Katsu Yamane — accepted AI-conference papers

2026

Real-Time Seam Tracking for Robotic Welding Via Registration-Based Deformation Estimation

Surag Balajepalli, Amrish Baskaran, Naik Shounak, Christopher Eubel, Abolfazl Meyarian, Andong Dai +3

ICRA 2026poster

Arc welding induces thermal deformation that continuously displaces the seam path during execution, causing the robot to miss the joint on long seams. We present a real-time seam tracking system with three principal contributions: (1) a constrained ICP registration of live leading-laser scans agains…

Cited by 0 Scholar ↗

2023

Hybrid Learning- and Model-Based Planning and Control of In-Hand Manipulation

Rana Soltani Zarrin, Rianna Jitosho, Katsu Yamane

IROS 2023poster

This paper presents a hierarchical framework for planning and control of in-hand manipulation of a rigid object involving grasp changes using fully-actuated multifin-gered robotic hands. While the framework can be applied to the general dexterous manipulation, we focus on a more complex definition o…

Cited by 8 Source ↗Scholar ↗

2022

A Large-Area Wearable Soft Haptic Device Using Stacked Pneumatic Pouch Actuation

Cara M. Nunez, Brian H. Do, Andrew K. Low, Laura H. Blumenschein, Katsu Yamane, Allison M. Okamura

IROS 2022poster

While haptics research has traditionally focused on the fingertips and hands, other locations on the body provide large areas of skin that could be utilized to relay large-area haptic sensations. Researchers have thus developed wearable devices that use distributed vibrotactile actuators and distrib…

Cited by 8 Source ↗Scholar ↗

2021

Admittance Control With Unknown Location of Interaction

Katsu Yamane

RA-L 2021

Admittance control is commonly used for controlling robots that physically interact with the environment or objects. Its goal is to realize a desired admittance property between the interaction wrench and robot motion. The original admittance control requires the interaction wrench and motion be con

Cited by 9 Source ↗Scholar ↗

2021

Large-Area Conformable Sensor for Proximity, Light Touch, and Pressure-Based Gesture Recognition

Mirza S. Sarwar, Katsu Yamane

IROS 2021poster

In this paper, we present a capacitance-based sensor array for physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) applications that can measure the proximity, near-zero-force (NZF) contacts, and pressure between a robot and human body. The top segment including the electrodes is made of soft, stretchable mater…

Cited by 5 Source ↗Scholar ↗

2021

Learning Dense Visual Correspondences in Simulation to Smooth and Fold Real Fabrics

Aditya Ganapathi, Priya Sundaresan, Brijen Thananjeyan, Ashwin Balakrishna, Daniel Seita, Jennifer Grannen +7

ICRA 2021poster

Robotic fabric manipulation is challenging due to the infinite dimensional configuration space, self-occlusion, and complex dynamics of fabrics. There has been significant prior work on learning policies for specific fabric manipulation tasks, but comparatively less focus on algorithms which can per…

Cited by 84 Source ↗Scholar ↗

2021

Macro-Mini Actuation of Pneumatic Pouches for Soft Wearable Haptic Displays

Brian H. Do, Allison M. Okamura, Katsu Yamane, Laura H. Blumenschein

ICRA 2021poster

Pneumatic wearable haptic devices can provide distributed pressure feedback to human operators during robot teleoperation and in virtual and augmented reality. However, these devices have an inherent trade-off between the spatial coverage of their pressure output and their resolution and dynamic res…

Cited by 15 Source ↗Scholar ↗

2020

Deep Imitation Learning of Sequential Fabric Smoothing From an Algorithmic Supervisor

Daniel Seita, Aditya Ganapathi, Ryan Hoque, Minho Hwang, Edward Cen, Ajay Kumar Tanwani +8

IROS 2020poster

Sequential pulling policies to flatten and smooth fabrics have applications from surgery to manufacturing to home tasks such as bed making and folding clothes. Due to the complexity of fabric states and dynamics, we apply deep imitation learning to learn policies that, given color (RGB), depth (D),…

Cited by 162 Source ↗Scholar ↗

2020

Kinematic Redundancy Resolution for Humanoid Robots by Human Motion Database

Katsu Yamane

RA-L 2020

In this letter, we present a method for resolving kinematic redundancy using a human motion database, with application to teleoperation of bimanual humanoid robots using low-cost devices. Handheld devices for virtual reality applications can realize low-cost interfaces for operating such robots but

Cited by 7 Source ↗Scholar ↗

2020

Learning Whole-Body Human-Robot Haptic Interaction in Social Contexts

Joseph Campbell, Katsu Yamane

ICRA 2020poster

This paper presents a learning-from-demonstration (LfD) framework for teaching human-robot social interactions that involve whole-body haptic interaction, i.e. direct human-robot contact over the full robot body. The performance of existing LfD frameworks suffers in such interactions due to the high…

Cited by 15 Source ↗Scholar ↗

2020

VisuoSpatial Foresight for Multi-Step, Multi-Task Fabric Manipulation

Ryan Hoque, Daniel Seita, Ashwin Balakrishna, Aditya Ganapathi, Ajay Tanwani, Nawid Jamali +3

RSS 2020poster

Robotic fabric manipulation has applications in home robotics, textiles, senior care and surgery. Existing fabric manipulation techniques, however, are designed for specific tasks, making it difficult to generalize across different but related tasks. We extend the Visual Foresight framework to learn…

Cited by 126 Source ↗PDF ↗code ↗Scholar ↗

2019

Perception of Pedestrian Avoidance Strategies of a Self-Balancing Mobile Robot

Shih-Yun Lo, Katsu Yamane, Ken-ichiro Sugiyama

IROS 2019poster

Mobile robots moving in crowded environments have to navigate among pedestrians safely. Ideally, the way the robot avoids the pedestrians should not only be physically safe but also perceived safe and comfortable. Despite the rich literature in collision-free crowd navigation, limited research has b…

