Frontiers in Robotics and AI最新文献

{"title":"Morphology and control roles in perturbed standing recovery: a robotic study.","authors":"Yelin Jiang, Marc Murcia, Jitong Yang, Andre Seyfarth, Rolf Findeisen, Maziar A Sharbafi","doi":"10.3389/frobt.2026.1840011","DOIUrl":"10.3389/frobt.2026.1840011","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Postural balance is essential for both humans and robots, as failures increase fall risk and limit robotic performance in real-world settings. Although humans and robots share fundamental balancing mechanics, biological complexity limits the isolation of individual muscle functions and direct principle transfer to robots. In this study, we use EPA-Walker, a bio-inspired robot actuated by electric motors and pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs), as a physical platform to investigate perturbed standing. Here, we focus on the PAM-driven actuation to systematically examine the roles of muscle morphology and control, and to validate biomechanical findings in a robotic setting. To enable a clear upper body perturbation, a Control Moment Gyroscope (CMG) was integrated. We evaluated two stabilization paradigms: passive standing, in which joint compliance was tuned through static PAM pressurization, and active balancing, in which a bio-inspired ground reaction force (GRF) feedback controller generated muscle reflexes. The results showed that biarticular thigh muscles, particularly the hamstrings and rectus femoris, played the most prominent role in enhancing robustness through both morphology in the passive experiments and reflex control in the active experiments, consistent with findings from human perturbation studies. While ankle muscles, such as the soleus, were essential for stable standing mainly through their passive morphological contribution, their reflex-based action could also improve robustness in a more specific manner through center-of-pressure regulation. Activating a single muscle could significantly improve robustness beyond morphology, enabling recovery from <math><mrow><mn>3</mn> <mtext> </mtext> <mi>N</mi> <mi>m</mi></mrow> </math> perturbations. Furthermore, synergistic reflex of biarticular muscles, especially hamstrings and gastrocnemius, extends the robustness to larger perturbations <math><mrow><mo>(</mo> <mrow><mn>5</mn> <mtext> </mtext> <mi>N</mi> <mi>m</mi></mrow> <mo>)</mo></mrow> </math> . Our contribution highlights the synchronization of control strategies with the underlying morphological design through a universal sensory feedback signal, namely, GRF. These findings demonstrate the value of bio-inspired robots as testbeds to understand the potential principles underlying human motor control and support the transfer of such principles to legged robots and assistive systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":47597,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Robotics and AI","volume":"13 ","pages":"1840011"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13368573/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148457600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Vision-based vs. IMU-based upper-limb pose estimation in assisted dressing: a comparative study of positional accuracy and kinematic fidelity.","authors":"Yasmin Rafiq, Shenglin Wang, Mohammed Al-Nuaimi, Lyudmila Mihaylova, Robert M Hierons, Sanja Dogramadzi","doi":"10.3389/frobt.2026.1844439","DOIUrl":"10.3389/frobt.2026.1844439","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Accurate estimation of upper-limb kinematics is essential for applications such as rehabilitation assessment and assistive robotics, yet remains challenging in real-world scenarios involving occlusion and physical human interaction. While vision-based pose estimation methods have advanced significantly, their ability to recover reliable joint kinematics under such conditions remains unclear. This paper presents a systematic comparison of vision-based and wearable sensing approaches for upper-limb pose estimation during assisted dressing tasks. A monocular RGB-based convolutional neural network (CNN) and a temporally smoothed variant (CNN_temporal) are evaluated alongside a wearable IMU-based reconstruction method. All approaches are compared against an inverse kinematics (IK) reference derived from VICON motion capture data using participant-specific kinematic models. Performance is assessed using both positional error, measured via global and shoulder-centred mean per-joint position error (MPJPE), and kinematic agreement, measured via elbow flexion/extension angle error. Experiments on a real-world dataset of assisted dressing trials, involving an occupational therapist and three participants, demonstrate that IMU-based estimation provides consistently accurate and stable joint-angle reconstruction (e.g., <math><mrow><mo>∼</mo> <mn>12</mn> <mo>°</mo></mrow> </math> mean absolute error). In contrast, vision-based methods achieve reasonable positional accuracy (MPJPE <math><mrow><mo>∼</mo></mrow> </math> 0.20 m) but exhibit substantially larger errors in joint-angle estimation (often exceeding 80 <math><mrow><mo>°</mo></mrow> </math> ), particularly under occlusion. Temporal smoothing improves positional consistency but does not preserve kinematic fidelity. These results highlight a fundamental limitation of current vision-based approaches for tasks requiring accurate joint kinematics. The findings suggest that integrating inertial sensing or incorporating biomechanical constraints may be necessary to achieve reliable pose estimation in real-world assistive scenarios.