IEEE Transactions on Robotics最新文献

{"title":"Ultimate Passivity: Balancing Performance and Stability in Physical Human–Robot Interaction","authors":"Xinliang Guo;Zheyu Liu;Vincent Crocher;Ying Tan;Denny Oetomo;Arno H. A. Stienen","doi":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3546856","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3546856","url":null,"abstract":"Haptic interaction is critical in physical human–robot Interaction (pHRI), given its wide applications in manufacturing, medical and healthcare, and various industry tasks. A stable haptic interface is always needed while the human operator interacts with the robot. Passivity-based approaches have been widely utilized in the control design as a sufficient condition for stability. However, it is a conservative approach which therefore sacrifices performance to maintain stability. This article proposes a novel concept to characterize an ultimately passive system, which can achieve the boundedness of the energy in the steady-state. A so-called ultimately passive controller (UPC) is then proposed. This algorithm switches the system between a nominal mode for keeping desired performance and a conservative mode when needed to remain stable. An experimental evaluation on two robotic systems, one admittance-based and one impedance-based, demonstrates the potential interest of the proposed framework compared to existing approaches. The results demonstrate the possibility of UPC in finding a more aggressive tradeoff between haptic performance and system stability, while still providing a stability guarantee.","PeriodicalId":50388,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Robotics","volume":"41 ","pages":"2050-2066"},"PeriodicalIF":9.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143526045","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":"Probabilistic Path Planning for Wheel-Legged Rover in Dense Environment Based on Extended MDP and Configuration Topology Analysis","authors":"Bike Zhu;Jun He;Zhicheng Yuan;Feng Gao","doi":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3546789","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3546789","url":null,"abstract":"Wheel-legged planetary rovers possess superb locomotion capabilities. This article combines an offline predefined motion planning library with online path planning, integrating energy consumption and probabilistic aspects of the robotic system. The primary focus is on addressing the planning challenges in dense environments, where the distance between any adjacent obstacles is smaller than the width of the prototype. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the interaction between the prototype and the environment. First, the generalized function set theory and the configuration topology theory are utilized to mathematically describe the motions of multilimbed systems. Based on the representation, an offline planning library is established. Second, the Markov-decision-process-based path planning method is extended by incorporating the platform's geometry and locomotion capabilities. The concept of “limb-travel relevant nodes” is introduced. To address the numerous iteration problems, the informed value iteration algorithm is proposed. Third, a multilayered map is evaluated to further enhance computational efficiency. Finally, the proposed algorithm is implemented on the terrain adaptive wheel-legged rover. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is capable of finding the optimal path with high computational efficiency, and it exhibits excellent adaptability on nonuniform maps.","PeriodicalId":50388,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Robotics","volume":"41 ","pages":"2512-2532"},"PeriodicalIF":9.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143518793","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":"Guest EditorialSpecial Collection on Tactile Robotics","authors":"Mark Yim;Shan Luo;Nathan Lepora;Wenzhen Yuan;Kaspar Althoefer;Gordon Cheng;Julio Rogelio Guadarrama Olvera;Ravinder Dahiya","doi":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3538993","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3538993","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50388,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Robotics","volume":"41 ","pages":"ii-iii"},"PeriodicalIF":9.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10900528","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143486020","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":"Robotic Haptic Exploration of Object Shape With Autonomous Symmetry Detection","authors":"Aramis Augusto Bonzini;Lucia Seminara;Simone Macciò;Alessandro Carfì;Lorenzo Jamone","doi":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3544113","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3544113","url":null,"abstract":"Haptic robotic exploration aims to control the movements of a robot with the objective of touching an object and retrieving physical information about it. In this work, we present an innovative exploration strategy to simultaneously detect symmetries in a 3-D object and use this information to enhance shape estimation. This is achieved by leveraging a novel formulation of Gaussian process models that allows the modeling of symmetric surfaces. Our procedure does not assume any prior knowledge about the object, neither about its shape nor about the presence and type of symmetry, necessitating only an approximate estimate of the size and boundaries (bounding box). We report experimental results both in simulation and in the real world, showing that using symmetric models leads to a reduction in shape estimation error, exploration time, and in the number of physical contacts performed by a robot when exploring objects that have symmetries.","PeriodicalId":50388,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Robotics","volume":"41 ","pages":"2391-2405"},"PeriodicalIF":9.