Publications associées à VP-STO: Via-point-based Stochastic Trajectory Optimization for Reactive Robot Behavior

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

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

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

Self-Correcting Quadratic Programming-Based Robot Control

Aude Billard, Konstantinos Chatzilygeroudis, Farshad Khadivar

Quadratic Programming (QP)-based controllers allow many robotic systems, such as humanoids, to successfully undertake complex motions and interactions. However, these approaches rely heavily on adequately capturing the underlying model of the environment a ...

2023

Human-Robot Swarm Interaction: An Explorative Path to Foster Complex Systems Understanding

Hala Khodr

Order, regularities, and patterns are ubiquitous around us. A flock of birds maneuvering in the sky, the self-organization of social insects, a global pandemic or a traffic jam are examples of complex systems where the macroscopic patterns arise from the m ...

EPFL2023

Computational Models of Mutual Understanding for Human-Robot Collaborative Learning

Utku Norman

There is a growing trend towards designing learning activities featuring robots as collaborative exercises where children work together to achieve the activity objectives, generating interactions that can trigger learning processes. Witnessing such activit ...

EPFL2023

A biohybrid interaction framework for the integration of robots in animal societies

Francesco Mondada, Daniel Burnier, Vaios Papaspyros, Raphael Cherfan

The collective behavior of animals has been traditionally studied through observation, quantitative models of behavior, and devices of low intelligence. Nowadays, the advancements in the field of robotics allow for closed-loop experiments that occur in rea ...

2023

Implicit Distance Functions: Learning and Applications in Robotics

Mikhail Koptev

In this thesis, we address the complex issue of collision avoidance in the joint space of robots. Avoiding collisions with both the robot's own body parts and obstacles in the environment is a critical constraint in motion planning and is crucial for ensur ...

EPFL2023

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

Piecewise Affine Curvature model: a reduced-order model for soft robot-environment interaction beyond PCC

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Francesco Stella, Qinghua Guan

Soft robot are celebrated for their propensity to enable compliant and complex robot-environment interactions. Soft robotic manipulators, or slender continuum structure robots have the potential to exploit these interactions to enable new exploration and m ...

IEEE2023

Online active and dynamic object shape exploration with a multi-fingered robotic hand

Aude Billard, Kunpeng Yao, Farshad Khadivar, Xiao Gao

The sense of touch can provide a robot with a wealth of information about the contact region when interacting with an unknown environment. Nevertheless, utilizing touch information to plan exploration paths and adjust robot posture to improve task efficien ...

Elsevier2023

Geometric and Learning Methods for Robots to Navigate in Human Crowds with Application to Smart Mobility Devices

David Julian Gonon

The thesis at hand is concerned with robots' navigation in human crowds. Specifically, methods are developed for planning a mobile robot's local motion between pedestrians, and they are evaluated in experiments where a robot interacts with real pedestrians ...

EPFL2023

Human Interactive Robotic Surfaces for Physical Immersion

Fabio Zuliani

Computers have long been augmenting human capabilities and communication, and with emerging technologies, physical immersion in virtual worlds is now attainable. These advancements push the boundaries of human potential, allowing designers, architects, eng ...

EPFL2023

Identifying important sensory feedback for learning locomotion skills

Auke Ijspeert, Milad Shafiee Ashtiani, Guillaume Denis Antoine Bellegarda

Robot motor skills can be acquired by deep reinforcement learning as neural networks to reflect state-action mapping. The selection of states has been demonstrated to be crucial for successful robot motor learning. However, because of the complexity of neu ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2023

Haptics based multi-level collaborative steering control for automated driving

Robert Fuchs, Jürg Alexander Schiffmann, Hannes Bleuler, Tomohiro Nakade

Increasing the capability of automated driving vehicles is motivated by environmental, productivity, and traffic safety benefits. But over-reliance on the automation system is known to cause accidents. The role of the driver cannot be underestimated as it ...

2023

Learning and optimization of anticipatory feedback controllers for robot manipulation

Hakan Girgin

Programming intelligent robots requires robust controllers that can achieve desired tasks while adapting to the changes in the task and the environment. In this thesis, we address the challenges in designing such adaptive and anticipatory feedback controll ...

EPFL2023

The science of soft robot design: A review of motivations, methods and enabling technologies

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Francesco Stella

Novel technologies, fabrication methods, controllers and computational methods are rapidly advancing the capabilities of soft robotics. This is creating the need for design techniques and methodologies that are suited for the multi-disciplinary nature of s ...

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA2023

A Provably Stable Iterative Learning Controller for Continuum Soft Robots

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Francesco Stella

Fully exploiting soft robots' capabilities requires devising strategies that can accurately control their movements with the limited amount of control sources available. This task is challenging for reasons including the hard-to-model dynamics, the system' ...

IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC2023

Neurophysiological underpinnings of an intensive protocol for upper limb motor recovery in subacute and chronic stroke patients

Silvestro Micera, Matteo Vissani, Michael Lassi

ABS T R A C T BACKGROUND: Upper limb (UL) motor impairment following stroke is a leading cause of functional limitations in activities of daily living. Robot-assisted therapy supports rehabilitation, but how its efficacy and the underlying neural mechanism ...

Edizioni Minerva Medica2023

Hybrid Quadratic Programming - Pullback Bundle Dynamical Systems Control

Aude Billard, Bernardo Fichera

Dynamical System (DS)-based closed-loop control is a simple and effective way to generate reactive motion policies that well generalize to the robotic workspace, while retaining stability guarantees. Lately the formalism has been expanded in order to handl ...

SPRINGER INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING AG2023

Haptics based collaborative steering control in automated driving environments

Tomohiro Nakade

A vehicle's steering is a particular system in that it is exposed to individual subjective reviews based on criteria that are hard to assess quantitatively. Haptic design of such systems is a prime concern that has been at the center of industrial developm ...

EPFL2023