13 papers
Sliding Sensors: Configurable Confidence in State Estimation for Continuum Robots
Ella Walsh, Spencer Teetaert, Eric Diller +2
Continuum robots often operate in uncertain environments, where accurate state estimation is essential for safe interactions. Estimate uncertainty is inherently spatially non-unifo…
Do Rigid-Body Simulators Dream of Soft Robots? Learning Contact-Rich Manipulation for Tendon-Driven Continuum Robots
Chengnan Shentu, Nicholas Baldassini, Tongjia Zheng +2
Learning contact-rich, whole-body manipulation for soft continuum robots is held back by the lack of simulation infrastructure that has accelerated rigid-robot manipulation. Existi…
Sampling-Based Follow-the-Leader Motion Planning for Manipulator-Mounted Continuum Robots
Chengnan Shentu, Nicholas Baldassini, Oluwagbotemi D. Iseoluwa +2
Follow-the-leader (FTL) motion exploits the unique morphology of continuum robots (CRs) to navigate confined spaces by having the body retrace the path of the tip. While extensivel…
Continuum Robot Localization using Distributed Time-of-Flight Sensors
Spencer Teetaert, Giammarco Caroleo, Marco Pontin +4
Localization and mapping of an environment are crucial tasks for any robot operating in unstructured environments. Time-of-flight (ToF) sensors (e.g.,~lidar) have proven useful in…
Collaborative Continuum Robots: A Survey
Xinyu Li, Qian Tang, Guoxin Yin +4
Continuum robots (CRs), owing to their compact structure, inherent compliance, and flexible deformation, have been widely applied in various fields. By coordinating multiple CRs to…
A Sliding-Window Filter for Online Continuous-Time Continuum Robot State Estimation
Spencer Teetaert, Sven Lilge, Jessica Burgner-Kahrs +1
Stochastic state estimation methods for continuum robots (CRs) often struggle to balance accuracy and computational efficiency. While several recent works have explored sliding-win…