Publications associées à R2T2 : Robotics to Integrate Educational Efforts in South Africa and Europe

Robot Learning using Tensor Networks

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

Gas Sensing with Rotary-Wing Nano Aerial Vehicles

Chiara Ercolani

Harmful chemical compounds are released daily in warehouses, chemical plants and during environmental emergencies. Their uncontrolled dispersion contributes to the pollution of the atmosphere and threatens human and animal lives. When gas leaks occur, the ...

EPFL2024

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

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

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

Prescribing Cartesian Stiffness of Soft Robots by Co-Optimization of Shape and Segment-Level Stiffness

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Francesco Stella

Soft robots aim to revolutionize how robotic systems interact with the environment thanks to their inherent compliance. Some of these systems are even able to modulate their physical softness. However, simply equipping a robot with softness will not genera ...

MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC2023

Bimanual dynamic grabbing and tossing of objects onto a moving target

Aude Billard, Michael Bosongo Bombile

Bimanual grabbing and tossing of packages onto trays or conveyor belts remains a human activity in the industry. For robots, such a dynamic task requires coordination between two arms and fast adaptation abilities when the tossing target is moving and subj ...

Elsevier2023

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

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

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

Language Learning using Caption Generation within Reciprocal Multi-Party Child-Tutor-Tutee Interaction

Barbara Bruno

Reciprocal Peer Tutoring (RPT) is a learning paradigm characteristic of collaborative interaction between learners with alternating tutortutee roles. In recent years, robot-assisted language learning (RALL) has gained traction by its wide application for l ...

ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY2023

Accessible Soft Robotics Education with Re-configurable Balloon Robots

Yi-Shiun Wu, Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Kieran Daniel Gilday

Soft robotics requires effective tools to educate the next generation of engineers and researchers. Stemming from a lack of universally accepted principles for education and with high barriers to entry in terms of fabrication and hardware, education to dat ...

IEEE2023

Supporting Teachers' Orchestration in Robot-mediated Classrooms

Sina Shahmoradi

To bring educational robots to classrooms, we need to consider teachers' self-efficacy and challenges in managing a robot-mediated classroom, and how to support them in overcoming these challenges. Orchestration tools are designed to support teachers by pr ...

EPFL2023

Non-verbal Communication between Humans and Robots: Imitation, Mutual Understanding and Inferring Object Properties

Nuno Ricardo Ferreira Duarte

Humans can express their actions and intentions, resorting to verbal and/or non-verbal communication. In verbal communication, humans use language to express, in structured linguistic terms, the desired action they wish to perform. Non-verbal communication ...

EPFL2023

Do Children Adapt Their Perspective to a Robot When They Fail to Complete a Task?

Pierre Dillenbourg, Ana Paiva, Elmira Yadollahi

Spatial understanding and communication are essential skills in human interaction. An adequate understanding of others' spatial perspectives can increase the quality of the interaction, both perceptually and cognitively. In this paper, we take the first st ...

Assoc Computing Machinery2022

Introducing Productive Engagement for Social Robots Supporting Learning

Jauwairia Nasir

We have all been one such student or seen such students who can maintain the 'good student' image while playing a video game under the table or those loyal backbenchers, seemingly always distracted, who then ace their exams. These intricacies of human beha ...

EPFL2022

Scalable Fabrication and Actuation of a Human Inspired Hand Through 3D Printed Flexures and Combinatorial Actuation

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Kai Christian Junge, Carlo Bosio

The fabrication and control of robot hands with biologically inspired structure remains challenging due to its cost and complexity. In this paper we explore how widely available FDM printers can be used to fabricate complex hand structures by leveraging co ...

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA2022

The role of feedback and guidance as intervention methods to foster computational thinking in educational robotics learning activities for primary school

Francesco Mondada, Jean-Philippe Pellet, Laila Abdelsalam El-Hamamsy, Morgane Solène Denise Chevalier, Evgeniia Bonnet, Christian Giang, Bernard Baumberger, Vaios Papaspyros

Computational thinking (CT) is considered an emerging competence domain linked to 21st-century competences, and educational robotics (ER) is increasingly recognised as a tool to develop CT competences. This is why researchers recommend developing intervent ...

2022

A New Methodological Approach to Analyze Human Roles in Human-Robot Interaction Scenarios

Auke Ijspeert

The influence of robotics in the job market has socio-economic consequences and the inevitable loss of job positions, but in the Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) scenarios, where humans and robots work together, new jobs and business models will be created. T ...

IEEE2022

Advancing coordination control of multi-limb robotic tasks: application to bimanual dynamic manipulation and bipedal reactive locomotion

Michael Bosongo Bombile

Bi-manual picking up of objects to toss them on a conveyor belt are dynamic manipulation activities generated daily in the industry. Such repetitive and physically demanding tasks are still done largely by humans for lack of similarly fast, precise, and ro ...

EPFL2022