11 accepted papers
Generative control policies (GCPs), such as diffusion- and flow-based control policies, have emerged as effective parameterizations for robot learning. Yet there remains substantial debate over how to sample efficiently fine-tune them via reinforcement learning. A prevailing view holds that fine-tun…
Mudskippers are unique amphibious fish capable of locomotion in diverse environments, including terrestrial surfaces, aquatic habitats, and highly viscous substrates such as mud. This versatile locomotion is largely enabled by their powerful tail, which stores and rapidly releases energy to produce …
Robotics presents a promising opportunity for enhancing bathing assistance, potentially to alleviate labor shortages and reduce care costs, while offering consistent and gentle care for individuals with physical disabilities. However, ensuring flexible and efficient cleaning of the human body poses
Springtails are tiny arthropods that crawl and jump. They jump by temporarily storing elastic energy in resilin elastic cuticular structures and releasing that energy to accelerate a tail, called a furca, propelling them in the air. This paper presents an autonomous, springtail-inspired microrobot t…
Dexterous robotic manipulation remains a challenging domain due to its strict demands for precision and robustness on both hardware and software. While dexterous robotic hands have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in complex tasks, efficiently learning adaptive control policies for hands still p…
Reconfigurable robot swarms are capable of connecting with each other to form complex structures. Current mechanical or magnetic connection mechanisms can be complicated to manufacture, consume high power, have a limited load-bearing capacity, or can only form rigid structures. In this paper, we pre…
In this paper, we present a heterogeneous robot swarm system that can physically couple with each other to form functional structures and dynamically decouple to perform individual tasks. The connection between robots can be formed with a passive coupling mechanism, ensuring minimum energy consumpti…
Robotic manipulation of cloth has applications ranging from fabrics manufacturing to handling blankets and laundry. Cloth manipulation is challenging for robots largely due to their high degrees of freedom, complex dynamics, and severe self-occlusions when in folded or crumpled configurations. Prior…
Robot swarms have been shown to improve the ability of individual robots by inter-robot collaboration. In this paper, we present the PuzzleBots - a low-cost robotic swarm system where robots can physically couple with each other to form functional structures with minimum energy consumption while mai…
Distributed manipulators - consisting of a set of actuators or robots working cooperatively to achieve a manipulation task - are robust and flexible tools for performing a range of planar manipulation skills. One novel example is the delta array, a distributed manipulator composed of a grid of delta…
Current techniques in robot design and fabrication are time consuming and costly. Robot designs are needed that facilitate low-cost fabrication techniques and reduce the design to production timeline. Here we present an axial-rotational coupled metastructure that can serve as the functional core of…