56 accepted papers
Robotic sole deburring is a key, yet underexplored, challenge in footwear automation, where the deformable nature of rubber, variability of burrs, and diversity of sole geometries make automation difficult. Existing deburring approaches typically rely on CAD models or large training datasets, and of…
This work presents a human-centered collaborative framework that integrates Preference-Based Optimization (PBO) and Dynamic Movement Primitives (DMPs) to optimize robot-assisted tasks such as painting. The system allows the operator to perform the process while the robot adapts its behavior in real-
The automatic manipulation of Deformable Linear Objects (DLOs) remains currently a challenge in robotics. Previous research on robotic DLOs manipulation has primarily addressed quasi-static DLO manipulation at low speeds, leaving the potential of dynamic DLO manipulation largely unexplored. This pap…
Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) is increasingly becoming a core element in modern industrial automation, as it enables the flexibility needed to meet diverse and rapidly changing production demands. However, a key challenge lies in combining production efficiency and flexibility. Robot decision-maki
Ensuring human safety in collaborative robotics can compromise efficiency because traditional safety measures increase robot cycle time when human interaction is frequent. This paper proposes a safety-aware approach to mitigate efficiency losses without assuming prior knowledge of safety logic. Usin
This paper addresses the optimization of human-robot collaborative work-cells before their physical deployment. Most of the times, such environments are designed based on the experience of the system integrators, often leading to sub-optimal solutions. Accurate simulators of the robotic cell, accoun
Physics-based simulations and learning-based models are vital for complex robotics tasks like deformable object manipulation and liquid handling. However, these models often struggle with accuracy due to epistemic uncertainty or the sim-to-real gap. For instance, accurately pouring liquid from one c
This work demonstrates the utility of dual-arm robots with dual-wrist force-torque sensors in manipulating a Deformable Linear Object (DLO) within an unknown environment that imposes constraints on the DLO’s movement through contacts and fixtures. We propose a strategy to estimate the pose of unknow…
This paper tackles the complex task of routing elastic deformable linear objects (DLOs) characterized by considerable stiffness, such as cables or hoses, which are already constrained at both ends. Specifically, a single arm robot is controlled to slide along the unknown contour of the cable, perfor…
Today, intelligent robotic manufacturing systems are reshaping the production industry. Using robots as actuators, multi-source sensors for perception, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) as decision-making systems, they can perform routine manufacturing tasks, surpassing the capabilities of traditiona…
This paper introduces a novel approach to address the problem of Physical Robot Interaction (PRI) during robot pushing tasks. The approach uses a data-driven forward model based on tactile predictions to inform the controller about potential future movements of the object being pushed, such as a str…
This paper presents an effective approach to enable performance improvement in human-robot collaboration scenarios. The problem is tackled from the perspective of speed and separation monitoring principle, which stems from the recently instituted safety standard. The proposed approach attempts to se…
This paper proposes a set of tactile based skills to perform robotic cable routing operations for deformable linear objects (DLOs) characterized by considerable stiffness and constrained at both ends. In particular, tactile data are exploited to reconstruct the shape of the grasped portion of the DL…
This paper deals with the challenging task of picking semi-deformable linear objects (SDLOs) from a bin. SDLOs are deformable elements, such as cables, joined to a rigid part as a connector. We propose a vision-based strategy to detect, classify and estimate the pose and the state (free or occluded)…
In human-robot collaboration, the mitigation of human physical workload is a crucial factor to avoid musculoskeletal disorders that might jeopardize the operator’s safety and job performance. In this work, we propose a novel, non-invasive method to estimate online the muscle fatigue experienced by t
In manual guidance robotic applications, like the handling of large and heavy objects in a cluttered environment, it is important to guarantee that the operator accurately reaches the goal position without collisions with working isles or other obstacles in the surrounding environment. When the tran
This paper introduces a novel approach for whole-body motion planning and dynamic occlusion avoidance. The proposed approach reformulates the visibility constraint as a likelihood maximization of visibility probability. In this formulation, we augment the primary cost function of a whole-body model…
In applications of human-robot physical interaction, it is important to guarantee high accuracy not only in terms of the position of the end-effector, but also in terms of its orientation. While translational movements are easily understandable for a human, rotational ones do not have an immediate i
