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This paper introduces the GazeRace method for drone navigation, employing a computer vision interface facilitated by eye-tracking technology. This interface is designed to be compatible with a single camera and uses a convolutional neural network to convert eye movements into control commands for the drone. Experimental validation demonstrates that users equipped with the eye-tracking interface achieve comparable performance to a traditional remote control interface when completing a drone racing task. Ten participants completed flight tests in which they navigated a drone through a racing track in a Gazebo simulation environment. Users reduced drone trajectory length by 18% (73.44 m vs. 89.29 m) using the eye-tracking interface to navigate racing gates effectively. The time taken to complete the route using the eye-tracking method (average of 70.01 seconds) was only 3.5% slower than using the remote control method (also average of 70.01 seconds), indicating the good efficiency of the interface. It is also worth mentioning that four of the participants completed the race with an average time that was 25.9% faster than the other participants. In addition, users evaluated highly the performance (M = 34.0, SD = 14.2) and low frustration (M = 30.5, SD = 9.2) with the eye-tracking interface compared to performance (M = 63.0, SD = 10.1) and frustration (M = 49.0, SD = 11.7) with the baseline remote controller. The hedonic quality (M = 1.65, SD = 0.45) was also evaluated high by the users in the UEQ questionnaire., Comment: Accepted in: IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC 2024)

This paper presents the development of a novel ethical reasoning framework for robots. "Robots Can Feel" is the first system for robots that utilizes a combination of logic and human-like emotion simulation to make decisions in morally complex situations akin to humans. The key feature of the approach is the management of the Emotion Weight Coefficient - a customizable parameter to assign the role of emotions in robot decision-making. The system aims to serve as a tool that can equip robots of any form and purpose with ethical behavior close to human standards. Besides the platform, the system is independent of the choice of the base model. During the evaluation, the system was tested on 8 top up-to-date LLMs (Large Language Models). This list included both commercial and open-source models developed by various companies and countries. The research demonstrated that regardless of the model choice, the Emotions Weight Coefficient influences the robot's decision similarly. According to ANOVA analysis, the use of different Emotion Weight Coefficients influenced the final decision in a range of situations, such as in a request for a dietary violation F(4, 35) = 11.2, p = 0.0001 and in an animal compassion situation F(4, 35) = 8.5441, p = 0.0001. A demonstration code repository is provided at: https://github.com/TemaLykov/robots_can_feel, Comment: The paper is submitted to the IEEE conference

This research introduces the Bi-VLA (Vision-Language-Action) model, a novel system designed for bimanual robotic dexterous manipulations that seamlessly integrate vision, language understanding, and physical action. The system's functionality was evaluated through a set of household tasks, including the preparation of a desired salad upon human request. Bi-VLA demonstrates the ability to interpret complex human instructions, perceive and understand the visual context of ingredients, and execute precise bimanual actions to assemble the requested salad. Through a series of experiments, we evaluate the system's performance in terms of accuracy, efficiency, and adaptability to various salad recipes and human preferences. Our results indicate a high success rate of 100% in generating the correct executable code by the Language module from the user-requested tasks. The Vision Module achieved a success rate of 96.06% in detecting specific ingredients and an 83.4% success rate in detecting a list of multiple ingredients., Comment: The paper is submitted to the IEEE conference

The collaborative robot market is flourishing as there is a trend towards simplification, modularity, and increased flexibility on the production line. But when humans and robots are collaborating in a shared environment, the safety of humans should be a priority. We introduce a novel wearable robotic system to enhance safety during Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). The proposed wearable robot is designed to hold a fiducial marker and maintain its visibility to a motion capture system, which, in turn, localizes the user's hand with good accuracy and low latency and provides vibrotactile feedback to the user's wrist. The vibrotactile feedback guides the user's hand movement during collaborative tasks in order to increase safety and enhance collaboration efficiency. A user study was conducted to assess the recognition and discriminability of ten designed vibration patterns applied to the upper (dorsal) and the down (volar) parts of the user's wrist. The results show that the pattern recognition rate on the volar side was higher, with an average of 75.64% among all users. Four patterns with a high recognition rate were chosen to be incorporated into our system. A second experiment was carried out to evaluate users' response to the chosen patterns in real-world collaborative tasks. Results show that all participants responded to the patterns correctly, and the average response time for the patterns was between 0.24 and 2.41 seconds., Comment: 14 pages, Eurohaptics 2024

