IEEE Transactions on Robotics最新文献

{"title":"Load-Transfer Suspended Backpack With Bioinspired Vibration Isolation for Shoulder Pressure Reduction Across Diverse Terrains","authors":"Yu Cao;Mengshi Zhang;Jian Huang;Samer Mohammed","doi":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3562488","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3562488","url":null,"abstract":"Active suspended backpacks represent a promising solution to mitigate the impact of inertial forces on individuals engaged in load carriage. However, identifying effective control objectives aimed at enhancing human carrying capacity remains a significant challenge. In this study, we introduce a novel approach by integrating a limb-like structure-type (LLS) bioinspired vibration isolator, modeled using Lagrangian mechanics, into an active load-transfer suspended backpack to primarily alleviate human shoulder pressure, thereby constructing a human–robot interaction control framework for the system. Drawing from a double-mass coupled oscillator model, this approach formulates a vertical dynamics model for the human-backpack system, systematically exploring the principles of both static load transfer and dynamic load reduction on the human shoulder. Subsequently, a series-elastic-actuator-based controller with prescribed performance is proposed to simultaneously achieve trajectory tracking and ensure load motion within the limited range. Theoretically, we validate the input–output stability of the LLS model and guarantee the ultimate uniform boundedness of the closed-loop system. Simulation and experimental trials conducted across different terrain scenarios validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, highlighting reductions of 18.68% in metabolic rate during level ground walking, 9.58% in a staircase scenario, and 12.35% in a complex terrain, involving uphill, downstairs, and flat ground walking.","PeriodicalId":50388,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Robotics","volume":"41 ","pages":"3059-3077"},"PeriodicalIF":9.4,"publicationDate":"2025-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143858025","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Shear-Based Grasp Control for Multifingered Underactuated Tactile Robotic Hands","authors":"Christopher J. Ford;Haoran Li;Manuel G. Catalano;Matteo Bianchi;Efi Psomopoulou;Nathan F. Lepora","doi":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3563046","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3563046","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents a shear-based control scheme for grasping and manipulating delicate objects with a Pisa/IIT anthropomorphic SoftHand equipped with soft biomimetic tactile sensors on all five fingertips. These “microTac” tactile sensors are miniature versions of the TacTip vision-based tactile sensor, and can extract precise contact geometry and force information at each fingertip for use as feedback into a controller to modulate the grasp while a held object is manipulated. Using a parallel processing pipeline, we asynchronously capture tactile images and predict contact pose and force from multiple tactile sensors. Consistent pose and force models across all sensors are developed using supervised deep learning with transfer learning techniques. We then develop a grasp control framework that uses contact force feedback from all fingertip sensors simultaneously, allowing the hand to safely handle delicate objects even under external disturbances. This control framework is applied to several grasp-manipulation experiments: First, retaining a flexible cup in a grasp without crushing it under changes in object weight; Second, a pouring task where the center of mass of the cup changes dynamically; and third, a tactile-driven leader-follower task where a human guides a held object. These manipulation tasks demonstrate more human-like dexterity with underactuated robotic hands by using fast reflexive control from tactile sensing.","PeriodicalId":50388,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Robotics","volume":"41 ","pages":"3113-3128"},"PeriodicalIF":9.4,"publicationDate":"2025-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143858026","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Fast Iterative Region Inflation for Computing Large 2-D/3-D Convex Regions of Obstacle-Free Space","authors":"Qianhao Wang, Zhepei Wang, Mingyang Wang, Jialin Ji, Zhichao Han, Tianyue Wu, Rui Jin, Yuman Gao, Chao Xu, Fei Gao","doi":"10.1109/tro.2025.3562482","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/tro.2025.3562482","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50388,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Robotics","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143849725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bridging the Gap Between Semantics and Geometry in SLAM: A Semantic-Geometric Tight-Coupling Monocular Visual Object SLAM System","authors":"Wenbin Zhu;Jing Yuan;Xuebo Zhang;Fei Chen","doi":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3562440","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3562440","url":null,"abstract":"Existing object-level simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) methods often overlook the correspondence between semantic information and geometric features, resulting in a significant gap between them within SLAM frameworks. To tackle this issue, this article proposes, a semantic-geometric tight-coupling monocular visual object SLAM system, (TiMoSLAM), which considers a rigorous correspondence between semantics and geometry across all steps of SLAM. Initially, a general semantic relation graph (SRG) is developed to consistently represent semantic information alongside geometric features. Detailed analyzes on complete constraints of the geometric feature combinations on estimation of 3-D cuboid model are performed. Subsequently, a compound hypothesis tree is proposed to