Study aims to develop a humanoid robot dialogue system.
problem Current dialogue systems lack attention to non-verbal cues.
method Participated in a competition to develop a system with facial expressions and gaze control.
result Developed a humanoid robot dialogue system.
New method constructs geometric flat outputs for robotic systems using symmetry.
problem Finding flat outputs for arbitrary robotic systems remains an open question.
method Employing symmetry directly to construct a flat output.
result Demonstrated geometric flat outputs for various robotic systems.
Automatically identifies geometric flat outputs for robotic systems.
problem Lack of systematic and practical means to identify flat outputs for arbitrary robotic systems.
method Casts the search for a globally valid, equivariant flat output as an optimization problem using Riemannian geometry, Lie group theory, and differential forms.
result Approximate transcription of continuum formulation to a quadratic program achieves precise agreement with known closed-form flat outputs.
Paper provides closed-form time derivatives for rigid body systems.
problem Need for time derivatives of equations of motion in robotics.
method Lie group formulation for rigid body systems to derive closed-form derivatives up to second-order.
result Closed-form equations provide direct insight into system dynamics.
For a safe, natural and effective human-robot social interaction, it is essential to develop a system that allows a robot to demonstrate the perceivable responsive behaviors to complex human behaviors. We introduce the Multimodal Deep Attention Recurrent Q-Network using which the robot exhibits human-like social intera…
Legged robots pose one of the greatest challenges in robotics. Dynamic and agile maneuvers of animals cannot be imitated by existing methods that are crafted by humans. A compelling alternative is reinforcement learning, which requires minimal craftsmanship and promotes the natural evolution of a control policy. Howeve…
Paper introduces timing-based adversarial attacks on DRL-based navigation systems.
problem Vulnerability of DRL-based navigation systems to adversarial attacks.
method Timing-based adversarial strategies using physical noise patterns.
result Adversarial timing attacks significantly degrade DRL-based navigation performance.
A new reward shaping method balances learning efficiency and effectiveness for robot manipulation.
problem Efficient and effective learning in robot manipulations with system uncertainty.
method Dense2Sparse reward shaping method combining dense and sparse rewards.
result Dense2Sparse method achieves higher expected reward and better system uncertainty tolerance.
Robotic systems are ever more capable of automation and fulfilment of complex tasks, particularly with reliance on recent advances in intelligent systems, deep learning and artificial intelligence. However, as robots and humans come closer in their interactions, the matter of interpretability, or explainability of robo…
Top 8 robotic vision systems tackled lifelong object recognition challenges.
problem Lifelong learning in robotic vision for varied, dynamic environments.
method Design of a dataset with diverse conditions and rules for evaluation.
result Robotic vision systems improved over time with dynamic object appearances.
This work analyzes how multi-agent reinforcement learning can bridge the gap to reality in distributed multi-robot systems.
problem Collaborative learning in distributed multi-robot systems with varying sensors and actuators.
method Simulation-based analysis using PPO and Bullet physics engine, considering different types of perturbations.
result PPO's robustness is affected by the presence of different types of perturbations and the number of agents experiencing them.
This paper introduces the Differentiable Algorithm Network (DAN), a composable architecture for robot learning systems. A DAN is composed of neural network modules, each encoding a differentiable robot algorithm and an associated model; and it is trained end-to-end from data. DAN combines the strengths of model-driven …
This work tackles real-world robotic reinforcement learning challenges.
problem Limited success of reinforcement learning in real-world robotics.
method Proposes a system for autonomous real-world learning without instrumentation.
result Demonstrates a complete system that learns without human intervention.
Robot learns from human demonstrations to work autonomously.
problem Leveraging human and robotic strengths in human-robot systems.
method Bayesian inference for detecting and classifying human heterogeneity.
result Bayesian approach outperforms conventional methods by up to 12.8. The paper formalizes robot environments using topological concepts.
problem Determining indistinguishable environments for robots.
method Formalizing robot systems as topological dynamical systems, using covering maps and bisimulation.
result Covering maps can witness indistinguishability of environments under general conditions.
Robot learns to juggle two balls from 56 minutes of experience.
problem Learning high-acceleration tasks in the real-world with binary rewards.
method Designs a learning system that incorporates safety and sample efficiency.
result High-speed manipulator learns to juggle for up to 33 minutes.
