In this paper, we discuss a methodology to extract play primitives, defined as a sequence of low-level motion behaviors identified during a playing action, such as stacking or inserting a toy. Our premise is that if a robot ...

Delivering an object to a user would be a generally useful capability for service robots. Within this paper, we look at this capability in the context of assistive object retrieval for motor-impaired users. We first describe ...

Objects within human environments are usually found on flat surfaces that are orthogonal to gravity, such as floors, tables, and shelves. We first present a new assistive robot that is explicitly designed to take advantage ...

Instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) involve physical interactions with diverse mechanical systems found within human environments. In this paper, we describe our efforts to capture the everyday mechanics of ...

Passive UHF RFID tags are well matched to robots' needs. Unlike lowfrequency (LF) and high-frequency (HF) RFID tags, passive UHF RFID tags are readable from across a room, enabling a mobile robot to efficiently discover ...

Many tasks that would be of benefit to users in domestic environments require that robots manipulate articulated objects such as doors and drawers. In this paper, we present a novel approach that simultaneously estimates ...

We present a novel interface for human-robot interaction that enables a human to intuitively and unambiguously se- lect a 3D location in the world and communicate it to a mo- bile robot. The human points at a location of ...

The goal of this project is to investigate the implementation of a planning algorithm for the problem of placing objects on a cluttered surface with a PR-2 mobile manipulator. The original push planning algorithm [1] ...

By initiating physical contact with people, robots can be more useful. For example, a robotic caregiver might make contact to provide physical assistance or facilitate communication. So as to better understand how people ...