arXiv daily

Robotics (cs.RO)

Fri, 12 May 2023

Other arXiv digests in this category:Thu, 14 Sep 2023; Wed, 13 Sep 2023; Tue, 12 Sep 2023; Mon, 11 Sep 2023; Fri, 08 Sep 2023; Tue, 05 Sep 2023; Fri, 01 Sep 2023; Thu, 31 Aug 2023; Wed, 30 Aug 2023; Tue, 29 Aug 2023; Mon, 28 Aug 2023; Fri, 25 Aug 2023; Thu, 24 Aug 2023; Wed, 23 Aug 2023; Tue, 22 Aug 2023; Mon, 21 Aug 2023; Fri, 18 Aug 2023; Thu, 17 Aug 2023; Wed, 16 Aug 2023; Tue, 15 Aug 2023; Mon, 14 Aug 2023; Fri, 11 Aug 2023; Thu, 10 Aug 2023; Wed, 09 Aug 2023; Tue, 08 Aug 2023; Mon, 07 Aug 2023; Fri, 04 Aug 2023; Thu, 03 Aug 2023; Wed, 02 Aug 2023; Tue, 01 Aug 2023; Mon, 31 Jul 2023; Fri, 28 Jul 2023; Thu, 27 Jul 2023; Wed, 26 Jul 2023; Tue, 25 Jul 2023; Mon, 24 Jul 2023; Fri, 21 Jul 2023; Thu, 20 Jul 2023; Wed, 19 Jul 2023; Tue, 18 Jul 2023; Mon, 17 Jul 2023; Fri, 14 Jul 2023; Thu, 13 Jul 2023; Wed, 12 Jul 2023; Tue, 11 Jul 2023; Mon, 10 Jul 2023; Fri, 07 Jul 2023; Thu, 06 Jul 2023; Wed, 05 Jul 2023; Tue, 04 Jul 2023; Mon, 03 Jul 2023; Fri, 30 Jun 2023; Thu, 29 Jun 2023; Wed, 28 Jun 2023; Tue, 27 Jun 2023; Mon, 26 Jun 2023; Fri, 23 Jun 2023; Thu, 22 Jun 2023; Wed, 21 Jun 2023; Tue, 20 Jun 2023; Fri, 16 Jun 2023; Thu, 15 Jun 2023; Tue, 13 Jun 2023; Mon, 12 Jun 2023; Fri, 09 Jun 2023; Thu, 08 Jun 2023; Wed, 07 Jun 2023; Tue, 06 Jun 2023; Mon, 05 Jun 2023; Fri, 02 Jun 2023; Thu, 01 Jun 2023; Wed, 31 May 2023; Tue, 30 May 2023; Mon, 29 May 2023; Fri, 26 May 2023; Thu, 25 May 2023; Wed, 24 May 2023; Tue, 23 May 2023; Mon, 22 May 2023; Fri, 19 May 2023; Thu, 18 May 2023; Wed, 17 May 2023; Tue, 16 May 2023; Mon, 15 May 2023; Thu, 11 May 2023; Wed, 10 May 2023; Tue, 09 May 2023; Mon, 08 May 2023; Fri, 05 May 2023; Thu, 04 May 2023; Wed, 03 May 2023; Tue, 02 May 2023; Mon, 01 May 2023; Fri, 28 Apr 2023; Thu, 27 Apr 2023; Wed, 26 Apr 2023; Tue, 25 Apr 2023; Mon, 24 Apr 2023; Fri, 21 Apr 2023; Thu, 20 Apr 2023; Wed, 19 Apr 2023; Tue, 18 Apr 2023; Mon, 17 Apr 2023; Fri, 14 Apr 2023; Thu, 13 Apr 2023; Wed, 12 Apr 2023; Tue, 11 Apr 2023; Mon, 10 Apr 2023
1.An Object SLAM Framework for Association, Mapping, and High-Level Tasks

Authors:Yanmin Wu, Yunzhou Zhang, Delong Zhu, Zhiqiang Deng, Wenkai Sun, Xin Chen, Jian Zhang

Abstract: Object SLAM is considered increasingly significant for robot high-level perception and decision-making. Existing studies fall short in terms of data association, object representation, and semantic mapping and frequently rely on additional assumptions, limiting their performance. In this paper, we present a comprehensive object SLAM framework that focuses on object-based perception and object-oriented robot tasks. First, we propose an ensemble data association approach for associating objects in complicated conditions by incorporating parametric and nonparametric statistic testing. In addition, we suggest an outlier-robust centroid and scale estimation algorithm for modeling objects based on the iForest and line alignment. Then a lightweight and object-oriented map is represented by estimated general object models. Taking into consideration the semantic invariance of objects, we convert the object map to a topological map to provide semantic descriptors to enable multi-map matching. Finally, we suggest an object-driven active exploration strategy to achieve autonomous mapping in the grasping scenario. A range of public datasets and real-world results in mapping, augmented reality, scene matching, relocalization, and robotic manipulation have been used to evaluate the proposed object SLAM framework for its efficient performance.

