrains, weather, and... |
A Tightly-Coupled Event-Inertial Odometry using Exponential Decay and Linear Preintegrated Measurements | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981249/ | [
"Benny Dai",
"Cedric Le Gentil",
"Teresa Vidal-Calleja",
"Benny Dai",
"Cedric Le Gentil",
"Teresa Vidal-Calleja"
] | In this paper, we introduce an event-based visual odometry and mapping framework that relies on decaying event-based corners. Event cameras, unlike conventional cam-eras, can provide sensor data during high-speed motions or in scenes with high dynamic ranges. Rather than providing intensity information at a global shutter rate, events are trig-gered asynchronously depending on whether there is a c... |
A Metric for Finding Robust Start Positions for Medical Steerable Needle Automation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982227/ | [
"Janine Hoelscher",
"Inbar Fried",
"Mengyu Fu",
"Mihir Patwardhan",
"Max Christman",
"Jason Akulian",
"Robert J. Webster",
"Ron Alterovitz",
"Janine Hoelscher",
"Inbar Fried",
"Mengyu Fu",
"Mihir Patwardhan",
"Max Christman",
"Jason Akulian",
"Robert J. Webster",
"Ron Alterovitz"
] | Steerable needles are medical devices with the ability to follow curvilinear paths to reach targets while circumventing obstacles. In the deployment process, a human operator typically places the steerable needle at its start position on a tissue surface and then hands off control to the automation that steers the needle to the target. Due to uncertainty in the placement of the needle by the human... |
Design and Development of a Lorentz Force-Based MRI-Driven Neuroendoscope | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981526/ | [
"Martin Francis Phelan",
"Nihal Olcay Dogan",
"Jelena Lazovic",
"Metin Sitti",
"Martin Francis Phelan",
"Nihal Olcay Dogan",
"Jelena Lazovic",
"Metin Sitti"
] | The introduction of neuroendoscopy, microneu- rosurgery, neuronavigation, and intraoperative imaging for surgical operations has made significant improvements over other traditionally invasive surgical techniques. The integration of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-driven surgical devices with intraoperative imaging and endoscopy can enable further advancements in surgical treatments and outcomes.... |
GESRsim: Gastrointestinal Endoscopic Surgical Robot Simulator | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982138/ | [
"Huxin Gao",
"Zedong Zhang",
"Changsheng Li",
"Xiao Xiao",
"Liang Qiu",
"Xiaoxiao Yang",
"Ruoyi Hao",
"Xiuli Zuo",
"Yanqing Li",
"Hongliang Ren",
"Huxin Gao",
"Zedong Zhang",
"Changsheng Li",
"Xiao Xiao",
"Liang Qiu",
"Xiaoxiao Yang",
"Ruoyi Hao",
"Xiuli Zuo",
"Yanqing Li",
"Hongliang Ren"
] | Robot-assisted gastrointestinal endoscopic surgery (GES) as a kind of natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery (NOTES) is the next-generation minimally invasive surgery (MIS). Besides, rendering certain autonomy to a Gas-trointestinal Endoscopic Surgical Robot (GESR) is promising but highly challenging. Therefore, to accelerate the development and augment the autonomy of GESR, we use Coppel... |
A Dataset and Benchmark for Learning the Kinematics of Concentric Tube Continuum Robots | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981719/ | [
"Reinhard M. Grassmann",
"Ryan Zeyuan Chen",
"Nan Liang",
"Jessica Burgner-Kahrs",
"Reinhard M. Grassmann",
"Ryan Zeyuan Chen",
"Nan Liang",
"Jessica Burgner-Kahrs"
] | Establishing a physics-based model capturing the kinetostatic behavior of concentric tube continuum robots is challenging as elastic interactions between the flexible tubes constituting the robot result in a highly non-linear problem. The Goldstandard physics-based model using the Cosserat theory of elastic rods achieves reasonable approximations with 1.5 - 3 % with respect to the robot's length, ... |
Colonoscopy Navigation using End-to-End Deep Visuomotor Control: A User Study | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981480/ | [
"Ameya Pore",
"Martina Finocchiaro",
"Diego Dall'Alba",
"Albert Hernansanz",
"Gastone Ciuti",
"Alberto Arezzo",
"Arianna Menciassi",
"Alicia Casals",
"Paolo Fiorini",
"Ameya Pore",
"Martina Finocchiaro",
"Diego Dall'Alba",
"Albert Hernansanz",
"Gastone Ciuti",
"Alberto Arezzo",
"Arianna Menciassi",
"Alicia Casals",
"Paolo Fiorini"
] | Flexible Endoscopes (FEs) for colonoscopy present several limitations due to their inherent complexity, resulting in patient discomfort and lack of intuitiveness for clinicians. Robotic FEs with autonomous control represent a viable solution to reduce the workload of endoscopists and the training time while improving the procedure outcome. Prior works on autonomous endoscope FE control use heurist... |
