118 accepted papers
For many complex tasks, multi-finger robot hands are poised to revolutionize how we interact with the world, but reliably grasping objects remains a significant challenge. We focus on the problem of synthesizing grasps for multi-finger robot hands that, given an target object's geometry and pose, co…
The Dubins Moving Target Traveling Salesman Problem with Obstacles (Dubins MT-TSP-O) seeks an obstacle-free trajectory for an agent with a fixed speed and minimum turning radius that intercepts several moving targets. To tackle this NP-hard problem, we introduce the Lazy Iterated Random Generalized …
This paper explores traversability estimation for robot navigation. A key bottleneck in traversability estimation lies in efficiently achieving reliable and robust predictions while accurately encoding both geometric and semantic information across diverse environments. We introduce Navigation via M…
Intercepting fast moving objects, by its very nature, is challenging because of its tight time constraints. This problem becomes further complicated in the presence of sensor noise because noisy sensors provide, at best, incomplete information, which results in a distribution over target states to b…
The moving target traveling salesman problem with obstacles (MT-TSP-O) seeks an obstacle-free trajectory for an agent that intercepts a given set of moving targets, each within specified time windows, and returns to the agent's starting position. Each target moves with a constant velocity within its
Future ground logistics missions will require multiple robots to travel in a convoy between locations. As each location may require a different number of robots (e.g. resupply vehicles), these missions will require a mutable convoy formation structure that may be divided to meet operational needs at
Loop closure is critical in Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) systems to reduce accumulative drift and ensure global mapping consistency. However, conventional methods struggle in perceptually aliased environments, such as narrow pipes, due to vector quantization, feature sparsity, and re
Despite having fewer neurons than more complex life forms, insects are still capable of producing astonishing locomotive behaviors, such as traversing diverse environments and making rapid gait adaptations after extreme injury or autotomy. Biologists attribute this to a chain of segmental neuron clu
This paper considers a Multi-Agent Motion Planning (MAMP) problem that seeks collision-free paths for multiple agents from their respective start to goal locations among static obstacles, while minimizing the arrival times of the agents with linear dynamics. Among existing approaches such as graph s
When agents must execute multiple tasks at spatially distinct locations, it is common to formulate and solve a Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) to find the order of locations (targets) that requires the smallest travel cost. Approaching such task sequencing problems as a TSP is restrictive, as it re
Robotic search and rescue, exploration, and inspection require trajectory planning across a variety of domains. A popular approach to trajectory planning for these types of missions is ergodic search, which biases a trajectory to spend time in parts of the exploration domain that are believed to con
This letter considers a generalization of the Path Finding (PF) problem with refuelling constraints referred to as the Gas Station Problem (GSP). Similar to PF, given a graph where vertices are gas stations with known fuel prices, and edge costs are the gas consumption between the two vertices, GSPs
Multi-Agent Motion Planning (MAMP) seeks collision-free trajectories for multiple agents from their respective start to goal locations among static obstacles, while minimizing a cost function over the trajectories. Existing approaches for this problem include graph-based, Mix-Integer Programming (MI
In this work, we consider the problem of multiagent informative path planning (IPP) for robots whose sensor visibility continuously changes as a consequence of a time-varying natural phenomenon. We leverage ergodic trajectory optimization (ETO), which generates paths such that the amount of time an
This paper focuses on the motion planning problem for serial articulated robots with revolute joints under kinematic constraints. Many motion planners leverage iterative local optimization methods but are often trapped in local minima due to non-convexity of the problem. A key reason for the non-con
We develop a coverage approach for heterogeneous agents that leverages the different sensing and motion capabilities of a team. Coverage performance is measured using ergodicity, which when optimized balances exploitation versus exploration, where areas of interest are indicated with an information
This paper introduces a new formulation that finds the optimum for the Moving-Target Traveling Salesman Problem (MT-TSP), which seeks to find a shortest path for an agent, that starts at a depot, visits a set of moving targets exactly once within their assigned time-windows, and returns to the depot…
Multi-Agent Combinatorial Path Finding (MCPF) seeks collision-free paths for multiple agents from their start to goal locations, while visiting a set of intermediate target locations in the middle of the paths. MCPF is challenging as it involves both planning collision-free paths for multiple agents
In this paper, we present a novel motion planning algorithm that inherits the strengths of both optimization and search-based planners. Optimization-based planners use the gradient of an objective function to generate a desired path, whereas search-based planners operate on a graph capturing the sal…
Robots designed for in-pipe navigation, inspection, and repair require flexibility for intricate pipeline traversal and the strength to carry payloads. However, conventional wheeled in-pipe robots face challenges in simultaneously achieving both substantial flexibility and payload-carrying capacity.
