15 accepted papers
Suction cups are popular for picking and transporting packages in warehouse applications. To maximize throughput, high transport speeds are desired. Many packages are deformable and may detach from the suction cups due to inertial loading if trajectories use excessive velocities. This paper introduc…
Bin-packing is an important problem in the robotic warehouse domain. Traditionally, this problem has been studied only for rigid packages (e.g., boxes or rigid objects). In this work, we tackle the problem of bin-packing with deformable packages that have become a popular choice for fulfillment need…
Aerial operation in turbulent environments is a challenging problem due to the chaotic behavior of the flow. This problem is made even more complex when a team of aerial robots is trying to achieve coordinated motion in turbulent wind conditions. In this letter, we present a novel multi-robot contro
We propose a new formulation for the multi-robot task planning and allocation problem that incorporates (a) precedence relationships between tasks; (b) coordination for tasks allowing multiple robots to achieve increased efficiency; and (c) cooperation through the formation of robot coalitions for t…
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
This paper develops a decentralized approach to mobile sensor coverage by a multi-robot system. We consider a scenario where a team of robots with limited sensing range must position itself to effectively detect events of interest in a region characterized by areas of varying importance. Towards thi…
This letter presents a resilient mechanism to allocate heterogeneous robots to tasks under difficult environmental conditions such as weather events or adversarial attacks. Our primary objective is to ensure that each task is assigned the requisite level of resources, measured as the aggregated capa
The cost, in terms of both time and money, of instantiating a physical testbed can be prohibitive. To help resolve this issue, the Robotarium offers a free, remotely accessible robotics lab to users around the world. Since allowing the general public to use it, hundreds of users have submitted thous
Executing multiple tasks concurrently is important in many robotic applications. Moreover, the prioritization of tasks is essential in applications where safety-critical tasks need to precede application-related objectives, in order to protect both the robot from its surroundings and vice versa. Fur…
For multi-robot teams with heterogeneous capabilities, typical task allocation methods assign tasks to robots based on the suitability of the robots to perform certain tasks as well as the requirements of the task itself. However, in real-world deployments of robot teams, the suitability of a robot…
In this paper we present a study of a specific class of vibration-driven robots: the brushbots. In a bottom-up fashion, we start by deriving dynamic models of the brushes and we discuss the conditions under which these models can be employed to describe the motion of brushbots. Then, we present two…
In robot swarms operating under highly restrictive sensing and communication constraints, individuals may need to use direct physical proximity to facilitate information exchange. However, in certain task-related scenarios, this requirement might conflict with the need for robots to spread out in th…
In densely-packed robot swarms operating in confined regions, spatial interference-which manifests itself as a competition for physical space-forces robots to spend more time navigating around each other rather than performing the primary task. This paper develops a decentralized algorithm that enab…
As the spatial scale of robots decrease in multi-robot systems, collisions cease to be catastrophic events that need to be avoided at all costs. This implies that less conservative, coordinated control strategies can be employed, where collisions are not only tolerated, but can potentially be harnes…
In multi-robot systems where a central decision maker is specifying the movement of each individual robot, a communication failure can severely impair the performance of the system. This paper develops a motion strategy that allows robots to safely handle critical communication failures for such mul…