Shape memory polymer variable stiffness magnetic catheters with hybrid stiffness control | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981935/ | [
"Michael Mattmann",
"Quentin Boehler",
"Xiang-Zhong Chen",
"Salvador Pané",
"Bradley J. Nelson",
"Michael Mattmann",
"Quentin Boehler",
"Xiang-Zhong Chen",
"Salvador Pané",
"Bradley J. Nelson"
] | Variable stiffness catheters typically rely on thermally induced stiffness transitions with a transition temperature above body temperature. This imposes considerable safety limitations for medical applications. In this work, we present a variable stiffness catheter using a hybrid control strategy capable of actively heating and actively cooling the catheter material. The proposed catheter is made... |
Passivity-Based Skill Motion Learning in Stiffness-Adaptive Unified Force-Impedance Control | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981728/ | [
"Kübra Karacan",
"Hamid Sadeghian",
"Robin Kirschner",
"Sami Haddadin",
"Kübra Karacan",
"Hamid Sadeghian",
"Robin Kirschner",
"Sami Haddadin"
] | Tactile robots shall be deployed for dynamic task execution in production lines with small batch sizes. Therefore, these robots should have the ability to respond to changing conditions and be easy to (re-)program. Operating under uncertain environments requires unifying subsystems such as robot motion and force policy into one framework, referred to as tactile skills. In this paper, we propose th... |
A Whole-Body Controller Based on a Simplified Template for Rendering Impedances in Quadruped Manipulators | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981895/ | [
"Mattia Risiglione",
"Victor Barasuol",
"Darwin G. Caldwell",
"Claudio Semini",
"Mattia Risiglione",
"Victor Barasuol",
"Darwin G. Caldwell",
"Claudio Semini"
] | Quadrupedal manipulators require to be compliant when dealing with external forces during autonomous manipulation, tele-operation or physical human-robot interaction. This paper presents a whole-body controller that allows for the implementation of a Cartesian impedance control to coordinate tracking performance and desired compliance for the robot base and manipulator arm. The controller is formu... |
Electro-Adhesive Tubular Clutch for Variable-Stiffness Robots | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982098/ | [
"Yi Sun",
"Krishna Manaswi Digumarti",
"Hoang-Vu Phan",
"Omar Aloui",
"Dario Floreano",
"Yi Sun",
"Krishna Manaswi Digumarti",
"Hoang-Vu Phan",
"Omar Aloui",
"Dario Floreano"
] | Electro-adhesive clutches have become effective tools for variable stiffness functions in many robotic systems due to their light weight, high speed and strong brake force. In this paper, we present a novel, tubular design of an electro-adhesive clutch. Our clutch consists of flexible electrode sheets rolled into a tubular structure. This design allows encapsulating large electrode areas in a comp... |
An Observer-Based Responsive Variable Impedance Control for Dual-User Haptic Training System | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981977/ | [
"A. Rashvand",
"R. Heidari",
"M. Motaharifar",
"A. Hassani",
"M.R. Dindarloo",
"M. J. Ahmadi",
"K. Hashtrudi-Zaad",
"M. Tavakoli",
"H. D. Taghirad",
"A. Rashvand",
"R. Heidari",
"M. Motaharifar",
"A. Hassani",
"M.R. Dindarloo",
"M. J. Ahmadi",
"K. Hashtrudi-Zaad",
"M. Tavakoli",
"H. D. Taghirad"
] | This paper proposes a variable impedance control architecture to facilitate eye surgery training in a dual-user haptic system. In this system, an expert surgeon (the trainer) and a novice surgeon (the trainee) collaborate on a surgical procedure using their own haptic devices. The mechanical impedance parameters of the trainer's haptic device remain constant during the operation, whereas those of ... |
Development of Low-Inertia Backdrivable Arm Focusing on Learning-Based Control | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981337/ | [
"Manabu Nishiura",
"Akira Hatano",
"Kazutoshi Nishii",
"Yoshihiro Okumatsu",
"Manabu Nishiura",
"Akira Hatano",
"Kazutoshi Nishii",
"Yoshihiro Okumatsu"
] | A robot designed to coexist and work with humans in the same workspace should be able to work at the same speed as humans and have safe contact with humans and with the environment. However, when a robot arm has been given flexibility through mechanisms and controls for the purpose of coexistence, it is difficult for it to perform tasks at the speed and accuracy desired by humans if it is moved si... |