We develop a planner that directs robots to construct a 3D target structure composed of blocks. The robots themselves are cubes of the same size as the blocks, and they may place, carry, or remove one block at a time. When moving, robots are also allowed to climb or descend a block. A construction p…
Smooth, collision-free motion planning is a fundamental challenge in robotics with a wide range of applications such as automated manufacturing, search \& rescue, underwater exploration, etc. Graphs of Convex Sets (GCS) is a recent method for synthesizing smooth trajectories by decomposing the plann…
Information-based coverage directs robots to move over an area to optimize a pre-defined objective function based on some measure of information. Our prior work determined that the spectral decomposition of an information map can be used to guide a set of heterogeneous agents, each with different se…
In deep metric learning, the triplet loss has emerged as a popular method to learn many computer vision and natural language processing tasks such as facial recognition, object detection, and visual-semantic embeddings. One issue that plagues the triplet loss is network collapse, an undesirable phen…
Trajectory optimization is a widely used technique in robot motion planning for letting the dynamics of the system shape and synthesize complex behaviors. Several previous works have shown its benefits in high-dimensional continuous state spaces and under differential constraints. However, long time
We are interested in studying sports with robots and starting with the problem of intercepting a projectile moving toward a robot manipulator equipped with a shield. To successfully perform this task, the robot needs to (i) detect the incoming projectile, (ii) predict the projectile’s future motion,…
Ultrasound scanning is an efficient imaging modality preferred for quick medical procedures. However, due to the lack of skilled sonographers, researchers have developed many Robotic Ultrasound System (RUS) prototypes for various procedures. Most of these systems have a human-in-the-loop and require…
The discovery of ocean worlds such as Enceladus, Titan, and Europa motivates the development of versatile autonomous mobility systems to enable the next era of space exploration where there is large uncertainty in terrain specifications due to a lack of prior surface reconnaissance missions. To expl…
Computing the distance from a point to a triangle mesh is a key computational step in robotics pipelines such as registration and collision detection, with applications to path planning, SLAM, and RGB-D vision. Numerous techniques to accelerate this computation have been developed, many of which use…
Limbless robots have the potential to maneuver through cluttered environments that conventional robots cannot traverse. As illustrated in their biological counterparts such as snakes and nematodes, limbless locomotors can benefit from interactions with obstacles, yet such obstacle-aided locomotion (…
Control policy learning for modular robot locomotion has previously been limited to proprioceptive feedback and flat terrain. This paper develops policies for modular systems with vision traversing more challenging environments. These modular robots can be reconfigured to form many different designs…
Agents that can build temporally abstract representations of their environment are better able to understand their world and make plans on extended time scales, with limited computational power and modeling capacity. However, existing methods for automatically learning temporally abstract world mode…
Consider a Multi-Agent Collective Construction (MACC) problem that aims to generate a plan for fictitious cubic robots to build a three-dimensional structure comprised of cubic blocks. These cubic robots can carry one cubic block at a time; robots may move left, right, forwards, backward, or climb u…
Search and rescue applications often need multiple agents to complete a set of conflicting tasks. This paper studies a Multi-Agent Multi-Objective Ergodic Search (MA-MO-ES) approach to this problem where each objective or task is to cover a domain subject to an information map. The goal is to alloca…
Robotic explorers are essential tools for gathering information about regions that are inaccessible to humans. For applications like planetary exploration or search and rescue, robots use prior knowledge about the area to guide their search. Ergodic search methods find trajectories that effectively…
We consider a search problem where a robot has one or more types of sensors, each suited to detecting different types of targets or target information. Often, information in the form of a distribution of possible target locations, or locations of interest, may be available to guide the search. When…
