From a functional standpoint, classic robots are not at all similar to biological systems. If
compared with rigid robots, animals' bodies look overly redundant, imprecise, and weak …

Nonlinear modes are a well investigated concept in dynamical systems theory, extending
the celebrated modal analysis of linear mechanical systems to nonlinear ones. This letter …

In this letter, a new approach is proposed to optimally plan the motion along a parametrized
path for flexible joint robots, ie, robots whose structure is purposefully provided with …

Recently, the method of choice to exploit robot dynamics for efficient walking is numerical
optimization (NO). The main drawback in NO is the computational complexity, which strongly …

Eigenmanifolds are two-dimensional submanifolds of the state space, which generalize
linear eigenspaces to nonlinear mechanical systems. Initializing a robot on an …

Quadratic programming (QP)-based controllers allow many robotic systems, such as
humanoids, to successfully undertake complex motions and interactions. However, these …

Potential applications for large-scale soft robots include interacting with humans while
carrying a heavy load, navigating in clutter, executing impact tasks like hammering a nail …

Robotic manipulation relies on analytical or learned models to simulate the system
dynamics. These models are often inaccurate and based on offline information, so that the …

Introducing elasticity in the mechanical design can endow robots with the ability of
performing efficient and effective periodic motions. Yet, devising controllers that can take …

This thesis introduces a new class of problems at the interface of combinatorial and convex
optimization. We consider graphs where each vertex is paired with a convex program, and …