Data-Driven Variable Impedance Control of a Powered Knee-Ankle Prosthesis for Sit, Stand, and Walk with Minimal Tuning | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982037/ | [
"Cara Gonzalez Welker",
"T. Kevin Best",
"Robert D. Gregg",
"Cara Gonzalez Welker",
"T. Kevin Best",
"Robert D. Gregg"
] | Although the average healthy adult transitions from sit to stand over 60 times per day, most research on powered prosthesis control has only focused on walking. In this paper, we present a data-driven controller that enables sitting, standing, and walking with minimal tuning. Our controller comprises two high level modes of sit/stand and walking, and we develop heuristic biomechanical rules to con... |
RobotCore: An Open Architecture for Hardware Acceleration in ROS 2 | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982082/ | [
"Víctor Mayoral-Vilches",
"Sabrina M. Neuman",
"Brian Plancher",
"Vijay Janapa Reddi",
"Víctor Mayoral-Vilches",
"Sabrina M. Neuman",
"Brian Plancher",
"Vijay Janapa Reddi"
] | Hardware acceleration can revolutionize robotics, enabling new applications by speeding up robot response times while remaining power-efficient. However, the diversity of acceleration options makes it difficult for roboticists to easily deploy accelerated systems without expertise in each specific hardware platform. In this work, we address this challenge with RobotCore, an architecture to integra... |
Tasho: A Python Toolbox for Rapid Prototyping and Deployment of Optimal Control Problem-Based Complex Robot Motion Skills | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981681/ | [
"Ajay Suresha Sathya",
"Alejandro Astudillo",
"Joris Gillis",
"Wilm Decré",
"Goele Pipeleers",
"Jan Swevers",
"Ajay Suresha Sathya",
"Alejandro Astudillo",
"Joris Gillis",
"Wilm Decré",
"Goele Pipeleers",
"Jan Swevers"
] | We present Tasho (Task specification for receding horizon control), an open-source Python toolbox that facilitates systematic programming of optimal control problem (OCP)-based robot motion skills. Separation-of-concerns is followed while designing the components of a motion skill, which promotes their modularity and reusability. This allows us to program complex motion tasks by configuring and co... |
Containerization and Orchestration of Software for Autonomous Mobile Robots: a Case Study of Mixed-Criticality Tasks across Edge-Cloud Computing Platforms | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981581/ | [
"Francesco Lumpp",
"Franco Fummi",
"Hiren D. Patel",
"Nicola Bombieri",
"Francesco Lumpp",
"Franco Fummi",
"Hiren D. Patel",
"Nicola Bombieri"
] | Containerization promises to strengthen platform-independent development, better resource utilization, and secure deployment of software. As these benefits come with negligible overhead in CPU and memory utilization, containerization is increasingly being adopted in mobile robotic applications. An open challenge is supporting software tasks that have mixed-criticality requirements. Even more chall... |
Transactional Transform Library for ROS | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981089/ | [
"Yushi Ogiwara",
"Ayanori Yorozu",
"Akihisa Ohya",
"Hideyuki Kawashima",
"Yushi Ogiwara",
"Ayanori Yorozu",
"Akihisa Ohya",
"Hideyuki Kawashima"
] | In the Robot Operating System (ROS), a major middleware for robots, the Transform Library (TF) is a mandatory package that manages transformation information between coordinate systems by using a single-rooted directed tree and providing methods for registering and computing the information. However, the tree has two fundamental problems. The first is its poor scalability: since it accepts only a ... |
An Impedance-Controlled Testbed for Simulating Variations in the Mechanical Fit of Wearable Devices | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981391/ | [
"Alexander B. Ambrose",
"Chelse VanAtter",
"Frank L. Hammond",
"Alexander B. Ambrose",
"Chelse VanAtter",
"Frank L. Hammond"
] | The fit of a wearable device, such as a prosthesis, can be quantitatively characterized by the mechanical coupling at the user-device interface. It is thought that the mechanical impedance, specifically the stiffness and damping, of wearable device interfaces can significantly impact human performance while using them. To test this theory, we develop a forearm-mounted testbed with a motorized, two... |
Human-exoskeleton Cooperative Balance Strategy for a Human-powered Augmentation Lower Exoskeleton | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981568/ | [
"Guangkui Song",
"Rui Huang",
"Zhinan Peng",