Cited by 31 Source ↗Scholar ↗

2018

Design and Fabrication of a Bipedal Robot Using Serial-Parallel Hybrid Leg Mechanism

Kevin G. Gim, Joohyung Kim, Katsu Yamane

IROS 2018poster

In this paper, we present the design and performance evaluation of a bipedal robot that utilizes the Hybrid Leg mechanism. It is a leg mechanism that achieves 6 DOF with a combined structure of serial and parallel mechanism. It is designed to have a light structural inertia and large workspace for a…

Cited by 33 Source ↗Scholar ↗

2018

Design of a Serial-Parallel Hybrid Leg for a Humanoid Robot

Kevin G. Gim, Joohyung Kim, Katsu Yamane

ICRA 2018poster

This paper presents a 6 DOF leg mechanism for a humanoid robot. The proposed Hybrid Leg is designed to combine serial and parallel mechanisms and consists of a pair of twin 3 DOF serial chains in parallel. A 5-bar-linkage mechanism is implemented to the serial mechanism to generate 2 DOF motion rega…

Cited by 30 Source ↗Scholar ↗

2018

Improving Model-Based Balance Controllers Using Reinforcement Learning and Adaptive Sampling

Visak C.V. Kumar, Sehoon Ha, Katsu Yamane

ICRA 2018poster

Balance control to recover from a wide range of disturbances is an important skill for humanoid robots. Traditionally, researchers have often designed a balance controller by applying optimal control theory on a simplified model that abstracts the full-body dynamics. However, the resulting controlle…

Cited by 6 Source ↗Scholar ↗

2018

Learning Hardware Dynamics Model from Experiments for Locomotion Optimization

Kuo Chen, Sehoon Ha, Katsu Yamane

IROS 2018poster

The hardware compatibility of legged locomotion is often illustrated by Zero Moment Point (ZMP) that has been extensively studied for decades. One of the most popular models for computing the ZMP is the linear inverted pendulum (LIP) model that expresses ZMP as a linear function of the center of mas…

Cited by 3 Source ↗Scholar ↗

2017

Joint Optimization of Robot Design and Motion Parameters using the Implicit Function Theorem

Sehoon Ha, Stelian Coros, Alexander Alspach, Joohyung Kim, Katsu Yamane

RSS 2017poster

We present a novel computational approach to optimizing the morphological design of robotic devices. Our framework takes as input a parameterized robot design, and a motion plan consisting of end-effector trajectories and/or a body trajectory. The algorithm we propose is used to optimize a set of de…

Cited by 98 Source ↗PDF ↗Scholar ↗

2017

Snapbot: A reconfigurable legged robot

Joohyung Kim, Alexander Alspach, Katsu Yamane

IROS 2017poster

We develop a reconfigurable legged robot, named Snapbot, to emulate configuration changes and various styles of legged locomotion. The body of Snapbot houses a microcontroller and a battery for untethered operation. The body also contains connections for communication and power to the modular legs.…

Cited by 37 Source ↗Scholar ↗

2016

Design of a hopping mechanism using a voice coil actuator: Linear elastic actuator in parallel (LEAP)

Zachary Batts, Joohyung Kim, Katsu Yamane

ICRA 2016

Among legged robots, hopping and running robots are useful because they can traverse terrain at high speeds and are a benchmark platform for locomotion actuators; if an actuator can power a hopping robot, it can power a walking robot. We aim to create a hopping mechanism for a small-scale, one-legge

Cited by 26 Source ↗Scholar ↗

2016

Task-based limb optimization for legged robots

Sehoon Ha, Stelian Coros, Alexander Alspach, Joohyung Kim, Katsu Yamane

IROS 2016poster

The design of legged robots is often inspired by animals evolved to excel at different tasks. However, while mimicking morphological features seen in nature can be very powerful, robots may need to perform motor tasks that their living counterparts do not. In the absence of designs that can be mimic…

Cited by 58 Source ↗Scholar ↗

2015

3D printed soft skin for safe human-robot interaction

Joohyung Kim, Alexander Alspach, Katsu Yamane

IROS 2015poster

The purpose of this research is the development of a soft skin module with a built-in airtight cavity in which air pressure can be sensed. A pressure feedback controller is implemented on a robotic system using this module for contact sensing and gentle grasping. The soft skin module is designed to…

Cited by 114 Source ↗Scholar ↗

2015

Adapting human motions to humanoid robots through time warping based on a general motion feasibility index

Yu Zheng, Katsu Yamane

ICRA 2015poster

Having human-like motions will make humanoid robots more predictable and safer for the people around them. An effective way to realize this would be to use human motions as reference. Due to different kinematic and dynamic properties between humans and humanoid robots, however, a human motion could…

Cited by 10 Source ↗Scholar ↗

2015

Development of a bipedal robot that walks like an animation character

Seungmoon Song, Joohyung Kim, Katsu Yamane

ICRA 2015poster

Our goal is to bring animation characters to life in the real world. We present a bipedal robot that looks like and walks like an animation character. We start from animation data of a character walking. We develop a bipedal robot which corresponds to lower part of the character following its kinema…

Cited by 20 Source ↗Scholar ↗

2015

Reducing hardware experiments for model learning and policy optimization

Sehoon Ha, Katsu Yamane

ICRA 2015poster

Conducting hardware experiment is often expensive in various aspects such as potential damage to the robot and the number of people required to operate the robot safely. Computer simulation is used in place of hardware in such cases, but it suffers from so-called simulation bias in which policies tu…

Cited by 28 Source ↗Scholar ↗