Service dogs have successfully provided assistance to thousands of motor-impaired people worldwide. As a step towards the creation of robots that provide comparable assistance, we present a biologically inspired robot ...

In this work we present a set of integrated methods that enable an RFID-enabled mobile manipulator to approach and grasp an object to which a self-adhesive passive (battery-free) UHF RFID tag has been affixed. Our primary ...

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 ...

Handheld manipulable objects can often be found on flat surfaces within human environments. Researchers have previously demonstrated that perceptually segmenting a flat surface from the objects resting on it can enable ...

In this paper, we demonstrate data-driven inference of mechanical properties of objects using a tactile sensor array (skin) covering a robot's forearm. We focus on the mobility (sliding vs. fixed), compliance (soft vs. ...

An omnidirectional Mecanum base allows for more flexible mobile manipulation. However, slipping of the Mecanum wheels results in poor dead-reckoning estimates from wheel encoders, limiting the accuracy and overall utility ...

Studies have consistently shown that object retrieval would be a valuable task for assistive robots to perform, yet detailed information about the needs of patients with respect to this task has been lacking. In this paper, ...