"Kecheng Shi",
"Long Zhang",
"Rong He",
"Jing Qiu",
"Huayi Zhan",
"Hong Cheng",
"Guangkui Song",
"Rui Huang",
"Zhinan Peng",
"Kecheng Shi",
"Long Zhang",
"Rong He",
"Jing Qiu",
"Huayi Zhan",
"Hong Cheng"
] | Lower Limb Exoskeletons (LLE) have received considerable interest in strength augmentation, rehabilitation, and walking assistance scenarios. For strength augmentation, LLE is expected to have the capability of reducing metabolic energy. However, the energy for adjusting Center of Gravity (CoG) is a main part of the total energy consumed during walking. This paper proposes a novel Human-exoskeleto... |
RANK - Robotic Ankle: Design and testing on irregular terrains | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981580/ | [
"J. Taborri",
"I. Mileti",
"G. Mariani",
"L. Mattioli",
"L. Liguori",
"S. Salvatori",
"E. Palermo",
"F. Patanè",
"S. Rossi",
"J. Taborri",
"I. Mileti",
"G. Mariani",
"L. Mattioli",
"L. Liguori",
"S. Salvatori",
"E. Palermo",
"F. Patanè",
"S. Rossi"
] | Despite the large amount of available exoskeletons, their use in daily life is still limited due to the absence of testing in real-life environments. Thus, the present work aims to test on a series of uneven terrains a wearable ankle exoskeleton, named RANK, designed for walking assistance and drop-foot prevention. RANK consists of a 3D-printed brace attached to the user and a piezoresistive insol... |
A Soft Fabric-based Shrink-to-fit Pneumatic Sleeve for Comfortable Limb Assistance | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981265/ | [
"Richard Suphapol Diteesawat",
"Sam Hoh",
"Emanuele Pulvirenti",
"Nahian Rahman",
"Leah Morris",
"Ailie Turton",
"Mary Cramp",
"Jonathan Rossiter",
"Richard Suphapol Diteesawat",
"Sam Hoh",
"Emanuele Pulvirenti",
"Nahian Rahman",
"Leah Morris",
"Ailie Turton",
"Mary Cramp",
"Jonathan Rossiter"
] | Upper limb impairments and weakness are com-mon post-stroke and with advanced aging. Rigid exoskeletons have been developed as a potential solution, but have had limited impact. In addition to user concerns about safety, their weight and appearance, the rigid attachment and typical anchoring methods can result in skin damage. In this paper, we present a soft, fabric-based pneumatic sleeve, which c... |
Intention estimation from gaze and motion features for human-robot shared-control object manipulation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982249/ | [
"Anna Belardinelli",
"Anirudh Reddy Kondapally",
"Dirk Ruiken",
"Daniel Tanneberg",
"Tomoki Watabe",
"Anna Belardinelli",
"Anirudh Reddy Kondapally",
"Dirk Ruiken",
"Daniel Tanneberg",
"Tomoki Watabe"
] | Shared control can help in teleoperated object manipulation by assisting with the execution of the user's intention. To this end, robust and prompt intention estimation is needed, which relies on behavioral observations. Here, an intention estimation framework is presented, which uses natural gaze and motion features to predict the current action and the target object. The system is trained and te... |
Disentangled Sequence Clustering for Human Intention Inference | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981116/ | [
"Mark Zolotas",
"Yiannis Demiris",
"Mark Zolotas",
"Yiannis Demiris"
] | Equipping robots with the ability to infer human intent is a vital precondition for effective collaboration. Most computational approaches towards this objective derive a probability distribution of “intent” conditioned on the robot's perceived state. However, these approaches typically assume task-specific labels of human intent are known a priori. To overcome this constraint, we propose the Dise... |
Flash: Fast and Light Motion Prediction for Autonomous Driving with Bayesian Inverse Planning and Learned Motion Profiles | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981347/ | [
"Morris Antonello",
"Mihai Dobre",
"Stefano V. Albrecht",
"John Redford",
"Subramanian Ramamoorthy",
"Morris Antonello",
"Mihai Dobre",
"Stefano V. Albrecht",
"John Redford",
"Subramanian Ramamoorthy"
] | Motion prediction of road users in traffic scenes is critical for autonomous driving systems that must take safe and robust decisions in complex dynamic environments. We present a novel motion prediction system for autonomous driving. Our system is based on the Bayesian inverse planning framework, which efficiently orchestrates map-based goal extraction, a classical control-based trajectory genera... |
MPC-PF: Social Interaction Aware Trajectory Prediction of Dynamic Objects for Autonomous Driving Using Potential Fields | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981046/ | [