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143462827","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":"Relative Localizability and Localization for Multirobot Systems","authors":"Liangming Chen;Chenyang Liang;Shenghai Yuan;Muqing Cao;Lihua Xie","doi":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3544103","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3544103","url":null,"abstract":"Inter-robot relative positions are crucial for executing various multirobot missions, such as formation maneuvering and collaborative inspection. However, the current sensing technology usually provides part of relative position information, such as inter-robot distances, bearings and angles. This prompts the study of determining inter-robot relative positions, i.e., relative localization, from these partial measurements. Based on the existing results of static networks' localizability and mobile robots' relative localization, we propose a novel concept, <italic>relative localizability</i> to describe whether a multirobot system is <italic>relatively localizable</i>. Given each robot's self-displacement measurements and inter-robot partial measurements in <inline-formula><tex-math>$d$</tex-math></inline-formula> (<inline-formula><tex-math>$dleq 4$</tex-math></inline-formula>) sampling instants, we show that a multirobot system's relative localization can be achieved in a purely <italic>algebraic</i> and <italic>distributed</i> manner, in which the multirobot system is said to be <italic><inline-formula><tex-math>$d$</tex-math></inline-formula>-step relatively localizable</i>. To make the results more general, we consider that the multirobot system consists of landmarks, leaders, and followers, and that the inter-robot measurements can be distances, bearings or angles. When robots' coordinate frames have different orientations, we show that the given local measurements can be used to determine robots' relative positions and their coordinate frames' relative orientations simultaneously. Simulations and experiments of relative localization for ground robots are conducted to validate the obtained results.","PeriodicalId":50388,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Robotics","volume":"41 ","pages":"2931-2949"},"PeriodicalIF":9.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143462826","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":"Remote Robotic Palpation With Depth-Vision-Driven Autonomous-Dimensionality-Reduction Shared Control","authors":"Jingwen Zhao;Leone Costi;Luca Scimeca;Fumiya Iida","doi":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3544104","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3544104","url":null,"abstract":"Teleoperated medical robots have the potential to revolutionize healthcare. However, when developing systems for tasks like remote palpation, state-of-the-art literature still uses test phantoms of oversimplified geometries, due to the complexity of the required mechanical robot–patient interaction. In reality, human bodies have complex 3-D shapes and require fine-tuning of all six manipulator's degrees of freedom, controlled by the user. In this article, we argue that the implementation of depth-vision-driven autonomous dimensionality-reduction (DVD ADR) shared control can greatly improve the users' performance. The proposed control method keeps the user in control of the end-effector’s position, while automatically adjusting its orientation in order to maintain the tactile sensor normal to the phantom's surface. A depth camera and a computer vision algorithm are used to infer the phantom's shape and achieve DVD ADR shared control. Experimental results showcase how this leads to statistically significant performance improvement. Not only were the participants able to achieve more precise palpations, with up to 29.5% and 22.4% more accuracy in position and orientation, respectively, but the DVD ADR shared control allowed them to achieve a 8.8% better detection accuracy while needing 13.8% less time. The abovementioned results are all tested for statistical significance and achieved a <italic>p</i>-value lower than 0.05.","PeriodicalId":50388,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Robotics","volume":"41 ","pages":"1882-1897"},"PeriodicalIF":9.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143462828","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":"In Memoriam","authors":"","doi":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3537216","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TRO.2025.3537216","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50388,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Robotics","volume":"41 ","pages":"i-i"},"PeriodicalIF":9.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10896982","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143455350","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":"Ultrasound Image-Based Average $Q$-Learning Control of Magnetic Microrobots","authors":"Jia Liu;Guoyao Ma;Shixiong Fu;Chenyang Huang;Xinyu Wu;Tiantian Xu","doi":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3543261","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3543261","url":null,"abstract":"Magnetic microrobots have garnered significant attention and hold great potential for biomedical research applications. However, achieving precise manipulation in vivo poses significant challenges, particularly in medical image-based real-time feedback control, because it is difficult for a visual camera to track the motion of magnetic microrobots inside the body in biomedical applications. To realize the precise control of magnetic microrobots, it is also necessary to design and implement a simple and powerful control method. This approach allows for avoiding resource-intensive and complex control strategies. In this article, we present a learning-based real-time control method utilizing ultrasound images. Inspired by the ADboost concept, we use a reinforcement learning approach to integrate two simple control methods: a proportional-integral-derivative controller and a guiding vector field controller. We develop a novel <inline-formula><tex-math>$Q$</tex-math></inline-formula>-learning method called average <inline-formula><tex-math>$Q$</tex-math></inline-formula>-learning that incorporates average operation and <inline-formula><tex-math>$n$</tex-math></inline-formula>-step bootstraps. Its primary objective is to dynamically adjust the outputs of the different simple controllers. While each controller individually offers a straightforward solution, their integration contributes to a powerful control approach. To demonstrate its scalability, a nonsmooth path is utilized to investigate the integration performance of three simple controllers. In addition, we enhance a classic segmentation module, U-net, by incorporating an atrous spatial pyramid pooling module. