In this project we research on how to manipulate more efficiently deformable objects by using dynamic manipulation as well as the modeling deformable objects via graph structures. Our applications range from manipulation of granular materials such as ground coffee to cloth manipulation.

In robotic manipulation, robots are required to interact with, and adapt to, unknown environments and objects. In order to successfully accomplish these tasks, robots need to identify various properties of the objects to be handled. For these reasons, identifying object models that can represent the properties of objects has become a crucial issue in robotics. […]

In many robot control problems, skills such as stiffness, damping and manipulability ellipsoids are naturally represented as symmetric positive definite (SPD) matrices, orientations are represented as unit quaternions, sensory data processed as spatial covariances, etc., which capture the specific geometric characteristics of those skills. Typical learned skill models such as dynamic movement primitives (DMPs), probabilistic […]

In robotic grasping, knowing the object shape allows for better grasp planning. However, in many environments it is impossible to know a priori the shape of all possible objects. For this reason, the object to be grasped is usually perceived through some sensory input, commonly vision. However, one of the main problems with this approach […]