"Neel P. Bhatt",
"Amir Khajepour",
"Ehsan Hashemi",
"Neel P. Bhatt",
"Amir Khajepour",
"Ehsan Hashemi"
] | Predicting object motion behaviour is a challenging but crucial task for safe decision making and path planning for an autonomous vehicle. It is challenging in large part due to the uncertain, multi-modal, and practically intractable set of possible agent-agent and agent-space interactions, especially in urban driving settings. Models solely based on constant velocity or social force have an inher... |
Optimization of Forcemyography Sensor Placement for Arm Movement Recognition | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981236/ | [
"Xiaohao Xu",
"Zihao Du",
"Huaxin Zhang",
"Ruichao Zhang",
"Zihan Hong",
"Qin Huang",
"Bin Han",
"Xiaohao Xu",
"Zihao Du",
"Huaxin Zhang",
"Ruichao Zhang",
"Zihan Hong",
"Qin Huang",
"Bin Han"
] | How to design an optimal wearable device for human movement recognition is vital to reliable and accurate human-machine collaboration. Previous works mainly fabricate wearable devices heuristically. Instead, this paper raises an academic question: can we design an optimization algorithm to optimize the fabrication of wearable devices such as figuring out the best sensor arrangement automatically? ... |
Pedestrian Intention Prediction Based on Traffic-Aware Scene Graph Model | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981690/ | [
"Xingchen Song",
"Miao Kang",
"Sanping Zhou",
"Jianji Wang",
"Yishu Mao",
"Nanning Zheng",
"Xingchen Song",
"Miao Kang",
"Sanping Zhou",
"Jianji Wang",
"Yishu Mao",
"Nanning Zheng"
] | Anticipating the future behavior of pedestrians is a crucial part of deploying Automated Driving Systems (ADS) in urban traffic scenarios. Most recent works utilize a convolutional neural network (CNN) to extract visual information, which is then input to a recurrent neural network (RNN) along with pedestrian-specific features like location and speed to obtain temporal features. However, the major... |
Social-PatteRNN: Socially-Aware Trajectory Prediction Guided by Motion Patterns | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981486/ | [
"Ingrid Navarro",
"Jean Oh",
"Ingrid Navarro",
"Jean Oh"
] | As robots across domains start collaborating with humans in shared environments, algorithms that enable them to reason over human intent are important to achieve safe inter-play. In our work, we study human intent through the problem of predicting trajectories in dynamic environments. We explore domains where navigation guidelines are relatively strictly defined but not clearly marked in their phy... |
A Hierarchical Deliberative Architecture Framework based on Goal Decomposition | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981488/ | [
"Charles Lesire",
"Rafael Bailon-Ruiz",
"Magali Barbier",
"Christophe Grand",
"Charles Lesire",
"Rafael Bailon-Ruiz",
"Magali Barbier",
"Christophe Grand"
] | Performing a complex autonomous mission with a multi-robot system requires to integrate several deliberative approaches to perform task allocation, optimization, and execution control. Implementing such a deliberative architecture is a complex task: it requires the developer to master the decision algorithms themselves (e.g., automated planning models), to have a good knowledge of the involved rob... |
Accurate Instance-Level CAD Model Retrieval in a Large-Scale Database | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981296/ | [
"Jiaxin Wei",
"Lan Hu",
"Chenyu Wang",
"Laurent Kneip",
"Jiaxin Wei",
"Lan Hu",
"Chenyu Wang",
"Laurent Kneip"
] | We present a new solution to the fine-grained retrieval of clean CAD models from a large-scale database in order to recover detailed object shape geometries for RGBD scans. Unlike previous work simply indexing into a moderately small database using an object shape descriptor and accepting the top retrieval result, we argue that in the case of a large-scale database a more accurate model may be fou... |
Low-Latency LiDAR Semantic Segmentation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982099/ | [
"Takahiro Hori",
"Takehisa Yairi",
"Takahiro Hori",
"Takehisa Yairi"
] | Several methods of semantic segmentation using light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors have been proposed for the recognition of surrounding objects by autonomous driving cars. LiDAR is a sensor that compensates for the weaknesses of other sensors, such as cameras or radar systems, and semantic segmentation assigns a class label to each point in the LiDAR point cloud. Recently, real-time seman... |