Dynamic Movement Primitives (DMPs) are a well-known tool for encoding robotic motions. Their popularity stems from invariance properties in time and space, the ability to describe complex coordinated motions in multiple degrees of freedom with a relatively small number of parameters, and the lineari…
In human-robot collaborative frameworks the maximization of productivity is of paramount importance. However, it is also crucial to mitigate the cognitive workload induced on the operator during cooperation. Indeed, a high level of stress can negatively affect the human capabilities, thus compromisi
In a collaborative scenario, robots working side by side with humans might rely on vision sensors to monitor the activity of the other agent. When occlusions of the human body occur, both the safety of the cooperation and the performance of the team can be penalized, since the robot could receive in…
In manufacturing, kitting is the process of grouping separate items together to be supplied as one unit to the assembly line. This is a key logistic task, which is usually performed manually by human operators. However, picking objects from the warehouse implies a great repetitiveness in arm motion.…
Enabling humans and robots to safely work close to each other deserves careful consideration. With the publication of ISO/TS 15066 directives on this matter, two different strategies, namely the Speed and Separation Monitoring and the Power and Force Limiting, have been proposed. This letter propose
In this paper we address variable admittance control for human-robot physical interaction in manual guidance applications. In the proposed solution, the parameters of the admittance filter can change not only as a function of the current state of motion (i.e. whether the human guiding the robot ia a…
Prediction of the human behaviour is essential for allowing an efficient human-robot collaboration. This was confirmed recently showing how scheduling approaches can significantly increase the productivity of a robotic cell by planning the robotic actions in a way as much as possible compliant with…
A crucial problem in human-robot collaboration is to achieve seamless coordination among the agents. Robots have to adapt to human behaviour, which is highly uncertain. In fact, humans can perform each task in many ways and with different speeds, occasional errors and short pauses. This paper offers…
Letting humans and robots share a common space for collaboration is considered a consolidated practice. The trajectories followed by the robot must be safe for the human mate, especially when the robot holds dangerous tools or parts. At the same time, the productivity must be preserved, without impo…
Collaborative robotics refers to the cooperation between humans and machines and aims at improving productivity and at facilitating the worker in demanding tasks. The advantage of collaboration is to combine the superior cognitive and motor skills of the operator with the physical capabilities of th…
Rapidly Random exploring Trees are popular algorithms in the field of motion planning. A feasible path connecting two different poses is found by incrementally building a tree data structure. They are powerful and flexible, but also computationally intense, requiring thousands of iterations before t…
The coexistence of humans and robots in the future production plants is one of the pillars of Industry 4.0. Humans and robots will collaborate to accomplish common tasks in order to mutually compensate their deficiencies. In recent years, many efforts have been spent to develop safe motion planning…
In collaborative robotics applications, human behaviour is a major source of uncertainty. Predicting the evolution of the current human activity might be beneficial to the effectiveness of task planning, as it enables a higher level of coordination of robot and human activities. This paper addresses…
This paper presents a robust impedance shaping controller for teleoperation systems. An integral sliding mode control law (ISM) is employed together with standard robot inverse dynamics to reject disturbances and uncertainties acting on the robot model and obtain an ideal fully-decoupled system. Hig…
In human-robot collaboration, the robot is required to provide assistance to the user by facilitating task execution. However, due to stability requirements, a well-damped admittance behavior of the robot is necessary during interaction, thus inducing fatigue in the operator. While available schemes…
Collaborative robotics over the last few years has gained increasing interest in the industrial scenario. Co-bots can be equipped with vision sensors and cognitive software layers, allowing the robot to figure out human intentions. To make this level of perception possible, human pose estimation alg…
Visual servoing in telerobotics provides information to the operator about the remote location and assists in the task execution to reduce stress on the user. Occlusions in this scenario can, on the one hand, lead to the visual servoing failure, and, on the other hand, degrade the user experience an
In industrial scenarios, requiring human-robot collaboration, the understanding between the human operator and his/her robot coworker is paramount. On the one side, the robot has to detect human intentions, and on the other side, the human needs to be aware of what is happening during the collaborat
Handling liquids with spilling avoidance is a topic of interest for a broad range of fields, both in industry and in service robotic applications. In this paper we present a new control architecture for motion planning of industrial robots, able to tackle the problem of liquid transfer with sloshing…
