Abstract-- Learned robot policies have consistently been shown to be versatile, but they typically have no built-in mechanism for handling the complexity of open environments, making them prone to execution failures; this implies that deploying policies without the ability to recognise and react to failures may lead to unreliable and unsafe robot behaviour . In this paper, we present a framework that couples a learned policy with a method to detect visual anomalies during policy deployment and to perform recovery behaviours when necessary, thereby aiming to prevent failures. Specifically, we train an anomaly detection model using data collected during nominal executions of a trained policy. This model is then integrated into the online policy execution process, so that deviations from the nominal execution can trigger a three-level sequential recovery process that consists of (i) pausing the execution temporarily, (ii) performing a local perturbation of the robot's state, and (iii) resetting the robot to a safe state by sampling from a learned execution success model. We verify our proposed method in two different scenarios: (i) a door handle reaching task with a Kinova Gen3 arm using a policy trained in simulation and transferred to the real robot, and (ii) an object placing task with a UFactory xArm 6 using a general-purpose policy model. Our results show that integrating policy execution with anomaly detection and recovery increases the execution success rate in environments with various anomalies, such as trajectory deviations and adversarial human interventions. I. INTRODUCTION To increase the flexibility of a robot's execution and reduce the requirements on explicitly modelling the execution process, robot execution policies are often acquired using learning methods, such as imitation learning or reinforcement learning (RL).

That's Harder Than It Sounds Proposed regulations in China would mean the end of flush handles on car doors, with precious little time to roll out the changes. Car door handles seem innocuous. Tesla's electronic, retractable ones--since imitated by plenty of global automakers--have become a symbol of the automaker's willingness to work from design-first principles, reimagining what the car of the future might look like, electric-style. But in September, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched an investigation into the Tesla 2021 Model Y's door handles. More than 140 consumers have complained to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) about the door handles, according to a Bloomberg report published last month.

Robots operating in unstructured environments face significant challenges when interacting with everyday objects like doors. They particularly struggle to generalize across diverse door types and conditions. Existing vision-based and open-loop planning methods often lack the robustness to handle varying door designs, mechanisms, and push/pull configurations. In this work, we propose a haptic-aware closed-loop hierarchical control framework that enables robots to explore and open different unseen doors in the wild. Our approach leverages real-time haptic feedback, allowing the robot to adjust its strategy dynamically based on force feedback during manipulation. We test our system on 20 unseen doors across different buildings, featuring diverse appearances and mechanical types. Our framework achieves a 90% success rate, demonstrating its ability to generalize and robustly handle varied door-opening tasks. This scalable solution offers potential applications in broader open-world articulated object manipulation tasks.

The sense of touch is an essential ability for skillfully performing a variety of tasks, providing the capacity to search and manipulate objects without relying on visual information. Extensive research has been conducted over time to apply these human tactile abilities to robots. In this paper, we introduce a multi-finger robot system designed to search for and manipulate objects using the sense of touch without relying on visual information. Randomly located target objects are searched using tactile sensors, and the objects are manipulated for tasks that mimic daily-life. The objective of the study is to endow robots with human-like tactile capabilities. To achieve this, binary tactile sensors are implemented on one side of the robot hand to minimize the Sim2Real gap. Training the policy through reinforcement learning in simulation and transferring the trained policy to the real environment, we demonstrate that object search and manipulation using tactile sensors is possible even in an environment without vision information. In addition, an ablation study was conducted to analyze the effect of tactile information on manipulative tasks. Our project page is available at https://lee-kangwon.github.io/dextouch/

Manipulation tasks are inherently object-centric and often require a robot to perform multiple subtasks in parallel, such as pressing on a sponge while wiping across a surface, balancing a saucer while serving tea, or maintaining alignment of a screwdriver while unscrewing a screw. The individual subtasks need to be performed in parallel to accomplish the overall task. As the above examples illustrate, subtasks usually correspond to goals and constraints associated to objects in the robot's environment. Thus, manipulation skills are often defined as 3D motions, which are implemented as simple position or force controllers, of the end effector in object-centric coordinate frames. One drawback of such an approach is that it results in monolithic controllers for each task, i.e. controllers which act specifically with respect to some fixed coordinate frame.

Most common navigation tasks in human environments require auxiliary arm interactions, e.g. opening doors, pressing buttons and pushing obstacles away. This type of navigation tasks, which we call Interactive Navigation, requires the use of mobile manipulators: mobile bases with manipulation capabilities. Interactive Navigation tasks are usually long-horizon and composed of heterogeneous phases of pure navigation, pure manipulation, and their combination. Using the wrong part of the embodiment is inefficient and hinders progress. We propose HRL4IN, a novel Hierarchical RL architecture for Interactive Navigation tasks. HRL4IN exploits the exploration benefits of HRL over flat RL for long-horizon tasks thanks to temporally extended commitments towards subgoals. Different from other HRL solutions, HRL4IN handles the heterogeneous nature of the Interactive Navigation task by creating subgoals in different spaces in different phases of the task. Moreover, HRL4IN selects different parts of the embodiment to use for each phase, improving energy efficiency. We evaluate HRL4IN against flat PPO and HAC, a state-of-the-art HRL algorithm, on Interactive Navigation in two environments - a 2D grid-world environment and a 3D environment with physics simulation. We show that HRL4IN significantly outperforms its baselines in terms of task performance and energy efficiency. More information is available at https://sites.google.com/view/hrl4in.

Is Tesla preparing to offer Model 3 leasing? Tesla is finally putting the Y in sexy – or rather S 3 X Y -- its lineup of car models. The electric car maker is unveiling its new Model Y crossover SUV at Thursday at 8 p.m. Pacific Time in Los Angeles. I would be lying if I said I didn't find it alluring. I have long lusted with a protective detachment after the sleek cars that seemed the elusive and unattainable thing I could only dream about.

Hyundai has created a futuristic car system that lets drivers unlock and start their car just by scanning their fingerprint. The system is set to debut in the new Santa Fe SUV and launched in China beginning in early 2019, according to ZDNet. A fingerprint scanner is built into both the door handle, as well as the ignition. Hyundai has created a futuristic car system that lets drivers unlock and start their car just by scanning their fingerprint. Multiple drivers and their fingerprints can be registered to the same car.

Flying robots that can carry objects 40 times of their own weight and even open doors have been developed in a collaboration between Stanford University and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland. Called FlyCroTug the tiny robots have advanced gripping technologies and the ability to move and pull on objects around it. When working in pairs, two FlyCroTugs can jointly lasso the door handle and heave the door open. The clever bots can adhere themselves to surfaces using adhesives inspired by the feet of geckos and insects. These sticky'hands' allow the robust to pull objects 40 times their weight, such as door handles, cameras or water bottles.