14 accepted papers
We consider joint trajectory generation and tracking control for under-actuated robotic systems. A common solution is to use a layered control architecture, where the top layer uses a simplified model of system dynamics for trajectory generation, and the low layer ensures approximate tracking of thi…
We address the problem of efficient 3-D exploration in indoor environments for micro aerial vehicles with limited sensing capabilities and payload/power constraints. We develop an indoor exploration framework that uses learning to predict the occupancy of unseen areas, extracts semantic features, sa…
We consider a scenario where a team of robots with heterogeneous sensors must track a set of targets or hazards which may induce sensory failures on the robots. In particular, the likelihood of failures depends on the proximity between the targets and the robots. We propose a control framework that
Mobile manipulators have the potential to revolutionize modern agriculture, logistics and manufacturing. In this work, we present the design of a ground-based mobile manipulator for automated structure assembly. The proposed system is capable of autonomous localization, grasping, transportation and
Scalable training data generation is a critical problem in deep learning. We propose PennSyn2Real - a photo-realistic synthetic dataset consisting of more than 100 000 4K images of more than 20 types of micro aerial vehicles (MAVs). The dataset can be used to generate arbitrary numbers of training i
We present an algorithm for the concurrent assignment and planning of collision-free trajectories (DC-CAPT) for robots whose kinematics can be modeled as Dubins cars, i.e., robots constrained in terms of their initial orientation and their minimum turning radius. Coupling the assignment and trajecto…
Robots are ideally suited to performing simple tasks in dangerous environments. In this letter, we address the use of robots for inspection of nuclear reactors which may be contaminated by radiation. The geometry of a reactor vessel is three-dimensional with significant clutter. Accordingly, we prop
Autonomous flight through unknown environments in the presence of obstacles is a challenging problem for micro aerial vehicles (MAVs). A majority of the current state-of-art research assumes obstacles as opaque objects that can be easily sensed by optical sensors such as cameras or LiDARs. However i…
We autonomously pour from unknown symmetric containers found in a typical wet laboratory for the development of a robot-assisted, rapid experiment preparation system. The robot estimates the pouring container symmetric geometry, then leverages simulated pours as priors for a given fluid to pour prec
This letter considers the problem of reducing uncertainty about a physical process of interest by designing sensing trajectories for a team of robots. This active information gathering problem has applications in environmental monitoring, search and rescue, and security and surveillance. Our previou
Autonomous Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) have the potential to assist in real-life tasks involving grasping and transportation, but not before solving several difficult research challenges. In this work, we address the design, control, estimation, and planning problems for cooperative localization, g
Applications of safety, security, and rescue in robotics, such as multi-robot target tracking, involve the execution of information acquisition tasks by teams of mobile robots. However, in failure-prone or adversarial environments, robots get attacked, their communication channels get jammed, and th…
Event-based cameras are a new passive sensing modality with a number of benefits over traditional cameras, including extremely low latency, asynchronous data acquisition, high dynamic range, and very low power consumption. There has been a lot of recent interest and development in applying algorithm
Robotic pouring is an important step in improving the safety, productivity and repeatability in the biotechnology industry and generally increasing the effectiveness of robotics in human based environments. In this work we present a method to autonomously dispense a precise amount of fluid using onl…