This paper introduces DogSurf - a newapproach of using quadruped robots to help visually impaired people navigate in real world. The presented method allows the quadruped robot to detect slippery surfaces, and to use audio and haptic feedback to inform the user when to stop. A state-of-the-art GRU-based neural network architecture with mean accuracy of 99.925% was proposed for the task of multiclass surface classification for quadruped robots. A dataset was collected on a Unitree Go1 Edu robot. The dataset and code have been posted to the public domain., Comment: This paper has been accepted for publication at the HRI2024 conference

This paper introduces CognitiveOS, the first operating system designed for cognitive robots capable of functioning across diverse robotic platforms. CognitiveOS is structured as a multi-agent system comprising modules built upon a transformer architecture, facilitating communication through an internal monologue format. These modules collectively empower the robot to tackle intricate real-world tasks. The paper delineates the operational principles of the system along with descriptions of its nine distinct modules. The modular design endows the system with distinctive advantages over traditional end-to-end methodologies, notably in terms of adaptability and scalability. The system's modules are configurable, modifiable, or deactivatable depending on the task requirements, while new modules can be seamlessly integrated. This system serves as a foundational resource for researchers and developers in the cognitive robotics domain, alleviating the burden of constructing a cognitive robot system from scratch. Experimental findings demonstrate the system's advanced task comprehension and adaptability across varied tasks, robotic platforms, and module configurations, underscoring its potential for real-world applications. Moreover, in the category of Reasoning it outperformed CognitiveDog (by 15%) and RT2 (by 31%), achieving the highest to date rate of 77%. We provide a code repository and dataset for the replication of CognitiveOS: link will be provided in camera-ready submission., Comment: The paper is submitted to the IEEE conference

The growing demand for electric vehicles requires the development of automated car charging methods. At the moment, the process of charging an electric car is completely manual, and that requires physical effort to accomplish the task, which is not suitable for people with disabilities. Typically, the effort in the research is focused on detecting the position and orientation of the socket, which resulted in a relatively high accuracy, $\pm 5 \: mm $ and $\pm 10^o$. However, this accuracy is not enough to complete the charging process. In this work, we focus on designing a novel methodology for robust robotic plug-in and plug-out based on human haptics, to overcome the error in the position and orientation of the socket. Participants were invited to perform the charging task, and their cognitive capabilities were recognized by measuring the applied forces along with the movement of the charger. Three controllers were designed based on impedance control to mimic the human patterns of charging an electric car. The recorded data from humans were used to calibrate the parameters of the impedance controllers: inertia $M_d$, damping $D_d$, and stiffness $K_d$. A robotic validation was performed, where the designed controllers were applied to the robot UR10. Using the proposed controllers and the human kinesthetic data, it was possible to successfully automate the operation of charging an electric car., Comment: Accepted to the 21st IEEE International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR 2023). IEEE copyright

The growing demand for electric vehicles requires the development of automated car charging methods. At the moment, the process of charging an electric car is completely manual, and that requires physical effort to accomplish the task, which is not suitable for people with disabilities. Typically, the effort in the automation of the charging task research is focused on detecting the position and orientation of the socket, which resulted in a relatively high accuracy, 5 mm, and 10 degrees. However, this accuracy is not enough to complete the charging process. In this work, we focus on designing a novel methodology for robust robotic plug-in and plug-out based on human haptics to overcome the error in the orientation of the socket. Participants were invited to perform the charging task, and their cognitive capabilities were recognized by measuring the applied forces along with the movements of the charger. Eventually, an algorithm was developed based on the human's best strategies to be applied to a robotic arm., Comment: Manuscript accepted to IEEE ROBIO 2023

The current capabilities of robotic systems make human collaboration necessary to accomplish complex tasks effectively. In this work, we are introducing a framework to ensure safety in a human-robot collaborative environment. The system is composed of a wearable 2-DOF robot, a low-cost and easy-to-install tracking system, and a collision avoidance algorithm based on the Artificial Potential Field (APF). The wearable robot is designed to hold a fiducial marker and maintain its visibility to the tracking system, which, in turn, localizes the user's hand with good accuracy and low latency and provides haptic feedback to the user. The system is designed to enhance the performance of collaborative tasks while ensuring user safety. Three experiments were carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed system. The first one evaluated the accuracy of the tracking system. The second experiment analyzed human-robot behavior during an imminent collision. The third experiment evaluated the system in a collaborative activity in a shared working environment. The results show that the implementation of the introduced system reduces the operation time by 16% and increases the average distance between the user's hand and the robot by 5 cm., Comment: 8 pages, Accepted paper in IEEE ETFA 2023

