Chao Liu

Massachusetts Institute of Technology | MIT · Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

Differentiable simulation has become a powerful tool for system identification. While prior work has focused on identifying robot properties using robot-specific data or object properties using object-specific data, our approach calibrates object properties by using information from the robot, without relying on data from the object itself. Specifi...

Mirroring the complex structures and diverse functions of natural organisms is a long-standing challenge in robotics. Modern fabrication techniques have dramatically expanded feasible hardware, yet deploying these systems requires control software to translate desired motions into actuator commands. While conventional robots can easily be modeled a...

Human-machine interfaces for capturing, conveying, and sharing tactile information across time and space hold immense potential for healthcare, augmented and virtual reality, human-robot collaboration, and skill development. To realize this potential, such interfaces should be wearable, unobtrusive, and scalable regarding both resolution and body c...

Truss robots are highly redundant parallel robotic systems that can be applied in a variety of scenarios. The variable topology truss (VTT) is a class of modular truss robots. As self-reconfigurable modular robots, a VTT is composed of many edge modules that can be rearranged into various structures depending on the task. These robots change their...

Self-assembly of modular robotic systems enables the construction of complex robotic configurations to adapt to different tasks. This paper presents a framework for SMORES types of modular robots to efficiently self-assemble into tree topologies. These modular robots form kinematic chains that have been shown to be capable of a large variety of man...

More info: https://action-sense.csail.mit.edu ====================== This paper introduces ActionSense, a multimodal dataset and recording framework with an emphasis on wearable sensing in a kitchen environment. It provides rich, synchronized data streams along with ground truth data to facilitate learning pipelines that could extract insights abou...

Accurate position sensing is important for state estimation and control in robotics. Reliable and accurate position sensors are usually expensive and difficult to customize. Incorporating them into systems that have very tight volume constraints such as modular robots are particularly difficult. PaintPots are low-cost, reliable, and highly customiz...

Truss robots are highly redundant parallel robotic systems and can be applied in a variety of scenarios. The variable topology truss (VTT) is a class of modular truss robot. As self-reconfigurable modular robots, variable topology trusses are composed of many edge modules that can be rearranged into various structures with respect to different acti...

Motion planning in high-dimensional space is a challenging task. In order to perform dexterous manipulation in an unstructured environment, a robot with many degrees of freedom is usually necessary, which also complicates its motion planning problem. Real-time control brings about more difficulties in which robots have to maintain the stability whi...

Motion planning in high-dimensional space is a challenging task. In order to perform dexterous manipulation in an unstructured environment, a robot with many degrees of freedom is usually necessary, which also complicates its motion planning problem. Real-time control brings about more difficulties in which robots have to maintain the stability whi...

Self-assembly of modular robotic systems enables the construction of complex robotic configurations to adapt to different tasks. This paper presents a framework for SMORES types of modular robots to efficiently self-assemble into tree topologies. These modular robots form kinematic chains that have been shown to be capable of a large variety of man...

Accurate position sensing is important for state estimation and control in robotics. Reliable and accurate position sensors are usually expensive and difficult to customize. Incorporating them into systems that have very tight volume constraints such as modular robots are particularly difficult. PaintPots are a low-cost, reliable, and highly custom...

Modular robots are usually composed of multiple blocks with uniform docking interfaces that can be transformed into different configurations. It is a significant challenge to recognize modular robot configurations composed of hundreds of modules. Given a new configuration, it is important to match it to an existing configuration and, if true, map e...

Self-reconfigurable modular robots are usually composed of multiple modules with uniform docking interfaces that can be transformed into different configurations by themselves. The reconfiguration planning problem is finding what sequence of reconfiguration actions are required for one arrangement of modules to transform into another. We present a...

Variable topology truss (VTT) is a new class of self-reconfigurable robot. A variable topology truss can change both its shape and its topology so that it can be reconfigured into various structures with respect to different environments and tasks. It is a significant challenge to control modular robot systems due to the complexity of its configura...

This paper is an initial step toward the realization of an aerial robot that can perform lateral physical work, such as drilling a hole or fastening a screw in a wall. Aerial robots are capable of high maneuverability and can provide access to locations that would be difficult or impossible for ground-based robots to reach. However, to fully utiliz...

Modular robots are usually composed of multiple blocks with uniform docking interfaces that can be transformed into different configurations. It is a significant challenge to recognize modular robot configurations composed of hundreds of modules. Given a new configuration, it is important to match it to an existing configuration and, if true, map e...