</p>","PeriodicalId":47597,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Robotics and AI","volume":"13 ","pages":"1844439"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13368569/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148457583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A new paradigm for marine ecological monitoring through swarm intelligence, digital twins, and Human-Swarm interaction.","authors":"Micael S Couceiro, Faisal Mazloum, André G Araújo, Rui P Rocha, Ana Bio, Gonçalo Ferreira","doi":"10.3389/frobt.2026.1809951","DOIUrl":"10.3389/frobt.2026.1809951","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Marine and coastal ecosystems are among the least observable yet most rapidly changing environments, where climate impacts, pollution, and biodiversity loss demand monitoring and intervention at scales that manual sampling and single-robot deployments cannot sustain. This paper argues for a conceptual shift in ecological monitoring and restoration toward networked robotic ecosystems, adopting cooperative swarms of autonomous aquatic robots coupled to <i>in-situ</i> digital twins and human-in-the-loop supervision. We use the REMORA project as a concrete instantiation of this paradigm, outlining an integrated architecture in which multiple low-cost, persistent robots perform distributed sensing and targeted interventions, while a continuously updated digital twin fuses multi-source data to support predictive assessment, \"what-if\" scenario exploration, and decision support. A dedicated human-swarm interaction layer enables non-roboticist stakeholders (e.g., environmental managers and aquaculture operators) to specify intent, manage exceptions, and maintain trust without micromanaging individual units. By linking advances in swarm intelligence, sensor integration, AI-enabled analysis, and interactive decision-making, the proposed approach targets durable, scalable, and socially relevant solutions for ecological monitoring and ecosystem management, spanning aquaculture, marinas, and broader coastal environments, and provides a roadmap for translating these technologies from controlled trials to sustained field operations.</p>","PeriodicalId":47597,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Robotics and AI","volume":"13 ","pages":"1809951"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13364599/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148449599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Low-cost social robot designs for education: a review.","authors":"Edger P Rutatola, Frank C Msonge, Remko Proesmans, Koen Stroeken, Tony Belpaeme","doi":"10.3389/frobt.2026.1827676","DOIUrl":"10.3389/frobt.2026.1827676","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Social robots have shown promising potential in educational contexts worldwide, with studies reporting significant cognitive and affective gains when such robots are deployed. However, among other factors, the high cost of commercial robots limits this line of research to a small number of laboratories and hinders large-scale adoption in real-world educational settings, with most studies remaining short-term pilot interventions. Although several reviews exist in this domain, they primarily focus on applications, impacts, and trends, with limited attention to robot design in relation to affordability. Using a systematic literature review, this study identifies the features and capabilities commonly incorporated in low-cost social robots in educational contexts, as well as the design choices that balance effectiveness and affordability. Thirty-four (34) studies describing low-cost custom social robot designs were analysed following PRISMA guidelines. Articles were retrieved from Web of Science, Scopus, IEEE Xplore, and the ACM Digital Library, and analysed using content analysis as well as descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings show that speech-based interaction (73.5%), vision capabilities (53%), and body-part movement (47%) are the most frequently reported features supporting learner-robot interaction. Additional features include expressive displays, touch input, and mobility. While 3D-printed housings are the most commonly adopted solution, alternative low-cost materials such as plywood and plush toys are also used. The use of smartphones as integrated computational and interaction platforms emerged as an innovative approach. Furthermore, commonly used sensors, actuators, and compute platforms are identified. This review provides a design-oriented perspective on developing effective yet affordable social robots and highlights practical design trade-offs for researchers, particularly in low-resource contexts.</p>","PeriodicalId":47597,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Robotics and AI","volume":"13 ","pages":"1827676"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13364618/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148449811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Projection surface detection and pose selection for autonomously displaying multimedia on walls using mobile robots.","authors":"Kay Richter, Söhnke Benedikt Fischedick, Horst-Michael Gross","doi":"10.3389/frobt.2026.1810071","DOIUrl":"10.3389/frobt.2026.1810071","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Mobile robots equipped with projectors enable versatile applications such as multimedia display, interactive communication, and environmental augmentation. However, wall projection, which is required for displaying multimedia content on walls, remains challenging, because it is difficult to autonomously locate a projection space that is both flat and unobstructed. Some existing approaches address wall projection using 2D maps or by considering only large continuous surfaces, but these methods fail to capture the full potential of detailed 3D information of the operation area and often overlook wall segments that are partially occluded by objects, for example, areas blocked by pictures or whiteboards. To tackle these challenges, we propose a method based on 3D PanopticNDT maps, that uses semantic information to identify suitable wall segments. A tailored scoring function then evaluates potential robot poses to ensure optimal projection conditions, such as proper viewing angle, appropriate distance, and maximal surface area. Our experiments on both synthetic and real-world datasets demonstrate that our approach is well-suited for practical applications, effectively overcoming the limitations of earlier methods.