Nowadays, there are few unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) capable of flying, walking and grasping. A drone with all these functionalities can significantly improve its performance in complex tasks such as monitoring and exploring different types of terrain, and rescue operations. This paper presents MorphoArms, a novel system that consists of a morphogenetic chassis and a hand gesture recognition teleoperation system. The mechanics, electronics, control architecture, and walking behavior of the morphogenetic chassis are described. This robot is capable of walking and grasping objects using four robotic limbs. Robotic limbs with four degrees-of-freedom are used as pedipulators when walking and as manipulators when performing actions in the environment. The robot control system is implemented using teleoperation, where commands are given by hand gestures. A motion capture system is used to track the user's hands and to recognize their gestures. The method of controlling the robot was experimentally tested in a study involving 10 users. The evaluation included three questionnaires (NASA TLX, SUS, and UEQ). The results showed that the proposed system was more user-friendly than 56% of the systems, and it was rated above average in terms of attractiveness, stimulation, and novelty., Comment: IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE 2023), Cordis, New Zeland, 26-30 August, 2023, in print

We propose a novel concept of augmented reality (AR) human-drone interaction driven by RL-based swarm behavior to achieve intuitive and immersive control of a swarm formation of unmanned aerial vehicles. The DroneARchery system developed by us allows the user to quickly deploy a swarm of drones, generating flight paths simulating archery. The haptic interface LinkGlide delivers a tactile stimulus of the bowstring tension to the forearm to increase the precision of aiming. The swarm of released drones dynamically avoids collisions between each other, the drone following the user, and external obstacles with behavior control based on deep reinforcement learning. The developed concept was tested in the scenario with a human, where the user shoots from a virtual bow with a real drone to hit the target. The human operator observes the ballistic trajectory of the drone in an AR and achieves a realistic and highly recognizable experience of the bowstring tension through the haptic display. The experimental results revealed that the system improves trajectory prediction accuracy by 63.3% through applying AR technology and conveying haptic feedback of pulling force. DroneARchery users highlighted the naturalness (4.3 out of 5 point Likert scale) and increased confidence (4.7 out of 5) when controlling the drone. We have designed the tactile patterns to present four sliding distances (tension) and three applied force levels (stiffness) of the haptic display. Users demonstrated the ability to distinguish tactile patterns produced by the haptic display representing varying bowstring tension(average recognition rate is of 72.8%) and stiffness (average recognition rate is of 94.2%). The novelty of the research is the development of an AR-based approach for drone control that does not require special skills and training from the operator., Comment: Accepted to the IEEE Int. Symp. on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR 2022). Copyright 20XX IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted

Teleoperation of robotic systems for precise and delicate object grasping requires high-fidelity haptic feedback to obtain comprehensive real-time information about the grasp. In such cases, the most common approach is to use kinesthetic feedback. However, a single contact point information is insufficient to detect the dynamically changing shape of soft objects. This paper proposes a novel telemanipulation system that provides kinesthetic and cutaneous stimuli to the user's hand to achieve accurate liquid dispensing by dexterously manipulating the deformable object (i.e., pipette). The experimental results revealed that the proposed approach to provide the user with multimodal haptic feedback considerably improves the quality of dosing with a remote pipette. Compared with pure visual feedback, the relative dosing error decreased by 66\% and task execution time decreased by 18\% when users manipulated the deformable pipette with a multimodal haptic interface in combination with visual feedback. The proposed technology can be potentially implemented in delicate dosing procedures during the antibody tests for COVID-19, chemical experiments, operation with organic materials, and telesurgery., Comment: Accepted paper in IEEE CASE (International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering) 2022, IEEE copyrigh