Implicit-Part Based Context Aggregation for Point Cloud Instance Segmentation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981772/ | [
"Xiaodong Wu",
"Ruiping Wang",
"Xilin Chen",
"Xiaodong Wu",
"Ruiping Wang",
"Xilin Chen"
] | Context information is important for instance segmentation on point clouds. Existing methods either only use local surroundings by stacking multiple convolution layers or use non-local methods to model long-range interactions. However, they usually directly operate on points which is an unstructured and low-level representation and is highly dependent on context. To address this issue, we propose ... |
Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for Point Cloud Semantic Segmentation via Graph Matching | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981603/ | [
"Yikai Bian",
"Le Hui",
"Jianjun Qian",
"Jin Xie",
"Yikai Bian",
"Le Hui",
"Jianjun Qian",
"Jin Xie"
] | Unsupervised domain adaptation for point cloud semantic segmentation has attracted great attention due to its effectiveness in learning with unlabeled data. Most of existing methods use global-level feature alignment to transfer the knowledge from the source domain to the target domain, which may cause the semantic ambiguity of the feature space. In this paper, we propose a graph-based framework t... |
SectionKey: 3-D Semantic Point Cloud Descriptor for Place Recognition | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981605/ | [
"Shutong Jin",
"Zhenyu Wu",
"Chunyang Zhao",
"Jun Zhang",
"Guohao Peng",
"Danwei Wang",
"Shutong Jin",
"Zhenyu Wu",
"Chunyang Zhao",
"Jun Zhang",
"Guohao Peng",
"Danwei Wang"
] | Place recognition is seen as a crucial factor to correct cumulative errors in Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) applications. Most existing studies focus on visual place recognition, which is inherently sensitive to environmental changes such as illumination, weather and seasons. Considering these facts, more recent attention has been attracted to use 3-D Light Detection and Ranging (Li... |
Fisheye object detection based on standard image datasets with 24-points regression strategy | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981891/ | [
"Xi Xu",
"Yu Gao",
"Hao Liang",
"Yi Yang",
"Mengyin Fu",
"Xi Xu",
"Yu Gao",
"Hao Liang",
"Yi Yang",
"Mengyin Fu"
] | Fisheye object detection is a difficult task in robotics and autonomous driving. One of the reasons is that the fisheye datasets are inferior to standard image datasets in scale and quantity, which inspires the idea of using standard image datasets for fisheye object detection. However, the models trained on standard image datasets do not perform well with fisheye data. In this work, we explore th... |
Real-time Semantic 3D Reconstruction for High- Touch Surface Recognition for Robotic Disinfection | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981300/ | [
"Ri-Zhao Qiu",
"Yixiao Sun",
"Joao Marcos Correia Marques",
"Kris Hauser",
"Ri-Zhao Qiu",
"Yixiao Sun",
"Joao Marcos Correia Marques",
"Kris Hauser"
] | Disinfection robots have applications in promoting public health and reducing hospital acquired infections and have drawn considerable interest due to the COVID-19 pan-demic. To disinfect a room quickly, motion planning can be used to plan robot disinfection trajectories on a reconstructed 3D map of the room's surfaces. However, existing approaches discard semantic information of the room and, thu... |
Relationship Oriented Semantic Scene Understanding for Daily Manipulation Tasks | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981960/ | [
"Chao Tang",
"Jingwen Yu",
"Weinan Chen",
"Bingyi Xia",
"Hong Zhang",
"Chao Tang",
"Jingwen Yu",
"Weinan Chen",
"Bingyi Xia",
"Hong Zhang"
] | Assistive robot systems have been developed to help people accomplish daily manipulation tasks especially for those with disabilities, where scene understanding plays a crucial role in enabling robots to interpret the surroundings and behave accordingly. Most of the current systems approach scene understanding without considering the functional dependencies between objects. However, it is only val... |
Multi-Robot Unknown Area Exploration Using Frontier Trees | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981914/ | [
"Ankit Soni",
"Chirag Dasannacharya",
"Avinash Gautam",
"Virendra Singh Shekhawat",
"Sudeept Mohan",
"Ankit Soni",
"Chirag Dasannacharya",
"Avinash Gautam",
"Virendra Singh Shekhawat",
"Sudeept Mohan"
