Publications related to EMG-based decoding of grasp gestures in reaching-to-grasping motions

Investigating neural resource allocation in the sensorimotor control of extra limbs

The rise of robotic body augmentation brings forth new developments that will transform robotics, human-machine interaction, and wearable electronics. Extra robotic limbs, although building upon restorative technologies, bring their own set of challenges i ...

EPFL2024

Avoidance of Concave Obstacles Through Rotation of Nonlinear Dynamics

Aude Billard, Lukas Huber

Controlling complex tasks in robotic systems, such as circular motion for cleaning or following curvy lines, can be dealt with using nonlinear vector fields. This article introduces a novel approach called the rotational obstacle avoidance method (ROAM) fo ...

Ieee-Inst Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc2024

A Biohybrid Superorganism - Investigating honeybees' collective behaviors via interactive robotics

Rafael Botner Barmak

Social insects, such as ants, termites, and honeybees, have evolved sophisticated societies where the collaborative efforts of "simple" individuals can lead to the emergence of complex dynamics. The reliance of each organism on the collective is so great t ...

EPFL2024

Hitting with Different Joints of a Robotic Manipulator

Aude Billard, Harshit Khurana

This paper builds up the skill of impact aware non prehensile manipulation through a hitting motion by allowing the robot arm to come in contact with the environment with parts other than its end effector. Hitting with other joints allows us to manipulate ...

2024

Biohybrid Superorganisms—On the Design of a Robotic System for Thermal Interactions With Honeybee Colonies

Francesco Mondada, Robert Matthew Mills, Rafael Botner Barmak, Raphael Cherfan

Social insects, such as ants, termites, and honeybees, have evolved sophisticated societies where collaboration and division of labor enhance survival of the whole colony, and are thus considered “superorganisms”. Historically, studying behaviors involving ...

2024

Soft Robotics: A Route to Equality, Diversity, and Inclusivity in Robotics

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes

Robotics is entering our daily lives. The discipline is increasingly crucial in fields such as agriculture, medicine, and rescue operations, impacting our food, health, and planet. At the same time, it is becoming evident that robotic research must embrace ...

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc2024

Exact Obstacle Avoidance for Robots in Complex and Dynamic Environments Using Local Modulation

Lukas Huber

Robots outside of the fenced factories have to deal with continuously changing environment, this requires fast and flexible modes of control. Planning methods or complex learning models can find optimal paths in complex surroundings, but they are computati ...

EPFL2024

Memento Mori: Reliable robustness in self-reconfigurable modular robots

Kevin Andrew Holdcroft

Modular robotics link the reliability of a centralised system with the adaptivity of a decentralised system. It is difficult for a robot with a fixed shape to be able to perform many different types of tasks. As the task space grows, the number of functi ...

EPFL2024

Distributed Predictive Formation Control of Autonomous Rotary-Wing Micro Aerial Vehicles

Izzet Kagan Erünsal

This doctoral thesis navigates the complex landscape of motion coordination and formation control within teams of rotary-wing Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs). Prompted by the intricate demands of real-world applications such as search and rescue or surveillan ...

EPFL2024

Small-scale robotic devices for medical interventions in the brain

Lorenzo Francesco John Noseda, Mahmut Selman Sakar

This article summarizes the recent advancements in the design, fabrication, and control of microrobotic devices for the diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders. With a focus on diverse actuation methods, we discuss how advancements in materials science ...

2024

Sense in Motion with Belief Clustering: Efficient Gas Source Localization with Mobile Robots

Alcherio Martinoli, Wanting Jin

Given the patchy nature of gas plumes and the slow response of conventional gas sensors, the use of mobile robots for Gas Source Localization (GSL) tasks presents significant challenges. These aspects increase the difficulties in obtaining gas measurements ...

2024

A lunar reconnaissance drone for cooperative exploration and high-resolution mapping of extreme locations

Erik Uythoven, Thomas Pfeiffer, Daniel Tataru, David Rodriguez Martinez

An efficient characterization of scientifically significant locations is essential prior to the return of humans to the Moon. The highest resolution imagery acquired from orbit of south-polar shadowed regions and other relevant locations remains, at best, ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2024

Quantifying the biomimicry gap in biohybrid robot-fish pairs

Francesco Mondada, Vaios Papaspyros

Biohybrid systems in which robotic lures interact with animals have become compelling tools for probing and identifying the mechanisms underlying collective animal behavior. One key challenge lies in the transfer of social interaction models from simulatio ...

2024

Robot Learning using Tensor Networks

Suhan Narayana Shetty

In various robotics applications, the selection of function approximation methods greatly influences the feasibility and computational efficiency of algorithms. Tensor Networks (TNs), also referred to as tensor decomposition techniques, present a versatile ...

EPFL2024

Improving hand prosthesis control with advanced single-finger proportional decoding and robotic shared control

Vincent Alexandre Mendez

Myoelectric prostheses allow users to recover lost functionality by controlling a robotic device with their remaining muscle activity. Commercial devices usually use a two-recording-channel system placed on specific muscles to control a single degree of fr ...

EPFL2023

Inferring individual evaluation criteria for reaching trajectories with obstacle avoidance from EEG signals

Aude Billard, José del Rocio Millán Ruiz, Fumiaki Iwane

During reaching actions, the human central nerve system (CNS) generates the trajectories that optimize effort and time. When there is an obstacle in the path, we make sure that our arm passes the obstacle with a sufficient margin. This comfort margin varie ...

Nature Portfolio2023

Exploration-based model learning with self-attention for risk-sensitive robot control

Sudong Lee

Model-based reinforcement learning for robot control offers the advantages of overcoming concerns on data collection and iterative processes for policy improvement in model-free methods. However, both methods use exploration strategy relying on heuristics ...

2023

Morphological flexibility in robotic systems through physical polygon meshing

Jamie Paik, Christoph Heinrich Belke, Kevin Andrew Holdcroft, Alexander Thomas Sigrist

Shape-changing robots adapt their own morphology to address a wider range of functions or environments than is possible with a fixed or rigid structure. Akin to biological organisms, the ability to alter shape or configuration emerges from the underlying m ...

Nature Portfolio2023

A Stable Adaptive Extended Kalman Filter for Estimating Robot Manipulators Link Velocity and Acceleration

Aude Billard, Harshit Khurana

One can estimate the velocity and acceleration of robot manipulators by utilizing nonlinear observers. This involves combining inertial measurement units (IMUs) with the motor encoders of the robot through a model-based sensor fusion technique. This approa ...

IEEE2023

Exploiting Kinematic Redundancy for Robotic Grasping of Multiple Objects

Aude Billard, Kunpeng Yao

Humans coordinate the abundant degrees of freedom (DoFs) of hands to dexterously perform tasks in everyday life. We imitate human strategies to advance the dexterity of multi-DoF robotic hands. Specifically, we enable a robot hand to grasp multiple objects ...

2023