incrementally construct the object-specific SRG and concurrently estimate the 3-D cuboid model of an object, ensuing semantic-geometric consistency in object representation and estimation. Special attention is given to the matching errors between geometric features and objects during the optimization of camera poses and object parameters. The effectiveness of this method is validated on various datasets, as well as in real-world environments.","PeriodicalId":50388,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Robotics","volume":"41 ","pages":"3078-3098"},"PeriodicalIF":9.4,"publicationDate":"2025-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143849756","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Deep Learning-Based Automatic Control of Magnetic Diatom Biohybrid Microrobots for Targeted Delivery","authors":"Mengyue Li;Liang Li;Junjian Zhou;Lianqing Liu;Niandong Jiao","doi":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3562452","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3562452","url":null,"abstract":"Biohybrid microrobots with autonomous movement capabilities have broad application prospects in targeted delivery, attracting researchers to study their movement characteristics. However, its automatic control is still challenging, and exploring real-time detection of its environment for path planning to achieve stable closed-loop control is highly important for its practical application. Here, we applied deep learning for the detection of biohybrid microrobots and their targets and obstacles, followed by real-time path planning and trajectory tracking of biohybrid microrobots for targeted delivery. The proposed detection algorithm introduces attention and multiscale feature fusion mechanisms in YOLOv7 algorithm (AM-YOLOv7) with the aim of enhancing the precision of detecting small-scale targets when robots, obstacles and targets are displayed globally, and the detection capabilities are verified through simulations and experiments. The proposed planning algorithm introduces a turning penalty function and a path smoothing strategy into A* algorithm (PS-A*) to make the planned path short and smooth, which has been verified through simulation and experiments. The adaptive fuzzy PID method is used to track the robot's trajectory, and experiments and simulations show that the biohybrid microrobot can move according to the preset trajectory better. The final cell scene experimental results show that the biohybrid microrobot using this system can effectively avoid obstacle cells and be delivered to target cells. The system can detect biohybrid microrobots, obstacle cells and target cells, plan short and smooth trajectories, and track them accurately. The proposed method has certain generalizability and broad application prospects in targeted delivery.","PeriodicalId":50388,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Robotics","volume":"41 ","pages":"2990-3003"},"PeriodicalIF":9.4,"publicationDate":"2025-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143849773","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Open-Loop Control of Electrically Conductive Materials in an Oscillating Magnetic Field","authors":"Seth Stewart, Joseph Pawelski, Steve Ward, Andrew J. Petruska","doi":"10.1109/tro.2025.3562451","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/tro.2025.3562451","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50388,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Robotics","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143849717","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From Concept to Field Trials: Design, Analysis, and Evaluation of a Novel Quadruped Robot With Deformable Wheel–Foot Structure","authors":"Zhongjin Ju;Ke Wei;Yundou Xu","doi":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3562449","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3562449","url":null,"abstract":"This study introduces a novel quadruped robot, the TerraAdapt, furnished with an innovative deformable wheel–foot integrated structure. This unique design grants the robot the flexibility to alternate between wheeled and footed modes of locomotion, making it efficient in traversing diverse terrains, from smooth indoor floors to challenging outdoor landscapes laden with obstacles. The study delineates an in-depth design and analysis of the deformable wheel and its integrated wheel–foot structure using screw theory. We engineer a 2 R: Rotational, P: Prismatic (RRR-RP) wheel–foot mode-switching mechanism by modifying a 2RRR spatial six-bar mechanism with an additional RP branch. This mechanism aids in seamless transitioning between different movement modes. Moreover, a 2RRR parallel structure is employed to construct the footed mode structure.To substantiate the viability and efficacy of the proposed design, we carry out extensive motion simulations and construct an experimental prototype for field testing. The field trials reveal the robot's adeptness in adapting to varied terrains, highlighting the possible advantages of incorporating the proposed deformable wheel into micro mobile robot designs.","PeriodicalId":50388,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Robotics","volume":"41 ","pages":"3143-3161"},"PeriodicalIF":9.4,"publicationDate":"2025-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143849771","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Aerial Robots Carrying Flexible Cables: Dynamic Shape Optimal Control via Spectral Method Model","authors":"Yaolei Shen;Antonio Franchi;Chiara Gabellieri","doi":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3562459","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3562459","url":null,"abstract":"In this work, we present a model-based optimal boundary control design for an aerial robotic system composed of a quadrotor carrying a flexible cable. The whole system is modeled by partial differential equations combined with boundary conditions