The paper addresses optimal control on Riemannian manifolds, introducing biased splines for robotic systems.
problem Optimal control on Riemannian manifolds with a mathematically natural cometric not capturing true motion cost.
method Encoding torque-based actuators into a cometric, characterizing optimal solutions via a 4th order differential equation.
result Identified a tensor as the geometric source of biasing solutions away from ordinary splines and geodesics.
Robotic grasping system learns to target objects from a single image.
problem Robotic grasping in unstructured environments.
method Distributed reinforcement learning, active vision, synchronous SGD.
result System learns to grasp unseen objects without retraining.
Paper presents a method for efficient robot adaptation using fine-tuning.
problem Continuous adaptation of robot learning systems in real-world scenarios.
method Fine-tuning previously learned policies using off-policy reinforcement learning.
result Fine-tuning leads to substantial performance gains and adaptation to new conditions.
A new network learns to prioritize messages for efficient multi-robot path planning.
problem Efficient path planning and coordination for large-scale multi-robot systems.
method Message-Aware Graph Attention Network (MAGAT) incorporating attention mechanisms.
result MAGAT achieves performance close to a coupled centralized expert algorithm.
Applications of safety, security, and rescue in robotics, such as multi-robot target tracking, involve the execution of information acquisition tasks by teams of mobile robots. However, in failure-prone or adversarial environments, robots get attacked, their communication channels get jammed, and their sensors may fail…
A new reinforcement learning method for robots thinking and moving simultaneously.
problem Concurrent control in robotic systems where actions must be decided while the system is still evolving.
method Continuous-time Bellman equations, discretization aware of system delays, and architectural extension to deep reinforcement learning.
result The method successfully handles tasks requiring simultaneous decision-making and action execution.
Study cohomological equation for robotic screw motions on SE(3).
problem Understanding obstruction phenomena in robotic rigid-body motion.
method Combining Fourier analysis and Peter-Weyl theory, reduce to finite-dimensional linear transport systems.
result Explicit screw motion illustrates resonance conditions and finite-dimensional obstructions.
Paper presents a new port-Hamiltonian model for vehicle manipulators.
problem Complex mechanical systems' energy flow and conservation.
method Derives port-Hamiltonian dynamics from Hamiltonian reduction theory.
result Establishes mathematical equivalence with existing formulations.
This paper improves robot grasping by integrating meta-control and latent-space imagination.
problem Dual-system approaches fail to consider the reliability of the learned model when making multiple-step predictions.
method A meta-controller arbitrates between model-based and model-free decisions based on local reliability, encouraging actions that improve the model and generating imagined experiences for additional training.
result Our approach learns near-optimal grasping policies in dense- and sparse-reward environments, outperforming baseline and state-of-the-art methods.
This research evaluates learning models for bionic robots, focusing on transfer function identification.
problem Developers need guidance on selecting and constructing transfer functions for bionic robots.
method Comprehensive evaluation strategy including data collection, learning model selection, comparative analysis, and transfer function identification.
result A framework for effectively dealing with multi-input multi-output robotic data.
Critical to evaluating the capacity, scalability, and availability of web systems are realistic web traffic generators. Web traffic generation is a classic research problem, no generator accounts for the characteristics of web robots or crawlers that are now the dominant source of traffic to a web server. Administrator…
Introduces GFC for learning complex dynamical systems with geometric constraints.
problem Challenges in accurately modeling and predicting complex dynamical systems with geometric constraints.
method Geometric Contact Flows (GFC) using Riemannian and Contact geometry as inductive biases.
result Ensemble of contactomorphisms adapt the latent contact Hamiltonian model to target dynamics while preserving desirable properties.
Robotics: Rolling robots on a moving platform can be controlled.
problem Controlling the motion of rolling robots atop a moving platform.
method Developed a mathematical model and demonstrated simulations.
result Platform acceleration can control robot's heading and motion.
Survey on manifold complexities and motion planning in robotics.
problem Understanding topological complexities of manifolds in robotic motion planning.
method Overview of topological complexities, geodesic motion planning, and connections to critical point theory.
result Estimation of motion planning complexity using Riemannian geometry and critical point theory.
A new Q-learning controller improves line follower robot control.
problem Challenges in controlling line follower robots due to unknown mechanical characteristics and uncertainties.
method Simulated annealing based Q learning method to address controller performance issues.
result The proposed controller outperforms conventional P controllers in line follower robots.
Robots learn new tasks autonomously with minimal human intervention.
problem Lack of scalable data collection for robot learning.
method Multi-task imitation learning with autonomous data collection and one-shot generalization.
result Robots can continuously improve through autonomous data collection without reinforcement learning.