This paper presents a Video Inpainting algorithm that enables monocular-camera-laser-based pipeline inspection robots to capture both color and 3D information using only one video stream. Conventional monocular-camera-laser inspection methods are limited to capture either 2D color images or 3D point…
Robot-guided vascular access has the potential to deliver urgent medical care in situations where medical personnel are unavailable. However, this technique requires accurate and reliable segmentation of anatomical landmarks in the body. For the ultrasound imaging modality, obtaining large amounts o…
Multi-Agent Path Finding (MA-PF) computes a set of collision-free paths for multiple agents from their respective starting locations to destinations. This paper considers a generalization of MA-PF called Multi-Agent Teamwise Cooperative Path Finding (MA-TC-PF), where agents are grouped as multiple t…
Robots often have to perform manipulation tasks in close proximity to people (Fig 1). As such, it is desirable to use a robot arm that has limited joint torques so as to not injure the nearby person. Unfortunately, these limited torques then limit the payload capability of the arm. By using contact…
Increased usage of additive manufacturing (AM) in various industries has solidified its role as an advanced manufacturing technique. However, there is an inherent lack of reliability in AM processes, particularly common in extrusion or deposition-based methods due to the stochastic nature of ma-teri…
In a structural collapse, debris piles up in a chaotic and unstable manner, creating pockets and void spaces that are difficult to see or access. Often, these regions have the highest chances of concealing survivors and identifying such regions can increase the success of a search and rescue (SAR) o…
This paper presents a deep-learning model for deformable registration of ultrasound images at online rates, which we call U-RAFT. As its name suggests, U-RAFT is based on RAFT, a convolutional neural network for estimating optical flow. U-RAFT, however, can be trained in an unsupervised manner and c…
Robotic solutions for pipeline inspection promise enhancement of human labor by automating data acquisition for pipe condition assessments, which are vital for the early detection of pipe anomalies and the prevention of hazardous leakages and explosions. Through simultaneous localization and mapping…
Robots have the potential to perform search for a variety of applications under different scenarios. Our work is motivated by humanitarian assistant and disaster relief (HADR) where often it is critical to find signs of life in the presence of conflicting criteria, objectives, and information. We be…
Autonomous Exploration Development Environment is an open-source repository released to facilitate development of high-level planning algorithms and integration of com-plete autonomous navigation systems. The repository contains representative simulation environment models, fundamental navigation mo…
Ultrasound scanning is an imaging technique that aids medical professionals in diagnostics and interventional procedures. However, a trained human-in-the-loop (HITL) with a radiologist is required to perform the scanning procedure. We seek to create a novel ultrasound system that can provide imaging…
Conventional Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF) problems aim to compute an ensemble of collision-free paths for multiple agents from their respective starting locations to pre-allocated destinations. This work considers a generalized version of MAPF called Multi-Agent Combinatorial Path Finding (MCPF)…
Tactile sensing typically involves active exploration of unknown surfaces and objects, making it especially effective at processing the characteristics of materials and textures. A key property extracted by human tactile perception in material classification is surface roughness, which relies on mea…
Robots have been used in all sorts of automation, and yet the design of robots remains mainly a manual task. We seek to provide design tools to automate the design of robots themselves. An important challenge in robot design automation is the large and complex design search space which grows exponen…
Reorientation (turning in plane) plays a critical role for all robots in any field application, especially those that in confined spaces. While important, reorientation remains a relatively unstudied problem for robots, including limbless mechanisms, often called snake robots. Instead of looking at…
One of the preeminent obstacles to scaling multi-agent reinforcement learning to large numbers of agents is assigning credit to individual agents’ actions. In this letter, we address this credit assignment problem with an approach that we call <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" x
Modular robots are made up of a set of components which can be configured and reconfigured to form customized robots for a wide range of tasks. Fully utilizing the flexibility of modular robots is challenging, as it requires the identification of optimal modular designs for each given task, often wi…
