Recent efforts in smart manufacturing have enhanced aerospace fuselage assembly processes, particularly by innovating shape adjustment techniques to minimize dimensional gaps between assembled sections. Existing approaches have shown promising results but face the issue of low sample efficiency from the manufacturing systems. It arises from the limitation of the classical Monte Carlo method when uncovering the mean response from a distribution. In contrast, recent work has shown that quantum algorithms can achieve the same level of estimation accuracy with significantly fewer samples than the classical Monte Carlo method from distributions. Therefore, we can adopt the estimation of the quantum algorithm to obtain the estimation from real physical systems (distributions). Motivated by this advantage, we propose a Quantum Bayesian Optimization (QBO) framework for precise shape control during assembly to improve the sample efficiency in manufacturing practice. Specifically, this approach utilizes a quantum oracle, based on finite element analysis (FEA)-based models or surrogate models, to acquire a more accurate estimation of the environment response with fewer queries for a certain input. QBO employs an Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) as the acquisition function to strategically select input values that are most likely to maximize the objective function. It has been theoretically proven to require much fewer samples while maintaining comparable optimization results. In the case study, force-controlled actuators are applied to one fuselage section to adjust its shape and reduce the gap to the adjoining section. Experimental results demonstrate that QBO achieves significantly lower dimensional error and uncertainty compared to classical methods, particularly using the same queries from the simulation.

The robotic shape control of deformable linear objects has garnered increasing interest within the robotics community. Despite recent progress, the majority of shape control approaches can be classified into two main groups: open-loop control, which relies on physically realistic models to represent the object, and closed-loop control, which employs less precise models alongside visual data to compute commands. In this work, we present a novel 3D shape control approach that includes the physically realistic Cosserat model into a closed-loop control framework, using vision feedback to rectify errors in real-time. This approach capitalizes on the advantages of both groups: the realism and precision provided by physics-based models, and the rapid computation, therefore enabling real-time correction of model errors, and robustness to elastic parameter estimation inherent in vision-based approaches. This is achieved by computing a deformation Jacobian derived from both the Cosserat model and visual data. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the method, we conduct a series of shape control experiments where robots are tasked with deforming linear objects towards a desired shape.

It is promising but challenging to design flocking control for a robot swarm to autonomously follow changing patterns or shapes in a optimal distributed manner. The optimal flocking control with dynamic pattern formation is, therefore, investigated in this paper. A predictive flocking control algorithm is proposed based on a Gibbs random field (GRF), where bio-inspired potential energies are used to charaterize ``robot-robot'' and ``robot-environment'' interactions. Specialized performance-related energies, e.g., motion smoothness, are introduced in the proposed design to improve the flocking behaviors. The optimal control is obtained by maximizing a posterior distribution of a GRF. A region-based shape control is accomplished for pattern formation in light of a mean shift technique. The proposed algorithm is evaluated via the comparison with two state-of-the-art flocking control methods in an environment with obstacles. Both numerical simulations and real-world experiments are conducted to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed design.

We offer a method for one-shot mask-guided image synthesis that allows controlling manipulations of a single image by inverting a quasi-robust classifier equipped with strong regularizers. Our proposed method, entitled MAGIC, leverages structured gradients from a pre-trained quasi-robust classifier to better preserve the input semantics while preserving its classification accuracy, thereby guaranteeing credibility in the synthesis. Unlike current methods that use complex primitives to supervise the process or use attention maps as a weak supervisory signal, MAGIC aggregates gradients over the input, driven by a guide binary mask that enforces a strong, spatial prior. MAGIC implements a series of manipulations with a single framework achieving shape and location control, intense non-rigid shape deformations, and copy/move operations in the presence of repeating objects and gives users firm control over the synthesis by requiring to simply specify binary guide masks. Our study and findings are supported by various qualitative comparisons with the state-of-the-art on the same images sampled from ImageNet and quantitative analysis using machine perception along with a user survey of 100+ participants that endorse our synthesis quality. Project page at https://mozhdehrouhsedaghat.github.io/magic.html. Code is available at https://github.com/mozhdehrouhsedaghat/magic