] | This paper presents a novel approach for multi-robot unknown area exploration. Recently, the frontier tree data structure was used in single robot exploration to memorize frontiers, their positions, exploration state, and the map. This tree could be queried to decide on further exploration steps. In this paper, we take the concept further for multi-robot exploration by proposing a new abstraction ... |
Efficient Range-Constraint Manifold Optimization with Application to Cooperative Navigation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982188/ | [
"Yetong Zhang",
"Gerry Chen",
"Adam Rutkowski",
"Frank Dellaert",
"Yetong Zhang",
"Gerry Chen",
"Adam Rutkowski",
"Frank Dellaert"
] | We present a manifold optimization approach to solve inference and planning problems with range constraints. The core of our approach is the definition of a manifold that represents points or poses with range constraints. We discover that the manifold of range-constrained points is homogeneous under the rigid transformation group action, and utilize the group action to derive the tangent space, re... |
On Coverage Control for Limited Range Multi-Robot Systems | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982002/ | [
"Federico Pratissoli",
"Beatrice Capelli",
"Lorenzo Sabattini",
"Federico Pratissoli",
"Beatrice Capelli",
"Lorenzo Sabattini"
] | This paper presents a coverage based control algorithm to coordinate a group of autonomous robots. Most of the solutions presented in the literature rely on an exact Voronoi partitioning, whose computation requires complete knowledge of the environment to be covered. This can be achieved only by robots with unlimited sensing capabilities, or through communication among robots in a limited sensing ... |
Multi-Goal Multi-Agent Pickup and Delivery | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981785/ | [
"Qinghong Xu",
"Jiaoyang Li",
"Sven Koenig",
"Hang Ma",
"Qinghong Xu",
"Jiaoyang Li",
"Sven Koenig",
"Hang Ma"
] | In this work, we consider the Multi-Agent Pickup-and-Delivery (MAPD) problem, where agents constantly engage with new tasks and need to plan collision-free paths to execute them. To execute a task, an agent needs to visit a pair of goal locations, consisting of a pickup location and a delivery location. We propose two variants of an algorithm that assigns a sequence of tasks to each agent using th... |
Asynchronous Real-time Decentralized Multi-Robot Trajectory Planning | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981760/ | [
"Baskin Şenbaşlar",
"Gaurav S. Sukhatme",
"Baskin Şenbaşlar",
"Gaurav S. Sukhatme"
] | We present a novel overconstraining and constraint-discarding method for asynchronous, real-time, decentralized, multi-robot trajectory planning that ensures collision avoidance. Our approach utilizes communication between robots. The communication medium is best-effort: messages may be dropped, re-ordered or delayed. Robots conservatively constrain themselves against others assuming they may be w... |
Decentralized Learning With Limited Communications for Multi-robot Coverage of Unknown Spatial Fields | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981665/ | [
"Kensuke Nakamura",
"María Santos",
"Naomi Ehrich Leonard",
"Kensuke Nakamura",
"María Santos",
"Naomi Ehrich Leonard"
] | This paper presents an algorithm for a team of mobile robots to simultaneously learn a spatial field over a domain and spatially distribute themselves to optimally cover it. Drawing from previous approaches that estimate the spatial field through a centralized Gaussian process, this work leverages the spatial structure of the coverage problem and presents a decentralized strategy where samples are... |
Multi-Robot Path Planning Using Medial-Axis-Based Pebble-Graph Embedding | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981807/ | [
"Liang He",
"Zherong Pan",
"Kiril Solovey",
"Biao Jia",
"Dinesh Manocha",
"Liang He",
"Zherong Pan",
"Kiril Solovey",
"Biao Jia",
"Dinesh Manocha"
] | We present a centralized algorithm for labeled, disk-shaped Multi-Robot Path Planning (MPP) in a continuous planar workspace with polygonal boundaries. Our method automatically transform the continuous problem into a discrete, graph-based variant termed the pebble motion problem, which can be solved efficiently. To construct the underlying pebble graph, we identify inscribed circles in the workspa... |
Multi-modal User Interface for Multi-robot Control in Underground Environments | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981165/ | [
"Shengkang Chen",
"Matthew J. O'Brien",
"Fletcher Talbot",
"Jason Williams",
"Brendan Tidd",
"Alex Pitt",
"Ronald C. Arkin",
"Shengkang Chen",
"Matthew J. O'Brien",
"Fletcher Talbot",