The long-term goal of this work is to enable agents with low-information sensors to perform tasks usually restricted to ones with more sophisticated, high-information sensing capabilities. Our approach is to regulate the motion of these low-information agents to obtain “high-information” results. As…
Incrementalgraph search algorithms such as D* Lite reuse previous, and perhaps partial, searches to expedite subsequent path planning tasks. In this article, we are interested in developing incremental graph search algorithms for path finding problems to simultaneously optimize multiple objectives s
Path planning among dynamic obstacles is a fundamental problem in Robotics with numerous applications. In this work, we investigate a problem called Multi-Objective Path Planning with Dynamic Obstacles (MOPPwDO), which requires finding collision-free Pareto-optimal paths amid obstacles moving along
This paper describes an online method to calibrate certain kinematic parameters of legged robots, including leg lengths, that can be difficult to measure offline due to dynamic deformation effects and rolling contacts. A kinematic model of the robot’s legs that depends on these parameters is used, a
Methods for state estimation that rely on visual information are challenging on legged robots due to rapid changes in the viewing angle of onboard cameras. In this work, we show that by leveraging structure in the way that the robot locomotes, the accuracy of visual-inertial SLAM in these challengin…
Effectively disassembling and recovering materials from waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is a critical step in moving global supply chains from carbon-intensive, mined materials to recycled and renewable ones. Conventional recycling processes rely on shredding and sorting waste strea…
One of the main obstacles to 3D semantic segmentation is the significant amount of endeavor required to generate expensive point-wise annotations for fully supervised training. To alleviate manual efforts, we propose GIDSeg, a novel approach that can simultaneously learn segmentation from sparse ann
In this work, we focus on the autonomous navigation of snake robots in densely-cluttered environments, where collisions between the robot and obstacles are frequent, which could happen often in disaster scenarios, underground caves, or grassland/forest environments. This work takes the view that obs…
This paper presents a novel factor graph-based approach to solve the discrete-time finite-horizon Linear Quadratic Regulator problem subject to auxiliary linear equality constraints within and across time steps. We represent such optimal control problems using constrained factor graphs and optimize…
This paper describes a novel framework for autonomous exploration in large and complex environments. We show that the framework is efficient as a result of its hierarchical structure, where at one level it maintains a sparse representation of the environment and at another level, a dense representat…
Real-time 3D place recognition is a crucial technology to recover from localization failure in applications like autonomous driving, last-mile delivery, and service robots. However, it is challenging for 3D place retrieval methods to be accurate, efficient, and robust to the variant viewpoints diffe
Traditional geometric mechanics models used in locomotion analysis rely heavily on systems having symmetry in SE(2) (i.e., the dynamics and constraints are invariant with respect to a system’s position and orientation) to simplify motion planning. As a result, the symmetry assumption prevents locomo…
Quadrotors can achieve aggressive flight by tracking complex maneuvers and rapidly changing directions. Planning for aggressive flight with trajectory optimization could be incredibly fast, even in higher dimensions, and can account for dynamics of the quadrotor, however, only provides a locally opt
Multi-agent path finding (MAPF) determines an ensemble of collision-free paths for multiple agents between their respective start and goal locations. Among the available MAPF planners for workspace modeled as a graph, A*-based approaches have been widely investigated due to their guarantees on compl…
In multi-agent applications such as surveillance and logistics, fleets of mobile agents are often expected to coordinate and safely visit a large number of goal locations as efficiently as possible. The multi-agent planning problem in these applications involves allocating and sequencing goals for e…
Contact planning is crucial to the locomotion performance of limbless robots. Typically; the pattern by which contact is made and broken between the mechanism and its environment determines the motion of the robot. The design of these patterns; often called contact patterns; is a difficult problem.…