In this paper, we present a novel and generic data-driven method to servo-control the 3-D shape of continuum and soft robots embedded with fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors. Developments of 3-D shape perception and control technologies are crucial for continuum robots to perform the tasks autonomously in surgical interventions. However, owing to the nonlinear properties of continuum robots, one main difficulty lies in the modeling of them, especially for soft robots with variable stiffness. To address this problem, we propose a versatile learning-based adaptive controller by leveraging FBG shape feedback that can online estimate the unknown model of continuum robot against unexpected disturbances and exhibit an adaptive behavior to the unmodeled system without priori data exploration. Based on a new composite adaptation algorithm, the asymptotic convergences of the closed-loop system with learning parameters have been proven by Lyapunov theory. To validate the proposed method, we present a comprehensive experimental study by using two continuum robots both integrated with multi-core FBGs, including a robotic-assisted colonoscope and multi-section extensible soft manipulators. The results demonstrate the feasibility, adaptability, and superiority of our controller in various unstructured environments as well as phantom experiments.

Robotic manipulation of deformable linear objects (DLOs) has broad application prospects in many fields. However, a key issue is to obtain the exact deformation models (i.e., how robot motion affects DLO deformation), which are hard to theoretically calculate and vary among different DLOs. Thus, shape control of DLOs is challenging, especially for large deformation control which requires global and more accurate models. In this paper, we propose a coupled offline and online data-driven method for efficiently learning a global deformation model, allowing for both accurate modeling through offline learning and further updating for new DLOs via online adaptation. Specifically, the model approximated by a neural network is first trained offline on random data, then seamlessly migrated to the online phase, and further updated online during actual manipulation. Several strategies are introduced to improve the model's efficiency and generalization ability. We propose a convex-optimization-based controller, and analyze the system's stability using the Lyapunov method. Detailed simulations and real-world experiments demonstrate that our method can efficiently and precisely estimate the deformation model, and achieve large deformation control of untrained DLOs in 2D and 3D dual-arm manipulation tasks better than the existing methods. It accomplishes all 24 tasks with different desired shapes on different DLOs in the real world, using only simulation data for the offline learning.

If robots could reliably manipulate the shape of 3D deformable objects, they could find applications in fields ranging from home care to warehouse fulfillment to surgical assistance. Analytic models of elastic, 3D deformable objects require numerous parameters to describe the potentially infinite degrees of freedom present in determining the object's shape. Previous attempts at performing 3D shape control rely on hand-crafted features to represent the object shape and require training of object-specific control models. We overcome these issues through the use of our novel DeformerNet neural network architecture, which operates on a partial-view point cloud of the object being manipulated and a point cloud of the goal shape to learn a low-dimensional representation of the object shape. This shape embedding enables the robot to learn to define a visual servo controller that provides Cartesian pose changes to the robot end-effector causing the object to deform towards its target shape. Crucially, we demonstrate both in simulation and on a physical robot that DeformerNet reliably generalizes to object shapes and material stiffness not seen during training and outperforms comparison methods for both the generic shape control and the surgical task of retraction.

Developing machine learning enabled smart manufacturing is promising for composite structures assembly process. To improve production quality and efficiency of the assembly process, accurate predictive analysis on dimensional deviations and residual stress of the composite structures is required. The novel composite structures assembly involves two challenges: (i) the highly nonlinear and anisotropic properties of composite materials; and (ii) inevitable uncertainty in the assembly process. To overcome those problems, we propose a neural network Gaussian process model considering input uncertainty for composite structures assembly. Deep architecture of our model allows us to approximate a complex process better, and consideration of input uncertainty enables robust modeling with complete incorporation of the process uncertainty. Based on simulation and case study, the NNGPIU can outperform other benchmark methods when the response function is nonsmooth and nonlinear. Although we use composite structure assembly as an example, the proposed methodology can be applicable to other engineering systems with intrinsic uncertainties.