Top Research Papers on Robotics

This article argues that the authors need to distinguish between three main forms of robotic deception (external state deception; superficial state deception; and hidden state deception) in order to think clearly about its ethics.

This paper contributes to a taxonomy of augmented reality and robotics based on a survey of 460 research papers and formulate key challenges and opportunities to guide and inform future research in AR and robotics.

It is argued that the media performances of the Sophia robot were choreographed to advance specific political interests and put the discussions about the robot’s rights or citizenship in the context of AI politics and economics.

Robotic equipment has been playing a central role since the proposal of smart manufacturing. Since the beginning of the first integration of industrial robots into production lines, industrial robots have enhanced productivity and relieved humans from heavy workloads significantly. Towards the next generation of manufacturing, this review first introduces the comprehensive background of smart robotic manufacturing within robotics, machine learning, and robot learning. Definitions and categories of robot learning are summarised. Concretely, imitation learning, policy gradient learning, value fu...

This survey paper comprehensively reviews the state-of-the-art development of collaborative robotic manipulation from the perspective of modelling, control and optimization.

Grounded in post-Cartesian philosophical foundations, this work argues not just to deny robots 'rights', but to deny that robots, as artifacts emerging out of and mediating human being, are the kinds of things that could be granted rights in the first place.

Abstract We study the microeconomic implications of robot adoption using a rich panel data set of Spanish manufacturing firms over a 27-year period (1990–2016). We provide causal evidence on two central questions: (1) Which firm characteristics prompt firms to adopt robots? (2) What is the impact of robots on adopting firms relative to non-adopting firms? To address these questions, we look at our data through the lens of recent attempts in the literature to formalise the implications of robot technology. As for the first question, we establish robust evidence for positive selection, i.e., ex ...

This book explores the ethics of creating robots that are, or appear to be, decision-making agents and investigates ethically important differences between human agency and robot agency to work towards an ethics of responsible human-robot interaction.

Progress in the burgeoning field of tensegrity robotics is reviewed, highlighting several emerging challenges, including automated design, state sensing, and kinodynamic motion planning.

This article is a hands-on tutorial on the Franka Emika robot, the first series of industrial artificial intelligence (AI)-ready tactile robot platforms, and takes a close look at implementations with all interfaces, ranging from simple solutions, apps, and controllers to robot-learning examples illustrating how to exploit all the advantages of this platform in ongoing robotics research and education.

By assembling a multidisciplinary team of engineers and endoscopists, the paper aims to provide a contemporary and highly-pictorial critical review for robotic colonoscopes, hence providing clinicians and researchers with a glimpse of the major changes and challenges that lie ahead.

Technology developments relating to automation, artificial intelligence, and robots have transformed the landscape of service industries, including hospitality and tourism. Through a qualitative content analysis of online review data, this study seeks a comprehensive and grounded understanding of customer experience with service robots in hospitality and tourism settings. The analysis identified four categories of customer experience: (1) sensory experience (verbal language, physical appearance, kinesics, and paralanguage), (2) cognitive experience (utility, cuteness, autonomy, coolness, inter...

Effective integration between the electronic components with garments, human skin, and living organisms is illustrated, presenting multifunctional platforms with self-powered potential for human-robot interactions and biomedicine.

A conceptual framework is offered that interpretively develops the ethical implications of AI robot applications, drawing on descriptive and normative ethical theory, and indicates that in situations of escalating AI agency and situational moral intensity, accountability is widely dispersed between actors and institutions.

Emerging RAMIS technologies are reviewed both in a historical and a future perspective, indicating the inception of a new era in telesurgical robotics, infiltrated by machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions.

The opportunities of using a digital twin to address the complexity of collaborative production systems through an industrial case and a demonstrator are explored.

It is proposed that people evaluate service robots more positively when they are anthropomorphized and seem more humanlike-capable of both agency and experience, and that high levels of perceived experience attenuate the negative impacts of service failures on customer satisfaction.

It is proposed that social robots may be an effective component in robot-assisted interventions for social anxiety, not replacing, but complementing the work of clinicians.

Lio is a mobile robot platform with a multi-functional arm explicitly designed for human-robot interaction and personal care assistant tasks, and complies with ISO13482 - Safety requirements for personal care robots, meaning it can be directly tested and deployed in care facilities.

A novel taxonomy of levels of interaction between humans and robots along the lines of SAEs guidelines for autonomous vehicles is introduced in response to a need for standard definitions and evolving nature of the field.

Soft robotics is an exciting field of science and technology that enables robots to manipulate objects with human-like dexterity. Soft robots can handle delicate objects with care, access remote areas, and offer realistic feedback on their handling performance. However, increased dexterity and mechanical compliance of soft robots come with the need for accurate control of the position and shape of these robots. Therefore, soft robots must be equipped with sensors for better perception of their surroundings, location, force, temperature, shape, and other stimuli for effective usage. This review...

Central aspects of language use by robots are described, including understanding natural language requests, using language to drive learning about the physical world, and engaging in collaborative dialogue with a human partner.

In this review, a summary of the recent progress in robotic DNA nanostructures, mechanics, and their various implementations is summarized.