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed control method, we conduct simulations and experiments using various planar paths. The quantitative analysis of the results demonstrates the efficacy of our approach in achieving precise manipulation, leveraging real-time control based on medical images for magnetic microrobots. Overall, this study provides a preliminary investigation into the field of medical image-based precise manipulation of magnetic microrobots in vivo applications.","PeriodicalId":50388,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Robotics","volume":"41 ","pages":"1728-1741"},"PeriodicalIF":9.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143451607","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":"Tactile-Reactive Roller Grasper","authors":"Shenli Yuan;Shaoxiong Wang;Radhen Patel;Megha Tippur;Connor L. Yako;Mark R. Cutkosky;Edward Adelson;J. Kenneth Salisbury","doi":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3543324","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3543324","url":null,"abstract":"Manipulation of objects within a robot's hand is one of the most important challenges in achieving robot dexterity. To address this challenge, Roller Graspers use steerable rolling fingertips. The fingertips impart motions and exert forces to achieve six degree of freedom mobility and closed-loop grasp force control. The design reported here uses image processing from cameras placed inside steerable compliant rollers to track contact conditions and locations. Integration of this data into a controller enables a variety of robust in-hand manipulation capabilities. We demonstrate that the same information can be used to reconstruct object shape. In addition, we show that by converting in-hand manipulation from a discontinuous process, with fingers frequently attaching and detaching from the object surface, to a continuous process, we can implement a convergent control loop that minimizes errors that otherwise accumulate during large object motions. The difference is apparent when comparing the results of an object rotation using a discontinuous finger-gaiting approach, as would be required without rolling fingertips, to the results obtained with continuous rolling. The results suggest that hybrid rolling fingertip and finger-gaiting approaches to manipulation may be a promising future research direction.","PeriodicalId":50388,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Robotics","volume":"41 ","pages":"1938-1955"},"PeriodicalIF":9.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143451608","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":"CliReg: Clique-Based Robust Point Cloud Registration","authors":"Javier Laserna Moratalla;Pablo San Segundo Carrillo;David Álvarez Sánchez","doi":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3542954","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3542954","url":null,"abstract":"We propose a branch-and-bound algorithm for robust rigid registration of two point clouds in the presence of a large number of outlier correspondences. For this purpose, we consider a maximum consensus formulation of the registration problem and reformulate it as a (large) maximal clique search in a correspondence graph, where a clique represents a complete rigid transformation. Specifically, we use a maximum clique algorithm to enumerate large maximal cliques and a fitness procedure that evaluates each clique by solving a least-squares optimization problem. The main advantages of our approach are 1) it is possible to exploit the cutting-edge optimization techniques employed by current exact maximum clique algorithms, such as partial maximum satisfiability-based bounds, branching by partitioning or the use of bitstrings, etc.; 2) the correspondence graphs are expected to be sparse in real problems (confirmed empirically in our tests), and, consequently, the maximum clique problem is expected to be easy; 3) it is possible to have a <italic>good</i> control of suboptimality with a k-nearest neighbor analysis that determines the size of the correspondence graph as a function of <inline-formula> <tex-math>$k$</tex-math></inline-formula>. The new algorithm is called <monospace>CliReg</monospace> and has been implemented in C++. To evaluate <monospace>CliReg</monospace>, we have carried out extensive tests both on synthetic and real public datasets. The results show that <monospace>CliReg</monospace> clearly dominates the state of the art (e.g., <monospace>RANSAC</monospace>, <monospace>FGR</monospace>, and <monospace>TEASER++</monospace>) in terms of robustness, with a running time comparable to <monospace>TEASER++</monospace> and <monospace>RANSAC</monospace>. In addition, we have implemented a fast variant called <monospace>CliRegMutual</monospace> that performs similarly to the fastest heuristic <monospace>FGR</monospace>.","PeriodicalId":50388,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Robotics","volume":"41 ","pages":"1898-1917"},"PeriodicalIF":9.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10892261","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143451609","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}