17 accepted papers
Shared autonomy methods, where a human operator and a robot arm work together, have enabled robots to complete a range of complex and highly variable tasks. Existing work primarily focuses on one human sharing autonomy with a <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http:/
Drones can provide a minimally-constrained adapting camera view to support robot telemanipulation. Furthermore, the drone view can be automated to reduce the burden on the operator during teleoperation. However, existing approaches do not focus on two important aspects of using a drone as an automat…
Many applications in robotics require computing a robot manipulator's "proximity" to a collision state in a given configuration. This collision proximity is commonly framed as a summation over closest Euclidean distances between many pairs of rigid shapes in a scene. Computing many such pairwise…
Remotely programming robots to execute tasks often relies on registering objects of interest in the robot's environment. Frequently, these tasks involve articulating objects such as opening or closing a valve. However, existing human-in-the-loop methods for registering objects do not consider articu…
In this work, we present a per-instant pose optimization method that can generate configurations that achieve specified pose or motion objectives as best as possible over a sequence of solutions, while also simultaneously avoiding collisions with static or dynamic obstacles in the environment. We ca…
Many tasks, particularly those involving interaction with the environment, are characterized by high variability, making robotic autonomy difficult. One flexible solution is to introduce the input of a human with superior experience and cognitive abilities as part of a shared autonomy policy. Howeve
Corrective Shared Autonomy is a method where human corrections are layered on top of an otherwise autonomous robot behavior. Specifically, a Corrective Shared Autonomy system leverages an external controller to allow corrections across a range of task variables (e.g., spinning speed of a tool, appli
Backchanneling behaviors on a robot, such as nodding, can make talking to a robot feel more natural and engaging by giving a sense that the robot is actively listening. For backchanneling to be effective, it is important that the timing of such cues is appropriate given the humans' conversational be…
Manipulations of a constrained object often use a non-rigid grasp that allows the object to rotate relative to the end effector. This orientation slip strategy is often present in natural human demonstrations, yet it is generally overlooked in methods to identify constraints from such demonstrations…
In this work, we present a novel sampling-based path planning method, called <i>SPRINT</i>. The method finds solutions for high dimensional path planning problems quickly and robustly. Its efficiency comes from minimizing the number of collision check samples. This reduction in sampling relies on he
In this paper, we present a meta-algorithm intended to accelerate many existing path optimization algorithms. The central idea of our work is to strategically break up a waypoint path into consecutive groupings called "pods," then optimize over various pods concurrently using parallel processing. Ea…
In this paper, we introduce a novel method to support remote telemanipulation tasks in complex environments by providing operators with an enhanced view of the task environment. Our method features a novel viewpoint adjustment algorithm designed to automatically mitigate occlusions caused by workspa…
We present a discrete-optimization technique for finding feasible robot arm trajectories that pass through provided 6-DOF Cartesian-space end-effector paths with high accuracy, a problem called pathwise-inverse kinematics. The output from our method consists of a path function of joint-angles that b…
We present an offline method to generate smooth, feasible motion for robot arms such that end-effector pose goals of a 6-DoF path are matched within acceptable limits specified by the user. Our approach aims to accurately match the position and orientation goals of the given path, and allows deviati…
How can we enable users to create effective, perception-driven task plans for collaborative robots? We conducted a 35-person user study with the Behavior Tree-based CoSTAR system to determine which strategies for end user creation of generalizable robot task plans are most usable and effctive. CoSTA…
We present a real-time motion-synthesis method for robot manipulators, called RelaxedIK, that is able to not only accurately match end-effector pose goals as done by traditional IK solvers, but also create smooth, feasible motions that avoid joint-space discontinuities, self-collisions, and kinemati…
Handovers of objects are critical interactions that frequently arise in physical collaborations. In such interactions, humans naturally monitor the pace and workload of their partners and adapt their handovers accordingly. In this paper, we investigate how robots designed to engage in physical colla…