In construction robotics, a conventional design-to-fabrication work-flow starts with designing a structure, followed by task and robotic motion planning, and ultimately, fabrication. However, this approach can prove unsuccessful, as we may only discover th ...
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 ...
Gender inequality is a widespread problem in our society. It can manifest itself in many ways and contexts, and starting as early as primary school. While an increasing number of initiatives aim at tackling gender biases and inequalities, few of them are a ...
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 ...
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 ...
Autonomous robots have the potential to fundamentally transform conventional farming methods, e.g. by enabling economically viable farming of sloped arable land. However, navigation on slopes in harsh conditions is challenging for robots as they must be pr ...
The digitization of timber construction, the emergence of engineered wood products, and the urgent need to drastically reduce buildings' environmental impact have given a rebirth to wood as a construction material. On the one hand, increasing the use of ti ...
Multimodal unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are rarely capable of more than two modalities, i.e., flying and walking or flying and perching. However, being able to fly, perch, and walk could further improve their usefulness by expanding their operating enve ...
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 ...
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 ...
