TY - JOUR T1 - LiDAR-Based GNSS Denied Localization for Autonomous Racing Cars JF - Sensors Y1 - 2020 A1 - F. Massa A1 - L. Bonamini A1 - A Settimi A1 - L. Pallottino A1 - D. Caporale VL - 20 UR - https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/20/14/3992#cite IS - 14 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Learning From Humans How to Grasp: A Data-Driven Architecture for Autonomous Grasping With Anthropomorphic Soft Hands JF - IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters Y1 - 2019 A1 - C. D. Santina A1 - V. Arapi A1 - G. Averta A1 - F. Damiani A1 - G. Fiore A1 - A Settimi A1 - M. G. Catalano A1 - D. Bacciu A1 - A. Bicchi A1 - M. Bianchi KW - Computer architecture KW - Control KW - Deep Learning in Robotics and Automation KW - Grasping KW - Learning for Soft Robots KW - Modeling KW - Natural Machine Motion KW - Neural networks KW - Robot sensing systems KW - Uncertainty KW - Videos VL - 4 ER - TY - Generic T1 - Towards the Design of Robotic Drivers for Full-Scale Self-Driving Racing Cars T2 - 2019 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) Y1 - 2019 A1 - D. Caporale A1 - A Settimi A1 - F. Massa A1 - F. Amerotti A1 - A. Corti A1 - A. Fagiolini A1 - M. Guiggiani A1 - A. Bicchi A1 - L. Pallottino JF - 2019 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Humanoids at Work: The WALK-MAN Robot in a Postearthquake Scenario JF - IEEE Robotics Automation Magazine Y1 - 2018 A1 - F. Negrello A1 - A Settimi A1 - D. Caporale A1 - G. Lentini A1 - M. Poggiani A1 - D. Kanoulas A1 - L. Muratore A1 - Luberto, E. A1 - G. Santaera A1 - L. Ciarleglio A1 - L. Ermini A1 - L. Pallottino A1 - D. G. Caldwell A1 - N. Tsagarakis A1 - A. Bicchi A1 - M. Garabini A1 - M. G. Catalano KW - Buildings KW - Earthquakes KW - Hardware KW - Legged locomotion KW - Robot sensing systems KW - Task analysis ER - TY - CONF T1 - A Planning and Control System for Self-Driving Racing Vehicles T2 - 2018 IEEE 4th International Forum on Research and Technology for Society and Industry (RTSI) Y1 - 2018 A1 - D. Caporale A1 - A. Fagiolini A1 - L. Pallottino A1 - A Settimi A1 - A. Biondo A1 - F. Amerotti A1 - F. Massa A1 - S. De Caro A1 - A. Corti A1 - L. Venturini JF - 2018 IEEE 4th International Forum on Research and Technology for Society and Industry (RTSI) CY - Palermo, Italy ER - TY - CHAP T1 - WALK-MAN Humanoid Platform T2 - The DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals: Humanoid Robots To The Rescue Y1 - 2018 A1 - N. G. Tsagarakis A1 - F. Negrello A1 - M. Garabini A1 - W. Choi A1 - L. Baccelliere A1 - V. G. Loc A1 - J. Noorden A1 - M. G. Catalano A1 - M. Ferrati A1 - L. Muratore A1 - P. Kryczka A1 - E. Mingo Hoffman A1 - A Settimi A1 - A. Rocchi A1 - A. Margan A1 - S. Cordasco A1 - D. Kanoulas A1 - A. Cardellino A1 - L. Natale A1 - H. Dallali A1 - J. Malzahn A1 - N. Kashiri A1 - V. Varricchio A1 - L. Pallottino A1 - C. Pavan A1 - J. Lee A1 - A. Ajoudani A1 - D. G. Caldwell A1 - A. Bicchi JF - The DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals: Humanoid Robots To The Rescue PB - Springer VL - 121 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - WALK-MAN: A High-Performance Humanoid Platform for Realistic Environments JF - Journal of Field Robotics Y1 - 2017 A1 - N. G. Tsagarakis A1 - D. G. Caldwell A1 - F. Negrello A1 - W. Choi A1 - L. Baccelliere A1 - V. G. Loc A1 - J. Noorden A1 - L. Muratore A1 - A. Margan A1 - A. Cardellino A1 - L. Natale A1 - E. Mingo Hoffman A1 - H. Dallali A1 - N. Kashiri A1 - J. Malzahn A1 - J. Lee A1 - P. Kryczka A1 - D. Kanoulas A1 - M. Garabini A1 - M. G. Catalano A1 - M. Ferrati A1 - V. Varricchio A1 - L. Pallottino A1 - C. Pavan A1 - A. Bicchi A1 - A Settimi A1 - A. Rocchi A1 - A. Ajoudani KW - Robotics AB -