Conventional multi-agent path planners typically compute an ensemble of paths while optimizing a single objective, such as path length. However, many applications may require multiple objectives, say fuel consumption and completion time, to be simultaneously optimized during planning and these crite…
Snake robots composed of alternating single-axis pitch and yaw joints have many internal degrees of freedom, which make them capable of versatile three-dimensional locomotion. In motion planning process, snake robot motions are often designed kinematically by a chronological sequence of continuous b
Conventional multi-agent path planners typically determine a path that optimizes a single objective, such as path length. Many applications, however, may require multiple objectives, say time-to-completion and fuel use, to be simultaneously optimized in the planning process. Often, these criteria ma
We present a method for autonomous exploration in complex three-dimensional (3D) environments. Our method demonstrates exploration faster than the current state-of-the-art using a hierarchical framework — one level maintains data densely and computes a detailed path within a local planning horizon;…
Three-dimensional reconstruction in confined spaces is important for the manufacturing of aircraft wings, inspection of narrow pipes, examination of turbine blades, etc. It is also challenging because confined spaces tend to lack a positioning infrastructure, and conventional sensors often cannot de…
We present a method for localizing a single camera with respect to a point cloud map in indoor and outdoor scenes. The problem is challenging because correspondences of local invariant features are inconsistent across the domains between image and 3D. The problem is even more challenging as the meth…
Sidewinder rattlesnakes generate movement through coordinated lateral and vertical traveling waves of body curvature. Previous biological and robotic studies have demonstrated that proper control and coordination of these two waves enables robust and versatile locomotion in complex environments. How…
State-of-the-art coverage planning methods perform well in simple environments but take an ineffectively long time to converge to an optimal solution in complex three-dimensional (3D) environments. As more structures are present in the same volume of workspace, these methods slow down as they spend…
In a geometric mechanics framework, the configuration space is decomposed into a shape space and a position space. The internal motion of the system is prescribed by a closed loop in the shape space, which causes net motion in the position space. If the shape space is a simply connected domain in an…
Human beings and animals are capable of recognizing places from a previous journey when viewing them under different environmental conditions (e.g., illuminations and weathers). This paper seeks to provide robots with a human-like place recognition ability using a new point cloud feature learning me…
Decentralized multi-agent reinforcement learning has been demonstrated to be an effective solution to large multiagent control problems. However, agents typically can only make decisions based on local information, resulting in suboptimal performance in partially-observable settings. The addition of
Recent approaches to multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) with inter-agent communication have often overlooked important considerations of real-world communication networks, such as limits on bandwidth. In this paper, we propose an approach to learning sparse discrete communication through back…
Snake robots have the potential to locomote through tightly packed spaces, but turning effectively within unmodelled and unsensed environments remains challenging. Inspired by a behavior observed in the tiny nematode worm C. elegans, we propose a novel in-place turning gait for elongated limbless ro…
Motion planning for mobile robots with many degrees-of-freedom (DoF) is challenging due to their high-dimensional configuration spaces. To manage this curse of dimensionality, this paper proposes a new hierarchical framework that decomposes the system into sub-systems (based on shared capabilities o…
In the future, human-robot interaction will include collaboration in close-quarters where the environment geometry is partially unknown. As a means for enabling such interaction, this paper presents a multi-modal sensor array capable of contact detection and localization, force sensing, proximity se…
Small-scale robots have the potential to impact many areas of medicine and manufacturing including targeted drug delivery, telemetry and micromanipulation. This paper develops an algorithmic framework for regulating external magnetic fields to induce motion in millimeter-scale robots in a viscous li…