</p>","PeriodicalId":47597,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Robotics and AI","volume":"13 ","pages":"1810071"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13358339/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148438439","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Editorial: The role of communication and emotion in human-robot interaction: a psychological perspective.","authors":"Karolina Eszter Kovács, Péter Korondi, Mihoko Niitsuma, Yousef Ibrahim, Csilla Csukonyi, Balázs Őrsi","doi":"10.3389/frobt.2026.1897548","DOIUrl":"10.3389/frobt.2026.1897548","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47597,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Robotics and AI","volume":"13 ","pages":"1897548"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13358340/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148438407","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Correction: Morphological symmetry-aware generalized policy network for deep reinforcement learning.","authors":"","doi":"10.3389/frobt.2026.1904541","DOIUrl":"10.3389/frobt.2026.1904541","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/frobt.2026.1816301.].</p>","PeriodicalId":47597,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Robotics and AI","volume":"13 ","pages":"1904541"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13358329/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148438482","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Uncertainty-aware estimation, planning, and control for tracking multiple drifting patches in flow fields.","authors":"Daniel O Akanji, Krishnanand N Kaipa, Cong Wei","doi":"10.3389/frobt.2026.1842384","DOIUrl":"10.3389/frobt.2026.1842384","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this study, we present a replay-based framework for uncertainty-aware persistent tracking of multiple advected surface patches using an autonomous marine vehicle operating in spatiotemporal-varying currents. The method combines three components: local flow estimation, covariance-aware patch-boundary propagation with intermittent boundary fusion, and mission-level scheduling over multiple patches. Each patch is represented by a polygonal boundary, whose vertices are propagated through the estimated flow field while carrying per-vertex covariance, thereby quantifying uncertainty growth during advection. A flow-aware gain-scheduled linear quadratic regulator (LQR) was designed to shape the desired surge speed to take advantage of favorable currents. When the vehicle services a patch, boundary detections are fused to reduce the active patch uncertainty, and optional local map-covariance refinement is used to reduce subsequent uncertainty regrowth in the surrounding flow field. A boundedness analysis shows that if each patch is revisited within a prescribed maximum interval, then the corresponding patch uncertainty remains uniformly bounded; a companion feasibility condition relates the allowable revisit interval to vehicle speed, service time, and tour length over the patch set. To validate the result, a data replay simulation using HF-radar currents from the San Francisco Bay region was used to demonstrate the expected bounded sawtooth uncertainty behavior under feasible revisit conditions. In addition, our proposed duration-weighted predictive scheduler outperforms nearest-patch and round-robin baselines and, in spatially separated patch configurations, achieves lower mean patch uncertainty and lower control-effort proxy than a highest-J baseline. These results indicate that combining uncertainty-aware propagation with cost-aware scheduling is a viable strategy for persistent monitoring of evolving marine surface phenomena.</p>","PeriodicalId":47597,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Robotics and AI","volume":"13 ","pages":"1842384"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13351817/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148425479","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"TouchWGNN: spatio-temporal tactile perception for multimodal dexterous manipulation.","authors":"Yu Ning, FuQiang Zhao, Qian Liu","doi":"10.3389/frobt.2026.1791424","DOIUrl":"10.3389/frobt.2026.1791424","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Dexterous in-hand manipulation requires robotic hands to estimate object-state reliably under frequent occlusions, contact-rich interactions, and fast dynamics. Tactile sensing provides high-frequency, contact-specific feedback, although extracting useful representations from raw tactile signals and integrating them with vision and proprioception remains challenging. In this article, we present TouchWGNN, a multimodal dexterous manipulation framework that explicitly models tactile signals as a spatio-temporal graph. We first develop a low-cost distributed tactile sensor array for a five-fingered robotic hand, enabling real-time acquisition of normal forces from 113 sensing points distributed across key contact regions. We then construct a tactile graph in which taxels (or active contact points) are nodes with force features and 3D coordinates and edges encode spatial proximity and local force variation. A graph-based spatial encoder captures instantaneous contact geometry, and a temporal module models its evolution over time to refine object-state estimates. Finally, we fuse the tactile estimate with vision (point-cloud-based pose) and proprioception (joint states) for policy learning with reinforcement learning. Experiments on two in-hand manipulation tasks, cube reorientation and Baoding ball swapping, demonstrate that integrating raw tactile feedback with vision and proprioception improves manipulation performance compared with unimodal baselines.</p>","PeriodicalId":47597,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Robotics and AI","volume":"13 ","pages":"1791424"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13351857/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148425471","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From vision-language models to structure-aware visual reasoning: foundations, representations, and consistency checking.","authors":"Xiaoyan Dai","doi":"10.3389/frobt.2026.1781874","DOIUrl":"10.3389/frobt.2026.1781874","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47597,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Robotics and AI","volume":"13 ","pages":"1781874"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13341544/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148413314","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}