In this work, we present WALK-MAN, a humanoid platform that has been developed to operate in realistic unstructured environment, and demonstrate new skills including powerful manipulation, robust balanced locomotion, high-strength capabilities, and physical sturdiness. To enable these capabilities, WALK-MAN design and actuation are based on the most recent advancements of series elastic actuator drives with unique performance features that differentiate the robot from previous state-of-the-art compliant actuated robots. Physical interaction performance is benefited by both active and passive adaptation, thanks to WALK-MAN actuation that combines customized high-performance modules with tuned torque/velocity curves and transmission elasticity for high-speed adaptation response and motion reactions to disturbances. WALK-MAN design also includes innovative design optimization features that consider the selection of kinematic structure and the placement of the actuators with the body structure to maximize the robot performance. Physical robustness is ensured with the integration of elastic transmission, proprioceptive sensing, and control. The WALK-MAN hardware was designed and built in 11 months, and the prototype of the robot was ready four months before DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Finals. The motion generation of WALK-MAN is based on the unified motion-generation framework of whole-body locomotion and manipulation (termed loco-manipulation). WALK-MAN is able to execute simple loco-manipulation behaviors synthesized by combining different primitives defining the behavior of the center of gravity, the motion of the hands, legs, and head, the body attitude and posture, and the constrained body parts such as joint limits and contacts. The motion-generation framework including the specific motion modules and software architecture is discussed in detail. A rich perception system allows the robot to perceive and generate 3D representations of the environment as well as detect contacts and sense physical interaction force and moments. The operator station that pilots use to control the robot provides a rich pilot interface with different control modes and a number of teleoperated or semiautonomous command features. The capability of the robot and the performance of the individual motion control and perception modules were validated during the DRC in which the robot was able to demonstrate exceptional physical resilience and execute some of the tasks during the competition.

VL - 34 UR - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/rob.21702/epdf IS - 4 ER - TY - CONF T1 - APRICOT: Aerospace PRototypIng COntrol Toolbox. A Modeling and Simulation Environment for Aircraft Control Design T2 - International Workshop on Modelling and Simulation for Autonomous Systems MESAS 2016 Y1 - 2016 A1 - A. Ferrarelli A1 - D. Caporale A1 - A Settimi A1 - L. Pallottino KW - Embedded Control KW - Robotics AB -

A novel MATLAB/Simulink based modeling and simulation environment for the design and rapid prototyping of state-of-the-art aircraft control systems is proposed. The toolbox, named APRICOT, is able to simulate the longitudinal and laterodirectional dynamics of an aircraft separately, as well as the complete 6 degrees of freedom dynamics. All details of the dynamics can be easily customized in the toolbox, some examples are shown in the paper. Moreover, different aircraft models can be easily integrated. The main goal of APRICOT is to provide a simulation environment to test and validate different control laws with different aircraft models. Hence, the proposed toolbox has applicability both for educational purposes and control rapid prototyping. With respect to similar software packages, APRICOT is customizable in all its aspects, and has been released as open source software. An interface with Flightgear Simulator allows for online visualization of the flight. Examples of control design with simulation experiments are reported and commented.

JF - International Workshop on Modelling and Simulation for Autonomous Systems MESAS 2016 PB - Springer CY - Rome, Italy, June 15-16, 2016 VL - 9991 of the book series Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) UR - http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-47605-6_11 ER - TY - CONF T1 - Motion Primitive Based Random Planning for Loco–Manipulation Tasks T2 - IEEE International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS 2016) Y1 - 2016 A1 - A Settimi A1 - D. Caporale A1 - P. Kryczka A1 - M. Ferrati A1 - L. Pallottino KW - Robotics AB -

Several advanced control laws are available for
complex robotic systems such as humanoid robots and mobile
manipulators. Controls are usually developed for locomotion or
for manipulation purposes. Resulting motions are usually executed
sequentially and the potentiality of the robotic platform
is not fully exploited.
In this work we consider the problem of loco–manipulation
planning for a robot with given parametrized control laws
known as primitives. Such primitives, may have not been
designed to be executed simultaneously and by composing
them instability may easily arise. With the proposed approach,
primitives combination that guarantee stability of the system
are obtained resulting in complex whole–body behavior.
A formal definition of motion primitives is provided and a
random sampling approach on a manifold with limited dimension
is investigated. Probabilistic completeness and asymptotic
optimality are also proved. The proposed approach is tested
both on a mobile manipulator and on the humanoid robot
Walk-Man, performing loco–manipulation tasks.

