24 accepted papers
This paper addresses the challenge of allocating heterogeneous resources among multiple agents in a decentralized manner. Our proposed method, Liquid-Graph-Time Clustering-IPPO, builds upon Independent Proximal Policy Optimization (IPPO) by integrating dynamic cluster consensus, a mechanism that all…
Magnetic actuation is a powerful, non-contact method for controlling milli-scale robots. However existing mobile magnetic field sources face a difficult trade-off. Single-coil end effectors are simple but underactuated, forcing complex and inefficient robot motions to steer objects. Conversely, mult…
This paper addresses the challenge of allocating heterogeneous resources among multiple agents in a decentralized manner. Our proposed method, Liquid-Graph-Time Clustering-IPPO, builds upon Independent Proximal Policy Optimization (IPPO) by integrating dynamic cluster consensus, a mechanism that all
Microrobotics implies actuation-related constraints that make safe telemanipulation particularly challenging. We present a haptic shared control system for electromagnetic-based telemanipulation of a pair of microrobots using a constrained optimization framework. Our contributions include: (1) a Qua
Variable stiffness of a remote robot is crucial for a teleoperation system to deal with challenging tasks. External stiffness command interfaces have emerged as a promising solution to regulating the remote robot stiffness because of the benefits of their accuracy, ergonomics, and avoidance of the “
This letter introduces an end-to-end trajectory planning algorithm tailored for multi-UAV systems that generates collision-free trajectories in environments populated with both static and dynamic obstacles, leveraging point cloud data. Our approach consists of a 2-branch neural network fed with sens
Multi-robot systems have gained increasing interest across various fields such as medicine, environmental monitoring, and more. Despite the evident advantages, the coordination of the swarm arises significant challenges for human operators, particularly concerning the cognitive burden needed for eff…
We present a decentralized connectivity-maintenance algorithm for controlling a group of quadrotor UAVs with limited field of view (FOV) and not sharing a common reference frame for collectively expressing measurements and commands. This is in contrast to the vast majority of previous works on this…
This paper considers a multi-robot team tasked with monitoring an environmental field of interest over long time horizons. The approach is based on a control-theoretic measure of the information collected by the robots, namely a norm of the constructability Gramian. This measure is leveraged in orde…
Neural Style Transfer (NST) refers to a class of algorithms able to manipulate an element, most often images, to adopt the appearance or style of another one. Each element is defined as a combination of Content and Style: the Content can be conceptually defined as the “what” and the Style as the “ho…
This letter presents an adaptive impedance control architecture for robotic teleoperation of contact tasks featuring continuous interaction with the environment. We use Learning from Demonstration (LfD) as a framework to learn variable stiffness control policies. Then, the learnt state-varying stiff
We present a haptic teleoperation system capable of steering flexible needles under ultrasound imaging toward a target. With respect to similar works, this approach enables intuitive control of the needle motion while providing the user with 3D navigation and needle tip cutting force using a combina
Teams of coordinated robots have been proven useful in several high-impact applications, including urban search and rescue (USAR) and disaster response. In this context, we present a decentralized haptic-enabled connectivity-maintenance control framework for heterogeneous human-robot teams. The prop
We propose a novel shared control and active perception framework combining the skills of a human operator in accomplishing complex tasks with the capabilities of a mobile robot in autonomously maximizing the information acquired by the onboard sensors for improving its state estimation. The human o
As robotic systems become more flexible and intelligent, they must be able to move into environments with a high degree of uncertainty or clutter, such as our homes, workplaces, and the outdoors. In these unstructured scenarios, it is possible that the body of the robot collides with its surrounding…
Robot-assisted cutting is considered an important task in several fields, such as robotic surgery, nuclear decommissioning, waste management, and manufacturing. Despite the complex dexterity requirements of cutting tasks, very simple mechanically-linked master-slave manipulators still dominate many…
Augmented reality (AR) enriches our physical world with digital content and media, such as three-dimensional models and videos, overlaying in real time the camera view of our smartphone, tablet, laptop, or glasses. Despite the recent massive interest for this technology, it is still not possible to
This letter presents a wearable haptic device for the forearm and its application in robotic teleoperation. The device is able to provide skin stretch, pressure, and vibrotactile stimuli. Two servo motors, housed in a 3D printed lightweight platform, actuate an elastic fabric belt, wrapped around th
We present a wearable skin stretch device for the forearm. It is composed of four cylindrical end effectors, evenly distributed around the user's forearm. They can generate independent skin stretch stimuli at the palmar, dorsal, ulnar, and radial sides of the arm. When the four end effectors rotate
We propose novel haptic guidance methods for a dual-arm telerobotic manipulation system, which are able to deal with several different constraints, such as collisions, joint limits, and singularities. We combine the haptic guidance with shared-control algorithms for autonomous orientation control an
Small size and low weight are critical requirements for wearable and portable haptic interfaces, making it essential to work toward the optimization of their sensing and actuation systems. This letter presents a new approach for task-driven design optimization of fingertip cutaneous haptic devices.
This paper presents a novel optimization-based passivity control algorithm for haptic-enabled bilateral teleoperation systems involving multiple degrees of freedom. In particular, in the context of energy-bounding control, the contribution focuses on the implementation of a passivity layer for an ex…
Robotic telemanipulators are already widely used in nuclear decommissioning sites for handling radioactive waste. However, currently employed systems are still extremely primitive, making the handling of these materials prohibitively slow and ineffective. As the estimated cost for the decommissionin…
Robotic teleoperation in cluttered environments is attracting increasing attention for its potential in hazardous scenarios, disaster response, and telemaintenance. Although haptic feedback has been proven effective in such applications, commercially-available grounded haptic interfaces still show s…