2.Learning Quadruped Locomotion using Bio-Inspired Neural Networks with Intrinsic Rhythmicity

Authors:Chuanyu Yang, Can Pu, Tianqi Wei, Cong Wang, Zhibin Li

Abstract: Biological studies reveal that neural circuits located at the spinal cord called central pattern generator (CPG) oscillates and generates rhythmic signals, which are the underlying mechanism responsible for rhythmic locomotion behaviors of animals. Inspired by CPG's capability to naturally generate rhythmic patterns, researchers have attempted to create mathematical models of CPG and utilize them for the locomotion of legged robots. In this paper, we propose a network architecture that incorporates CPGs for rhythmic pattern generation and a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) network for sensory feedback. We also proposed a method that reformulates CPGs into a fully-differentiable stateless network, allowing CPGs and MLP to be jointly trained with gradient-based learning. The results show that our proposed method learned agile and dynamic locomotion policies which are capable of blind traversal over uneven terrain and resist external pushes. Simulation results also show that the learned policies are capable of self-modulating step frequency and step length to adapt to the locomotion velocity.

3.Motion comfort and driver feel: An explorative study about their relation in remote driving

Authors:Georgios Papaioannou, Lin Zhao, Mikael Nybacka, Jenny Jerrelind, Riender Happee, Lars Drugge

Abstract: Teleoperation is considered as a viable option to control fully automated vehicles (AVs) of Level 4 and 5 in special conditions. However, by bringing the remote drivers in the loop, their driving experience should be realistic to secure safe and comfortable remote control.Therefore, the remote control tower should be designed such that remote drivers receive high quality cues regarding the vehicle state and the driving environment. In this direction, the steering feedback could be manipulated to provide feedback to the remote drivers regarding how the vehicle reacts to their commands. However, until now, it is unclear how the remote drivers' steering feel could impact occupant's motion comfort. This paper focuses on exploring how the driver feel in remote (RD) and normal driving (ND) are related with motion comfort. More specifically, different types of steering feedback controllers are applied in (a) the steering system of a Research Concept Vehicle-model E (RCV-E) and (b) the steering system of a remote control tower. An experiment was performed to assess driver feel when the RCV-E is normally and remotely driven. Subjective assessment and objective metrics are employed to assess drivers' feel and occupants' motion comfort in both remote and normal driving scenarios. The results illustrate that motion sickness and ride comfort are only affected by the steering velocity in remote driving, while throttle input variations affect them in normal driving. The results demonstrate that motion sickness and steering velocity increase both around 25$\%$ from normal to remote driving.

4.A Virtual Reality Framework for Human-Robot Collaboration in Cloth Folding

Authors:Marco Moletta, Maciej K. Wozniak, Michael C. Welle, Danica Kragic

Abstract: We present a virtual reality (VR) framework to automate the data collection process in cloth folding tasks. The framework uses skeleton representations to help the user define the folding plans for different classes of garments, allowing for replicating the folding on unseen items of the same class. We evaluate the framework in the context of automating garment folding tasks. A quantitative analysis is performed on 3 classes of garments, demonstrating that the framework reduces the need for intervention by the user. We also compare skeleton representations with RGB and binary images in a classification task on a large dataset of clothing items, motivating the use of the framework for other classes of garments.

5.Dynamically Conservative Self-Driving Planner for Long-Tail Cases

Authors:Weitao Zhou, Zhong Cao, Nanshan Deng, Xiaoyu Liu, Kun Jiang, Diange Yang

Abstract: Self-driving vehicles (SDVs) are becoming reality but still suffer from "long-tail" challenges during natural driving: the SDVs will continually encounter rare, safety-critical cases that may not be included in the dataset they were trained. Some safety-assurance planners solve this problem by being conservative in all possible cases, which may significantly affect driving mobility. To this end, this work proposes a method to automatically adjust the conservative level according to each case's "long-tail" rate, named dynamically conservative planner (DCP). We first define the "long-tail" rate as an SDV's confidence to pass a driving case. The rate indicates the probability of safe-critical events and is estimated using the statistics bootstrapped method with historical data. Then, a reinforcement learning-based planner is designed to contain candidate policies with different conservative levels. The final policy is optimized based on the estimated "long-tail" rate. In this way, the DCP is designed to automatically adjust to be more conservative in low-confidence "long-tail" cases while keeping efficient otherwise. The DCP is evaluated in the CARLA simulator using driving cases with "long-tail" distributed training data. The results show that the DCP can accurately estimate the "long-tail" rate to identify potential risks. Based on the rate, the DCP automatically avoids potential collisions in "long-tail" cases using conservative decisions while not affecting the average velocity in other typical cases. Thus, the DCP is safer and more efficient than the baselines with fixed conservative levels, e.g., an always conservative planner. This work provides a technique to guarantee SDV's performance in unexpected driving cases without resorting to a global conservative setting, which contributes to solving the "long-tail" problem practically.

