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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
We address multi-robot safe mission planning in uncertain dynamic environments. This problem arises in several applications including safety-critical exploration, surveillance, and emergency rescue missions. Computation of a multi-robot optimal control pol ...
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 ...
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 ...
In this paper, we propose a metric called hitting flux which is used in the motion generation and controls for a robot manipulator to interact with the environment through a hitting or a striking motion. Given the task of placing a known object outside of ...
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 ...
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 ...
