13 citations · 40 across the 18 of their papers we have counts for
19 papers
Does This Action Still Explain the Task? Reverse Scoring for Diffusion Language Model Agents
Jiacheng Qiu, Christopher E. Mower, Jan Peters +2
Diffusion-based large language models (dLLMs) promise to break the sequential latency bottleneck of autoregressive agents through parallel decoding, but recent evaluations show thi…
Trust Region Inverse Reinforcement Learning: Explicit Dual Ascent using Local Policy Updates
Anish Diwan, Davide Tateo, Christopher E. Mower +3
Inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) is typically formulated as maximizing entropy subject to matching the distribution of expert trajectories. Classical (dual-ascent) IRL guarante…
HapTile: A Haptic-Informed Vision-Tactile-Language-Action Dataset for Contact-Rich Imitation Learning
Amirhosein Alian, Yongqiang Zhao, Shiyi Gu +5
Despite the importance of tactile sensing for reliable manipulation, most existing Vision-Language-Action (VLA) datasets remain vision-only, and those that do incorporate tactile i…
EmbodimentSemantic: A Spatial Scene-Graph Dataset and Benchmark for Vision-Language Models on Embodied Manipulation Trajectories
Hassan Jaber, Refinath S N, Luca Cagliero +2
Spatial grounding remains a key limitation of vision-language-action (VLA) systems for robotic manipulation. While current models can recognize objects and follow language instruct…
Data-driven Interpretable Hybrid Robot Dynamics
Christopher E. Mower, Rui Zong, Haitham Bou-Ammar
We study data-driven identification of interpretable hybrid robot dynamics, where an analytical rigid-body dynamics model is complemented by a learned residual torque term. Using s…
Localising under the drape: proprioception in the era of distributed surgical robotic system
Martin Huber, Nicola A. Cavalcanti, Ayoob Davoodi +15
Despite their mechanical sophistication, surgical robots remain blind to their surroundings. This lack of spatial awareness causes collisions, system recoveries, and workflow disru…
Ark: An Open-source Python-based Framework for Robot Learning
Magnus Dierking, Christopher E. Mower, Sarthak Das +10
Robotics has made remarkable hardware strides-from DARPA's Urban and Robotics Challenges to the first humanoid-robot kickboxing tournament-yet commercial autonomy still lags behind…
A Pragmatist Robot: Learning to Plan Tasks by Experiencing the Real World
Kaixian Qu, Guowei Lan, René Zurbrügg +4
Large language models (LLMs) have emerged as the dominant paradigm for robotic task planning using natural language instructions. However, trained on general internet data, LLMs ar…
Hydra: Marker-Free RGB-D Hand-Eye Calibration
Martin Huber, Huanyu Tian, Christopher E. Mower +4
This work presents an RGB-D imaging-based approach to marker-free hand-eye calibration using a novel implementation of the iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm with a robust poi…
Al-Khwarizmi: Discovering Physical Laws with Foundation Models
Christopher E. Mower, Haitham Bou-Ammar
Inferring physical laws from data is a central challenge in science and engineering, including but not limited to healthcare, physical sciences, biosciences, social sciences, susta…
Vision and Contact based Optimal Control for Autonomous Trocar Docking
Christopher E. Mower, Martin Huber, Huanyu Tian +4
Future operating theatres will be equipped with robots to perform various surgical tasks including, for example, endoscope control. Human-in-the-loop supervisory control architectu…
ROS-LLM: A ROS framework for embodied AI with task feedback and structured reasoning
Christopher E. Mower, Yuhui Wan, Hongzhan Yu +20
We present a framework for intuitive robot programming by non-experts, leveraging natural language prompts and contextual information from the Robot Operating System (ROS). Our sys…
Semi-Autonomous Laparoscopic Robot Docking with Learned Hand-Eye Information Fusion
Huanyu Tian, Martin Huber, Christopher E. Mower +4
In this study, we introduce a novel shared-control system for key-hole docking operations, combining a commercial camera with occlusion-robust pose estimation and a hand-eye inform…
Excitation Trajectory Optimization for Dynamic Parameter Identification Using Virtual Constraints in Hands-on Robotic System
Huanyu Tian, Martin Huber, Christopher E. Mower +4
This paper proposes a novel, more computationally efficient method for optimizing robot excitation trajectories for dynamic parameter identification, emphasizing self-collision avo…
LBR-Stack: ROS 2 and Python Integration of KUKA FRI for Med and IIWA Robots
Martin Huber, Christopher E. Mower, Sebastien Ourselin +2
The LBR-Stack is a collection of packages that simplify the usage and extend the capabilities of KUKA's Fast Robot Interface (FRI). It is designed for mission critical hard real-ti…
Deep Reinforcement Learning Based System for Intraoperative Hyperspectral Video Autofocusing
Charlie Budd, Jianrong Qiu, Oscar MacCormac +7
Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) captures a greater level of spectral detail than traditional optical imaging, making it a potentially valuable intraoperative tool when precise tissue d…
OpTaS: An Optimization-based Task Specification Library for Trajectory Optimization and Model Predictive Control
Christopher E. Mower, João Moura, Nazanin Zamani Behabadi +3
This paper presents OpTaS, a task specification Python library for Trajectory Optimization (TO) and Model Predictive Control (MPC) in robotics. Both TO and MPC are increasingly rec…
ROS-PyBullet Interface: A Framework for Reliable Contact Simulation and Human-Robot Interaction
Christopher E. Mower, Theodoros Stouraitis, João Moura +7
Reliable contact simulation plays a key role in the development of (semi-)autonomous robots, especially when dealing with contact-rich manipulation scenarios, an active robotics re…
Comparing Alternate Modes of Teleoperation for Constrained Tasks
Christopher E. Mower, Wolfgang Merkt, Aled Davies +1
Teleoperation of heavy machinery in industry often requires operators to be in close proximity to the plant and issue commands on a per-actuator level using joystick input devices.…