Multi-agent path finding (MAPF) is an essential component of many large-scale, real-world robot deployments, from aerial swarms to warehouse automation. However, despite the community's continued efforts, most state-of-the-art MAPF planners still rely on centralized planning and scale poorly past a
This letter addresses the challenge of determining the optimal design of a customizable robot for a given task. We present a motion planner that not only prescribes a path, but also synthesizes the robot design to follow that path. Our approach treats design variables as part of an inverse kinematic
In this paper, we focus on the problem of directing the gaze of a vision system mounted to the body of a high-degree-of-freedom (DOF) legged robot for active perception deployments. In particular, we consider the case where the vision system is rigidly attached to the robot's body (i.e., without any…
We describe a surgical system that autonomously searches for tumors and dynamically displays a computer graphic model of them super-imposed on the organ (or in our case, phantom). Once localized, the phantom is tracked in real time and augmented with overlaid stiffness information in 3D. We believe…
Inspired by the locomotor nervous system of vertebrates, central pattern generator (CPG) models can be used to design gaits for articulated robots, such as crawling, swimming or legged robots. Incorporating sensory feedback for gait adaptation in these models can improve the locomotive performance o…
Many quadrupedal animals have lateral degrees of freedom in their backs that assist locomotion. This paper seeks to use a robotic model to demonstrate that back bending assists not only forward motion, but also lateral and turning motions. This paper uses geometric mechanics to prescribe gaits that…
Decentralized control architectures, such as those conventionally defined by central pattern generators, independently coordinate spatially distributed portions of articulated bodies to achieve system-level objectives. State of the art distributed algorithms for reinforcement learning employ a diffe…
Inspired by the ability of animals to rely on proprioception and vestibular feedback to adapt their gait, we propose a modular framework for autonomous locomotion that relies on force sensing and inertial information. A first controller exploits anti-compliance, a new application of positive force f…
Place recognition is one of the major challenges for the LiDAR-based effective localization and mapping task. Traditional methods are usually relying on geometry matching to achieve place recognition, where a global geometry map need to be restored. In this paper, we accomplish the place recognition…
In this work, we develop an approach for guiding robots to automatically localize and find the shapes of tumors and other stiff inclusions present in the anatomy. Our approach uses Gaussian processes to model the stiffness distribution and active learning to direct the palpation path of the robot. T…
Pose estimation is central to several robotics applications such as registration, hand-eye calibration, SLAM, etc. Online pose estimation methods typically use Gaussian distributions to describe the uncertainty in the pose parameters. Such a description can be inadequate when using parameters s…
Search-based planning that uses a state lattice has been successfully applied in many applications but its utility is limited when confronted with complex problems represented by a lattice with many nodes and edges with high branching factor. However, in many seemingly complex problems, proper “form…
This work presents the design and evaluation of a low-cost tri-axial force sensor, that has been developed to regain the sense of touch in minimally invasive surgeries (MIS). The force sensor uses an array of force sensitive resistors (FSR) with a mechanically pre-loaded structure to perform the for…
In search and surveillance applications in robotics, it is intuitive to spatially distribute robot trajectories with respect to the probability of locating targets in the domain. Ergodic coverage is one such approach to trajectory planning in which a robot is directed such that the percentage of tim…
Modular robots can be rapidly reconfigured into customized articulated legged morphologies capable of mobile manipulation and inspection. However, current gait generation methods do not keep pace with the speed of physical reconfiguration. This work focuses on quickly creating gaits for modular legg…
Palpation is a key diagnostic aid for physicians when looking for tissue abnormalities. This letter focuses on autonomous robotic palpation for locating regions of interest representing possible tumor locations or underlying anatomy (e.g., a hidden artery). Many approaches direct the robot to exhaus
Registering a surgical tool to an a priori model of the environment is an important first step in computer-aided surgery. In this paper we present an approach for simultaneous registration and stiffness mapping using blind exploration of flexible environments. During contact-based exploration of fle