Robot learns to manipulate objects using multiple geometric representations.
problem Manipulation tasks are poorly represented by Cartesian coordinates.
method Extends Gaussian distributions on Riemannian manifolds to analyze demonstrations, formulating the problem as an optimal control problem.
result Robot can generalize manipulation tasks using multiple geometric representations.
Survey examines challenges and solutions in sim-to-real transfer for robotics.
problem Challenges in transferring robotic systems from simulation to real-world environments.
method Leveraging techniques like domain randomization, real-to-sim transfer, state and action abstractions, and sim-real co-training.
result Promising results in closing the reality gap across various robotic domains.
The past few decades has seen increased interest in the application of social robots to interventions for Autism Spectrum Disorder as behavioural coaches [4]. We consider that robots embedded in therapies could also provide quantitative diagnostic information by observing patient behaviours. The social nature of ASD sy…
A new framework for robot block-stacking tasks using causal probabilistic models.
problem Robots fail outside controlled environments due to uncertainty and lack of explicit design for all scenarios.
method Causal probabilistic framework combining causal models and probabilistic representations of noise.
result Robots can perceive, reason about, and explain their environment for block-stacking tasks.
Autonomous learning has been a promising direction in control and robotics for more than a decade since data-driven learning allows to reduce the amount of engineering knowledge, which is otherwise required. However, autonomous reinforcement learning (RL) approaches typically require many interactions with the system t…
This work tackles force control for contact-rich manipulation tasks with rigid robots using RL.
problem Challenges in working with real robotic hardware, especially position-controlled robots.
method Combines RL with traditional force control techniques, implementing parallel position/force control and admittance control.
result Validated methods on both simulation and real robot (UR3 e-series) for force control.
Paper addresses hypothesis space misspecification in learning from human demonstrations and corrections.
problem Hypothesis space misspecification in learning from human demonstrations and corrections.
method Reason explicitly about how well the robot can explain human inputs given its hypothesis space.
result Demonstrates method on a 7 DOF robot manipulator.
Data driven methods for time series forecasting that quantify uncertainty open new important possibilities for robot tasks with hard real time constraints, allowing the robot system to make decisions that trade off between reaction time and accuracy in the predictions. Despite the recent advances in deep learning, it i…
We propose a principled algorithm for robust Bayesian filtering and smoothing in nonlinear stochastic dynamic systems when both the transition function and the measurement function are described by non-parametric Gaussian process (GP) models. GPs are gaining increasing importance in signal processing, machine learning,…
Reinforcement learning is a promising approach to learning robotics controllers. It has recently been shown that algorithms based on finite-difference estimates of the policy gradient are competitive with algorithms based on the policy gradient theorem. We propose a theoretical framework for understanding this phenomen…
Model learns and plans in real-time under constraints for robotic systems.
problem Challenges in applying reinforcement learning to robotic systems, especially handling continuous state and action spaces, time/resource budget, and hard constraints.
method Combines Gaussian Process regression and Receding Horizon Control. Uses sparse spectrum Gaussian Processes for incremental model updates from sensory data.
result Demonstrates benefits of online learning on autonomous racing tasks and reusability of learned dynamics.
New metric solves correspondence problem for robotic arm imitation learning.
problem Establishing corresponding states and actions between different robotic arms.
method Introducing a distance measure between dissimilar robotic arms and using it as a loss function.
result The distance measure effectively learns imitation policies by minimizing distance between robotic arms.
Machine vision is critical to robotics due to a wide range of applications which rely on input from visual sensors such as autonomous mobile robots and smart production systems. To create the smart homes and systems of tomorrow, an overview about current challenges in the research field would be of use to identify furt…
Prototype real-world RL environment for robotics training.
problem Lack of common real-world RL benchmark.
method Developed OffWorld Gym with open access to real-world robotics environments.
result Baseline results in navigation task on real and simulated terrain.
We propose a neural information processing system which is obtained by re-purposing the function of a biological neural circuit model, to govern simulated and real-world control tasks. Inspired by the structure of the nervous system of the soil-worm, C. elegans, we introduce Neuronal Circuit Policies (NCPs), defined as…
Space exploration missions have seen use of increasingly sophisticated robotic systems with ever more autonomy. Deep learning promises to take this even a step further, and has applications for high-level tasks, like path planning, as well as low-level tasks, like motion control, which are critical components for missi…