6.Periscope: A Robotic Camera System to Support Remote Physical Collaboration

Authors:Pragathi Praveena, Yeping Wang, Emmanuel Senft, Michael Gleicher, Bilge Mutlu

Abstract: We investigate how robotic camera systems can offer new capabilities to computer-supported cooperative work through the design, development, and evaluation of a prototype system called Periscope. With Periscope, a local worker completes manipulation tasks with guidance from a remote helper who observes the workspace through a camera mounted on a semi-autonomous robotic arm that is co-located with the worker. Our key insight is that the helper, the worker, and the robot should all share responsibility of the camera view-an approach we call shared camera control. Using this approach, we present a set of modes that distribute the control of the camera between the human collaborators and the autonomous robot depending on task needs. We demonstrate the system's utility and the promise of shared camera control through a preliminary study where 12 dyads collaboratively worked on assembly tasks and discuss design and research implications of our work for future robotic camera system that facilitate remote collaboration.

7.VBOC: Learning the Viability Boundary of a Robot Manipulator using Optimal Control

Authors:Asia La Rocca, Matteo Saveriano, Andrea Del Prete

Abstract: Safety is often the most important requirement in robotics applications. Nonetheless, control techniques that can provide safety guarantees are still extremely rare for nonlinear systems, such as robot manipulators. A well-known tool to ensure safety is the Viability kernel, which is the largest set of states from which safety can be ensured. Unfortunately, computing such a set for a nonlinear system is extremely challenging in general. Several numerical algorithms for approximating it have been proposed in the literature, but they suffer from the curse of dimensionality. This paper presents a new approach for numerically approximating the viability kernel of robot manipulators. Our approach solves optimal control problems to compute states that are guaranteed to be on the boundary of the set. This allows us to learn directly the set boundary, therefore learning in a smaller dimensional space. Compared to the state of the art on systems up to dimension 6, our algorithm resulted to be more than 2 times as accurate for the same computation time, or 6 times as fast to reach the same accuracy.

8.Vision and Control for Grasping Clear Plastic Bags

Authors:Joohwan Seo, Jackson Wagner, Anuj Raicura, Jake Kim

Abstract: We develop two novel vision methods for planning effective grasps for clear plastic bags, as well as a control method to enable a Sawyer arm with a parallel gripper to execute the grasps. The first vision method is based on classical image processing and heuristics (e.g., Canny edge detection) to select a grasp target and angle. The second uses a deep-learning model trained on a human-labeled data set to mimic human grasp decisions. A clustering algorithm is used to de-noise the outputs of each vision method. Subsequently, a workspace PD control method is used to execute each grasp. Of the two vision methods, we find the deep-learning based method to be more effective.

9.Design, Development, and Evaluation of an Interactive Personalized Social Robot to Monitor and Coach Post-Stroke Rehabilitation Exercises

Authors:Min Hun Lee, Daniel P. Siewiorek, Asim Smailagic, Alexandre Bernardino, Sergi Bermúdez i Badia

Abstract: Socially assistive robots are increasingly being explored to improve the engagement of older adults and people with disability in health and well-being-related exercises. However, even if people have various physical conditions, most prior work on social robot exercise coaching systems has utilized generic, predefined feedback. The deployment of these systems still remains a challenge. In this paper, we present our work of iteratively engaging therapists and post-stroke survivors to design, develop, and evaluate a social robot exercise coaching system for personalized rehabilitation. Through interviews with therapists, we designed how this system interacts with the user and then developed an interactive social robot exercise coaching system. This system integrates a neural network model with a rule-based model to automatically monitor and assess patients' rehabilitation exercises and can be tuned with individual patient's data to generate real-time, personalized corrective feedback for improvement. With the dataset of rehabilitation exercises from 15 post-stroke survivors, we demonstrated our system significantly improves its performance to assess patients' exercises while tuning with held-out patient's data. In addition, our real-world evaluation study showed that our system can adapt to new participants and achieved 0.81 average performance to assess their exercises, which is comparable to the experts' agreement level. We further discuss the potential benefits and limitations of our system in practice.