The survey is intended to delineate an interpretation key for the design of collaborative robotics solution that explains the relationship among all relevant factors: actuation, control, safety, physical interaction, usability, and productivity.

This review provides a current overview of the field by examining the working mechanisms of advanced actuation and sensing modalities, modeling techniques, control strategies, and learning architectures for soft robots, and how these approaches can be applied to create sophisticated soft robots and examine their application areas.

This review examines the dichotomy between automatic and autonomous behaviors in surgical robots, maps the possible levels of autonomy of these robots, and describes the primary enabling technologies that are driving research in this field. It is organized in five main sections that cover increasing levels of autonomy. At level 0, where the bulk of commercial platforms are, the robot has no decision autonomy. At level 1, the robot can provide cognitive and physical assistance to the surgeon, while at level 2, it can autonomously perform a surgical task. Level 3 comes with conditional autonomy,...

The unique roles robots can play in groups are reviewed, finding that small changes in their nonverbal behavior and personality impacts group behavior and, by extension, influences ongoing interpersonal interactions.

Herein, recent advances, current limitations, and open challenges in the design, modeling, and control of continuum robots are discussed. Thanks to their lean bodies, these robots achieve a long reach through narrow and tortuous environments, enabling currently unachievable tasks for medical, industrial, and service applications. The recent surge in research on these robots leads to significant advances in design, modeling, and control methods. Herein, these developments with a comprehensive review of existing continuum robots and emerging technologies are examined. Then, modeling and control ...

A mobile robot autonomously operates analytical instruments in a wet chemistry laboratory, performing a photocatalyst optimization task much faster than a human would be able to.

The development of pediatric robotic-assisted surgery is described, technical limitations and benefits are discussed, and training considerations particular to robotic surgery are reviewed.

The paper provides detailed information about state-of-the-art research in care, hospital, assistive, rehabilitation, and walking assisting robots and discusses the open challenges healthcare robots face to be integrated into the authors' society.

With the rapidly growing attention to human-robot interfaces, soft robotics has attracted a great deal of interest. Soft robots have diverse advantages, including compliancy and safety, which contribute to seamless interactions with humans. To boost progress in the field, there is a need for compliant materials. Hydrogels are promising as compliant materials for soft robots because of their outstanding features, including high stretchability, transparency, ion conductivity, and biocompatibility. Furthermore, hydrogels provide innovative capabilities for soft robotics based on their unique resp...

The robotic deep inferior epigastric artery perforator flap permits the longest possible pedicle harvest through the smallest possible fascial incision and may be the next stage in the evolution of minimally invasive, autologous breast reconstruction.

The role of robots in society keeps expanding and diversifying, bringing with it a host of issues surrounding the relationship between robots and humans. This introduction to human-robot interaction (HRI), written by leading researchers in this developing field, is the first to provide a broad overview of the multidisciplinary topics central to modern HRI research. Students and researchers from robotics, artificial intelligence, psychology, sociology, and design will find it a concise and accessible guide to the current state of the field. Written for students from diverse backgrounds, it pres...

A key aspect of robotics today is estimating the state (e.g., position and orientation) of a robot, based on noisy sensor data. This book targets students and practitioners of robotics by presenting classical state estimation methods (e.g., the Kalman filter) but also important modern topics such as batch estimation, Bayes filter, sigmapoint and particle filters, robust estimation for outlier rejection, and continuous-time trajectory estimation and its connection to Gaussian-process regression. Since most robots operate in a three-dimensional world, common sensor models (e.g., camera, laser ra...

The Retail Service Robot (RSR) is a humanoid robot that uses AI service automation to provide customized shopping assistance. Based upon Computers-Are-Social-Actors theory, this study investigates: (1) The way RSRs’ usefulness, social capability, and appearance facilitate Human-Robot Interaction (HRI); (2) whether anxiety toward robots inhibits the relations between RSRs’ facilitators and HRI, and (3) whether HRI affects anticipated service quality and ultimately the acceptance of RSRs. The study incorporates interviews, video clip stimuli, and empirical data collection (n = 1362) in fashion, ...

In a world that requires sustainable agricultural practices, quantitative plant-by-plant and field status monitoring can be advantageous to all farmers by optimizing their farm management. Autonomous robots, sensing technologies, and automated data analysis will play a key role. In the present article, we discuss three critical aspects of the incorporation of field robots in agriculture: 1) the main design specifications and economic aspects for Commercial Agricultural Robots (CARs) in terms of autonomous navigation (perception, localization, and kinematics); 2) the business models of agricult...

This work explores how a social robot influences team engagement using an experimental design where a group of three humans and one robot plays a collaborative game and shows that a robot’s social behavior influences the conversational dynamics between human members of the human–robot group, demonstrating the ability of a robot to significantly shape human–human interaction.

It is shown that consumers feel less judged by a robot (vs. a human) when having to engage in an embarrassing service encounter, and a robot helps consumers to overcome their reluctance to accept the service provider’s offering when the situation becomes embarrassing.

Findings indicate that while consumers prefer higher levels of humanness and moderate-to-high levels of social interaction opportunity, only some participants liked robots more when dialogue (high-interaction opportunity) was offered.