JF - IEEE International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS 2016) PB - IEEE CY - Cancun, Mexico, 15-17 Nov. 2016 SN - 978-1-5090-4718-5 UR - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7803402/ N1 -
This work is supported by the European commission project Walk-Man EU FP7-ICT no. 611832 and the ECs Horizon 2020 robotics program ICT-23-2014 under grant agreement 644727 (CogIMon)
ER - TY - CONF T1 - Multi–object handling for robotic manufacturing T2 - IECON 2016: 42nd Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society Y1 - 2016 A1 - M. Ferrati A1 - H. Marino A1 - A Settimi A1 - S. Nardi A1 - L. Pallottino KW - Robotics AB -

The purpose of this work is to move a step toward the automation of industrial plants through full exploitation of autonomous robots. A planning algorithm is proposed to move different objects in desired configurations with heterogeneous robots such as manipulators, mobile robots and conveyor belts.
The proposed approach allows different objects to be handled by different robots simultaneously in an efficient way and avoiding collisions with the environment and self–collisions between robots. In particular, the integrated system will be capable of planning paths for a set of objects from various starting points in the environment (e.g. shelves) to their respective final destinations. The proposed approach unifies the active (e.g., grasping by a hand) and passive (e.g., holding by a table) steps involved in moving the objects in the environment by treating them as end–effectors with constraints and capabilities.
Time varying graphs will be introduced to model the problem for simultaneous handling of objects by different end–effectors.
Optimal exploration of such graphs will be used to determine paths for each object with time constraints. Results will be validated through simulations.

JF - IECON 2016: 42nd Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society PB - IEEE CY - Florence, Italy, October 24-27 UR - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7793936/?reload=true ER - TY - JOUR T1 - On the Problem of Moving Objects With Autonomous Robots: A Unifying High-Level Planning Approach JF - IEEE ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION LETTERS Y1 - 2016 A1 - H. Marino A1 - M. Ferrati A1 - A Settimi A1 - C. Rosales A1 - M Gabiccini KW - Robotics AB -

Moving objects with autonomous robots is a wide topic that includes single-arm pick-and-place tasks, object regrasping, object passing between two or more arms in the air or using support surfaces such as tables and similar. Each task has been extensively studied and many planning solutions are already present in the literature. In this letter, we present a planning scheme which, based on the use of pre-defined elementary manipulation skills, aims to unify solutions which are usually obtained by means of different planning strategies rooted on hardcoded behaviors. Both robotic manipulators and environment fixed support surfaces are treated as end-effectors of movable and non-movable types, respectively. The task of the robot can thus be broken down into elementary building blocks, which are endeffector manipulation skills, that are then planned at the kinematic level. Feasibility is ensured by propagating unforeseen low-level failures at the higher level and by synthesizing different behaviors. The validity of the proposed solution is shown via experiments on a bimanual robot setup and in simulations involving a more complex setup similar to an assembly line.

VL - 1 UR - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=7384694 IS - 1 U1 -

pacman, soma

ER - TY - JOUR T1 - The Walk-Man Robot Software Architecture JF - Front. Robot. AI Y1 - 2016 A1 - M. Ferrati A1 - A Settimi A1 - L. Muratore A1 - N. G. Tsagarakis A1 - L. Natale A1 - L. Pallottino KW - Robotics AB -

A software and control architecture for a humanoid robot is a complex and large project, which involves a team of developers/researchers to be coordinated and requires many hard design choices. If such project has to be done in a very limited time, i.e., less than 1 year, more constraints are added and concepts, such as modular design, code reusability, and API definition, need to be used as much as possible. In this work, we describe the software architecture developed for Walk-Man, a robot participant at the Darpa Robotics Challenge. The challenge required the robot to execute many different tasks, such as walking, driving a car, and manipulating objects. These tasks need to be solved by robotics specialists in their corresponding research field, such as humanoid walking, motion planning, or object manipulation. The proposed architecture was developed in 10 months, provided boilerplate code for most of the functionalities required to control a humanoid robot and allowed robotics researchers to produce their control modules for DRC tasks in a short time. Additional capabilities of the architecture include firmware and hardware management, mixing of different middlewares, unreliable network management, and operator control station GUI. All the source code related to the architecture and some control modules have been released as open source projects.