described by ordinary differential equations. The proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) method is adopted to project the original infinite-dimensional system on a finite low-dimensional space spanned by orthogonal basis functions. Based on such a reduced-order model, nonlinear model predictive control is implemented online to realize both position and shape trajectory tracking of the flexible cable in an optimal predictive fashion. The proposed POD-based reduced modeling and optimal control paradigms are verified in simulation using an accurate high-dimensional finite difference method-based model and experimentally using a real quadrotor and a cable. The results show the viability of the POD-based predictive control approach (allowing to close the control loop on the full system state) and its superior performance compared to an optimally tuned proportional–integral–derivative (PID) controller (allowing to close the control loop on the quadrotor state only).","PeriodicalId":50388,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Robotics","volume":"41 ","pages":"3162-3182"},"PeriodicalIF":9.4,"publicationDate":"2025-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143849774","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"SceneFactory: A Workflow-Centric and Unified Framework for Incremental Scene Modeling","authors":"Yijun Yuan;Michael Bleier;Andreas Nüchter","doi":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3562479","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3562479","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we present SceneFactory, a workflow-centric and unified framework for incremental scene modeling that conveniently supports a wide range of applications, such as (unposed and/or uncalibrated) multiview depth estimation, LiDAR completion, (dense) RGB-D/RGB-LiDAR (RGB-L)/Mono/Depth-only reconstruction, and simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). The workflow-centric design uses multiple blocks as the basis for constructing different production lines. The supported applications, i.e., productions avoid redundancy in their designs. Thus, the focus is placed on each block itself for independent expansion. To support all input combinations, our implementation consists of four building blocks that form SceneFactory: first, tracking, second, flexion, third, depth estimation, and fourth, scene reconstruction. The tracking block is based on Mono SLAM and is extended to support RGB-D and RGB-L inputs. Flexion is used to convert the depth image (untrackable) into a trackable image. For general-purpose depth estimation, we propose an unposed and uncalibrated multiview depth estimation model (U<inline-formula><tex-math>$^{2}$</tex-math></inline-formula>-MVD) to estimate dense geometry. U<inline-formula><tex-math>$^{2}$</tex-math></inline-formula>-MVD exploits dense bundle adjustment to solve for poses, intrinsics, and inverse depth. A semantic-aware ScaleCov step is then introduced to complete the multiview depth. Relying on U<inline-formula><tex-math>$^{2}$</tex-math></inline-formula>-MVD, SceneFactory both supports user-friendly 3-D creation (with just images) and bridges the applications of Dense RGB-D and Dense Mono. For high-quality surface and color reconstruction, we propose dual-purpose multiresolutional neural points for the first surface accessible surface color field design, where we introduce improved point rasterization for point cloud-based surface query. We implement and experiment with SceneFactory to demonstrate its broad applicability and high flexibility. Its quality also competes or exceeds the tightly-coupled state of the art approaches in all tasks.","PeriodicalId":50388,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Robotics","volume":"41 ","pages":"3183-3201"},"PeriodicalIF":9.4,"publicationDate":"2025-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10970428","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143849719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"An Efficient Unified Algorithm for the Minimum Euclidean Distance Between Two Collections of Compact Convex Sets","authors":"Yu Zheng","doi":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3562478","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3562478","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we present an efficient unified algorithm for the minimum Euclidean distance between two collections of compact convex sets, each of which can be a collection of convex primitives, such as ellipsoids, capsules, and cylinders, or a collection of triangles (i.e., triangle mesh) or a collection of points (i.e., point cloud) as special cases. The Euclidean distance between two compact convex sets is defined to be the smallest translation to bring them into intersection if they are separated or to separate them if they intersect, which can be computed by the well-known Gilbert–Johnson–Keerthi and expanding polytope algorithms, respectively. While existing algorithms are aimed at computing the minimum Euclidean distance for a specific type of collections, algorithms for mixed situations always remain vacant. We discover that the smallest translation direction between any two compact convex sets determines the planes to bound and separate some other sets in two collections and can help quickly identify sets that do not have the minimum distance. In this way, the minimum distance between two collections can be efficiently computed, hundreds to thousands of times faster than the brute-force search. The computational efficiency of the proposed algorithm is verified with a number of numerical experiments in various scenarios.","PeriodicalId":50388,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Robotics","volume":"41 ","pages":"3004-3018"},"PeriodicalIF":9.4,"publicationDate":"2025-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143849772","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}