"Jason Williams",
"Brendan Tidd",
"Alex Pitt",
"Ronald C. Arkin"
] | Leveraging both the autonomy of robots and the expert knowledge of humans can enable a multi-robot system to complete missions in challenging environments with a high degree of adaptivity and robustness. This paper proposes a multi-modal task-based graphical user interface for controlling a heterogeneous multi-robot team. The core of the interface is an integrated multi-robot task allocation syste... |
Slip Anticipation for Grasping Deformable Objects Using a Soft Force Sensor | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981174/ | [
"Euan Judd",
"Bekir Aksoy",
"Krishna Manaswi Digumarti",
"Herbert Shea",
"Dario Floreano",
"Euan Judd",
"Bekir Aksoy",
"Krishna Manaswi Digumarti",
"Herbert Shea",
"Dario Floreano"
] | Robots using classical control have revolutionised assembly lines where the environment and manipulated objects are restricted and predictable. However, they have proven less effective when the manipulated objects are deformable due to their complex and unpredictable behaviour. The use of tactile sensors and continuous monitoring of tactile feedback is there-fore particularly important for pick-an... |
Estimation of Soft Robotic Bladder Compression for Smart Helmets using IR Range Finding and Hall Effect Magnetic Sensing | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981160/ | [
"Colin Pollard",
"Jon Aston",
"Mark A. Minor",
"Colin Pollard",
"Jon Aston",
"Mark A. Minor"
] | This research focuses on soft robotic bladders that are used to monitor and control the interaction between a user's head and the shell of a Smart Helmet. Compression of these bladders determines impact dissipation; hence the focus of this paper is sensing and estimation of bladder compression. An IR rangefinder-based solution is evaluated using regression techniques as well as a Neural Network to... |
Kirigami Skin Based Flexible Whisker Sensor | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981556/ | [
"Bangyuan Liu",
"Robert Herbert",
"Woon-Hong Yeo",
"Frank L. Hammond",
"Bangyuan Liu",
"Robert Herbert",
"Woon-Hong Yeo",
"Frank L. Hammond"
] | Whiskers are widely used by animals for sensing physical interactions with their environments. By combining the Kirigami skin pop-up feature and flexible conducting layer, we designed a deployable Kirigami whisker sensor. The sensor can deploy from a flat state to a sensing state while whisker stiffness and initial pop-up angle can be tuned by adjusting the pre-stretch strain. Preliminary results ... |
Design and Characterisation of a Soft Barometric Sensing Skin for Robotic Manipulation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981855/ | [
"Kieran Gilday",
"Louis Relandeau",
"Fumiya Iida",
"Kieran Gilday",
"Louis Relandeau",
"Fumiya Iida"
] | Soft sensorised skins are essential for improving robotic manipulation capabilities towards that of humans. Integration of sensors into existing robotic hands is challenging due to rigidity of components, low packing density or poor sensor response. We propose a sensorised skin, based-on barometric sensing, which can be molded over a skeletal robot hand. The sensors connect air chambers embedded i... |
A Virtual 2D Tactile Array for Soft Actuators Using Acoustic Sensing | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981225/ | [
"Vincent Wall",
"Oliver Brock",
"Vincent Wall",
"Oliver Brock"
] | We create a virtual 2D tactile array for soft pneumatic actuators using embedded audio components. We detect contact-specific changes in sound modulation to infer tactile information. We evaluate different sound representations and learning methods to detect even small contact variations. We demonstrate the acoustic tactile sensor array by the example of a PneuFlex actuator and use a Braille displ... |
FBG-Based Variable-Length Estimation for Shape Sensing of Extensible Soft Robotic Manipulators | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9981501/ | [
"Yiang Lu",
"Wei Chen",
"Zhi Chen",
"Jianshu Zhou",
"Yun–hui Liu",
"Yiang Lu",
"Wei Chen",
"Zhi Chen",
"Jianshu Zhou",
"Yun–hui Liu"
] | In this paper, we propose a novel variable-length estimation approach for shape sensing of extensible soft robots utilizing fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs). Shape reconstruction from FBG sensors has been increasingly developed for soft robots, while the narrow stretching range of FBG fiber makes it difficult to acquire accurate sensing results for extensible robots. Towards this limitation, we newly i... |
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