UR - http://bit.ly/2jAPke2 ER - TY - CONF T1 - ASCARI: a component based simulator for distributed mobile robot systems T2 - Modelling & Simulation for Autonomous Systems - MESAS2014 Y1 - 2014 A1 - M. Ferrati A1 - A Settimi A1 - L. Pallottino KW - Embedded Control KW - Robotics JF - Modelling & Simulation for Autonomous Systems - MESAS2014 PB - Springer CY - Rome, 5-6 May 2014 VL - Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 8906, 2014 ER - TY - CONF T1 - Manipulation Framework for Compliant Humanoid COMAN: Application to a Valve Turning Task T2 - IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS 2014) Y1 - 2014 A1 - A. Ajoudani A1 - J. Lee A1 - A. Rocchi A1 - M. Ferrati A1 - E. Mingo Hoffman A1 - A Settimi A1 - D. G. Caldwell A1 - A. Bicchi A1 - N G Tsagarakis KW - Haptics KW - Robotics AB -

With the purpose of achieving a desired interaction performance for our compliant humanoid robot (COMAN), in this paper we propose a semi-autonomous control framework and evaluate it experimentally in a valve turning setup. The control structure consists of various modules and interfaces to identify the valve, locate the robot in front of it and perform the manipulation. The manipulation module implements four motion primitives (Reach, Grasp, Rotate and Disengage) and realizes the corresponding desired impedance profile for each phase to accomplish the task. In this direction, to establish a stable and compliant contact between the valve and the robot hands, while being able to generate the sufficient rotational torques depending on the valve's friction, Rotate incorporates a novel dual-arm impedance control technique to plan and realize a task-appropriate impedance profile. Results of the implementation of the proposed control framework are firstly evaluated in simulation studies using Gazebo. Subsequent experimental results highlight the efficiency of the proposed impedance planning and control in generation of the required interaction forces to accomplish the task.

JF - IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS 2014) PB - IEEE CY - Madrid, Spain, November 18 - 20 UR - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=7041434 ER - TY - CONF T1 - A modular approach for remote operation of humanoid robots in search and rescue scenarios T2 - Modelling & Simulation for Autonomous Systems - MESAS2014 Y1 - 2014 A1 - A Settimi A1 - C. Pavan A1 - V. Varricchio A1 - M. Ferrati A1 - E. Mingo A1 - A. Rocchi A1 - K. Melo A1 - N G Tsagarakis A1 - A. Bicchi KW - Robotics JF - Modelling & Simulation for Autonomous Systems - MESAS2014 CY - Rome, 5-6 May 2014 ER - TY - CONF T1 - Upper-body Impedance Control with an Intuitive Stiffness Emulation for a Door Opening Task T2 - IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS 2014) Y1 - 2014 A1 - J. Lee A1 - A. Ajoudani A1 - E. Mingo Hoffman A1 - A. Rocchi A1 - A Settimi A1 - M. Ferrati A1 - A. Bicchi A1 - N G Tsagarakis A1 - D. G. Caldwell KW - Robotics AB -

The advent of humanoids has brought new challenges in the real-world application. As a part of ongoing efforts to foster functionality of the robot accommodating a real environment, this paper introduces a recent progress on a door opening task with our compliant humanoid, CoMan. We presents a task-prioritized impedance control framework for an upper body system that includes a dual-arm, a waist, two soft hands, and 3D camera. Aimed to create desired responses to open the door, a novel stiffness modulation method is proposed, incorporating a realtime optimization. As a preliminary experiment, a full door-opening scenario (approaching to the door and reaching, grasping, rotating and pulling the door handle) is demonstrated under a semi-autonomous operation with a pilot. The experimental result shows the effectiveness and efficacy of the proposed impedance control approach. Despite of uncertainties from sensory data, the door opening task is successfully achieved and safe and robust interaction is established without creating excessive forces.

JF - IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS 2014) PB - IEEE CY - Madrid, Spain, November 18 - 20 UR - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=7041441 ER - TY - CONF T1 - Yarp Based Plugins for Gazebo Simulator T2 - 2014 Modelling and Simulation for Autonomous Systems Workshop (MESAS) Y1 - 2014 A1 - Mingo, E A1 - Traversaro, S A1 - Rocchi, A A1 - M. Ferrati A1 - A Settimi A1 - Romano, F A1 - Natale, L A1 - A. Bicchi A1 - Nori, F A1 - N G Tsagarakis KW - Robotics JF - 2014 Modelling and Simulation for Autonomous Systems Workshop (MESAS) CY - Roma, Italy, 5 -6 May 2014 ER - TY - CONF T1 - A Subgradient Based Algorithm for Distributed Task Assignment for Heterogeneous Mobile Robots T2 - IEEE Conference on Decision and Control Y1 - 2013 A1 - A Settimi A1 - L. Pallottino KW - Robotics JF - IEEE Conference on Decision and Control CY - Florence, Italy ER -