Standard control design for robot implicit force control is a typical example of model-based regulator synthesis. This paper proposes a method to improve closed-loop performance of standard model-based controllers for robot implicit force control in terms of closed-loop model matching, between desir…
This paper addresses the problem of robot implicit force control by means of set invariance theory. The proposed control law improves the invariance control approach by avoiding the definition of a nominal stabilizing controller, while simultaneously ensuring the absence of output overshoots with re
Allowing a cobot to predict what the human operator is about to do can definitely enhance the effectiveness of human-robot collaboration. This paper addresses the problem of inferring the most likely reaching target of the human hand. The method allows the robot to promptly recognise the intention o…
In this work a constraint-based control approach is proposed in order to perform a cap rotation task with a dual-arm robot. The method relies on the introduction of a robust specification for the constraint on the interaction force arising during the task, accounting for robot-environment contact mo…
The present paper exploits set invariance theory to address the problem of robot implicit force control in presence of stiffness uncertainty in the interaction model. A numerical approach is introduced to compute the invariance function for constraints with arbitrary relative degree. The method is t…
In modern day industry, robots are indispensable for achieving high production rates and competitiveness. In small and medium scale enterprises, where the production may shift rapidly, it is vital to be able to reprogram robots quickly. Kinesthetic teaching, also known as lead-through programming (L…
In this paper, a trajectory generation approach using quadratic programming is described for aerial manipulation, i.e., for the control of an aerial vehicle equipped with a robot arm. The proposed approach applies the online active set strategy to generate a feasible trajectory of the joints, in ord
The increasing demand for flexible robotized solutions in SMEs motivates the research on innovative and general control algorithms suitable for a large variety of applications. Particularly suited for this are constraint-based trajectory generation and control methods, which have been deeply investi
Although force control algorithms have been studied for three decades, this technology is not largely exploited in industry yet. The present paper proposes a position-based adaptive force control strategy, that relies on a novel method for the on line estimation of the environment stiffness. The con
This paper addresses time-optimal path-constrained trajectory planning. Given a geometric path for a manipulator, this paper focuses on the selection of the time law along the path. This law minimizes the time required to complete the path and at the same time is consistent with constraints, both at…
Classical control approaches to robot force control have been extensively addressed by research in the last decades and are now considered a paradigm when dealing with force control for industrial robots. With this respect, the present paper exploits the capability of state-of-the-art Quadratic Prog…
Despite the availability in the literature of several constraint-based motion generation algorithms, modest attention has been paid to their robustness with respect to noise, and more in general, to unstructured uncertainties. Especially in the case of sensor-related constraints, the envisaged robus…
Fast and sensorless peg-in-hole insertion is a challenging task for a robotic manipulator. In order to deal with the peg-in-hole insertion problem without any need of an external force/torque sensor, this paper proposes to actively accomplish compliance in the insertion task relying on an admittance
Enabling human-robot collaboration raises new challenges in safety-oriented robot design and control. Indices that quantitatively describe human injury due to a human-robot collision are needed to propose suitable pre-collision control strategies. This paper presents a novel model-based injury index…
In order to make humans feeling comfortable when working with robots, it is necessary for robots to be as much as possible “human-like” in both their appearance and movements. In redundant manipulators, it is possible to use the additional degrees of freedom in order to make the robot motion more hu…
In this paper, a controller based on constrained optimization for tracking problems in mobile manipulation is presented. A Model Predictive Control problem is set and solved online, allowing to deal with dynamic scenarios and unforeseen events. Besides acceleration, velocity and position constraints…
To perform many common industrial robotic tasks, e.g. deburring a work-piece, in small and medium size companies where a model of the work-piece may not be available, building a geometrical model of how to perform the task from a data set of human demonstrations is highly demanded. In many cases, ho…
In this work, we propose a constraint-based algorithm for combined trajectory generation and kinematic control for robotic manipulators. The main feature of the algorithm is to ease robot programming, shifting from an imperative paradigm, in which task constraints are semantically and uniquely mappe…