Many applications in robotics such as registration, object tracking, sensor calibration, etc. use Kalman filters to estimate a time invariant SE(3) element by locally linearizing a non-linear measurement model. Linearization-based filters tend to suffer from inaccurate estimates, and in some cases d…
Snake robots can contact their environments along their whole bodies. This distributed contact makes them versatile and robust locomotors, but also makes controlling them a chal- lenging problem involving high-dimensional configuration spaces, with no direct way to break their motion down into âdr…
Conventional path planning algorithms compute a single path through the configuration space. There is no guarantee that a physical robot will be able to track the trajectory while avoiding collisions, particularly in the presence of environmental perturbations and errors in the process model. Sequen…
Inertial reorientation of airborne articulated bodies has been an active area of research in the robotics community, as this behavior can help guide dynamic robots to a safe landing with minimal damage. The main objective of this work is emulating the aggressive and large angle correction maneuvers,…
Having many degrees of freedom is both a blessing and a curse. A mechanism with a large number of degrees of freedom can better comply to and therefore better move in complex environments. Yet, possessing many degrees of freedom is only an advantage if the system is capable of coordinating them to a…
Gaits are crucial to the performance of locomotors. However, it is often difficult to design effective gaits for complex locomotors. Geometric mechanics offers powerful gait design tools, but the utilities of these tools have been limited to systems with two joints. Using shape basis functions, it i…
One of the goals of computer-aided surgery is to register intraoperative data to preoperative model of the anatomy, and hence add complementary information that can facilitate the task of surgical navigation. In this context, mechanical palpation can reveal critical anatomical features such as arter
The cooperative path planning problem seeks to determine a path for a group of robots which form temporary teams to perform tasks that require multiple robots. The multi-scale effects of simultaneously coordinating many robots distributed across the workspace while also tightly coordinating robots i…
Swarms consist of large numbers of individual agents that generally maintain no fixed relative positions, which makes describing the behavior of the swarm as a whole difficult. Furthermore, the high number of agents leads to frequent occlusions that prevent observations of the entire swarm. In this…
Our research group has started a collaboration that analyzes data collected from biological snakes to provide insight on how to better program snake robots. Most data collected on biological snakes views the snakes from above and thus can only detect motion in the horizontal plane. However, both our…
Limbless locomotion, evidenced by both biological and robotic snakes, capitalizes on these systems' redundant degrees of freedom to negotiate complicated environments. While the versatility of locomotion methods provided by a snake-like form is of great advantage, the difficulties in both representi…
Assembly of large structures requires large fixtures, often referred to as monuments. Their cost and massive size limit flexibility and scalability of the manufacturing process. Numerous small mobile robots can replace these large structures and, therefore, replicate the efficiency of the assembly l…
Successful deployment of a snake robot in search and rescue tasks requires the capability of generating controls which can adapt to unknown environments in real-time. However, available motion generation techniques can be computationally expensive and lack the ability to adapt to the surroundings. T…
Biologically inspired robots perform many interesting and useful behaviors, but to effectively emulate their biological counterparts, robots often need to possess many degrees of freedom, complicating their mechanical design and making it difficult to apply standard control and motion planning strat…
The snakeboard is a well-studied example for mechanical systems analysis, largely because of its simultaneous richness in behavior and simplicity in design. However, few snakeboard models incorporate dissipative friction in the traveling direction and skidding as a violation of the rigid nonholonomi…
The correct way to design controllers for dynamic robots is still very much an open question. This is in a large part due to the complexity and uncertainty in modeling their nonlinear dynamics. In this work, we focus on deriving concise dynamic expressions for a particular class of robots that can b…