LinkGlide-S is a novel wearable hand-worn tactile display to deliver multi-contact and multi-modal stimuli at the user's palm.} The array of inverted five-bar linkages generates three independent contact points to cover the whole palm area. \textcolor{black} {The independent contact points generate various tactile patterns at the user's hand, providing multi-contact tactile feedback. An impedance control delivers the stiffness of objects according to different parameters. Three experiments were performed to evaluate the perception of patterns, investigate the realistic perception of object interaction in Virtual Reality, and assess the users' softness perception by the impedance control. The experimental results revealed a high recognition rate for the generated patterns. These results confirm that the performance of LinkGlide-S is adequate to detect and manipulate virtual objects with different stiffness. This novel haptic device can potentially achieve a highly immersive VR experience and more interactive applications during telemanipulation., Comment: Accepted paper in IEEE CASE (International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering) 2022, IEEE copyrigh

The ability to perform locomotion in various terrains is critical for legged robots. However, the robot has to have a better understanding of the surface it is walking on to perform robust locomotion on different terrains. Animals and humans are able to recognize the surface with the help of the tactile sensation on their feet. Although, the foot tactile sensation for legged robots has not been much explored. This paper presents research on a novel quadruped robot DogTouch with tactile sensing feet (TSF). TSF allows the recognition of different surface textures utilizing a tactile sensor and a convolutional neural network (CNN). The experimental results show a sufficient validation accuracy of 74.37\% for our trained CNN-based model, with the highest recognition for line patterns of 90\%. In the future, we plan to improve the prediction model by presenting surface samples with the various depths of patterns and applying advanced Deep Learning and Shallow learning models for surface recognition. Additionally, we propose a novel approach to navigation of quadruped and legged robots. We can arrange the tactile paving textured surface (similar that used for blind or visually impaired people). Thus, DogTouch will be capable of locomotion in unknown environment by just recognizing the specific tactile patterns which will indicate the straight path, left or right turn, pedestrian crossing, road, and etc. That will allow robust navigation regardless of lighting condition. Future quadruped robots equipped with visual and tactile perception system will be able to safely and intelligently navigate and interact in the unstructured indoor and outdoor environment., Comment: Accepted paper at IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference 2022 (IEEE VTC 2022), IEEE copyright

A Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) was used to perform video frame prediction of microbial growth for a population of two mutants of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The RNN was trained on videos of 20 frames that were acquired using fluorescence microscopy and microfluidics. The network predicted the last 10 frames of each video, and the accuracy's of the predictions was assessed by comparing raw images, population curves, and the number and size of individual colonies. Overall, we found the predictions to be accurate using this approach. The implications this result has on designing autonomous experiments in microbiology, and the steps that can be taken to make the predictions even more accurate, are discussed.

Modern industry still relies on manual manufacturing operations and safe human-robot interaction is of great interest nowadays. Speed and Separation Monitoring (SSM) allows close and efficient collaborative scenarios by maintaining a protective separation distance during robot operation. The paper focuses on a novel approach to strengthen the SSM safety requirements by introducing haptic feedback to a robotic cell worker. Tactile stimuli provide early warning of dangerous movements and proximity to the robot, based on the human reaction time and instantaneous velocities of robot and operator. A preliminary experiment was performed to identify the reaction time of participants when they are exposed to tactile stimuli in a collaborative environment with controlled conditions. In a second experiment, we evaluated our approach into a study case where human worker and cobot performed collaborative planetary gear assembly. Results show that the applied approach increased the average minimum distance between the robot's end-effector and hand by 44% compared to the operator relying only on the visual feedback. Moreover, the participants without the haptic support have failed several times to maintain the protective separation distance., Comment: Accepted paper in SMC conference 2021, IEEE copyright

Complex tasks require human collaboration since robots do not have enough dexterity. However, robots are still used as instruments and not as collaborative systems. We are introducing a framework to ensure safety in a human-robot collaborative environment. The system is composed of a haptic feedback display, low-cost wearable mocap, and a new collision avoidance algorithm based on the Artificial Potential Fields (APF). Wearable optical motion capturing system enables tracking the human hand position with high accuracy and low latency on large working areas. This study evaluates whether haptic feedback improves safety in human-robot collaboration. Three experiments were carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed system. The first one evaluated human responses to the haptic device during interaction with the Robot Tool Center Point (TCP). The second experiment analyzed human-robot behavior during an imminent collision. The third experiment evaluated the system in a collaborative activity in a shared working environment. This study had shown that when haptic feedback in the control loop was included, the safe distance (minimum robot-obstacle distance) increased by 4.1 cm from 12.39 cm to 16.55 cm, and the robot's path, when the collision avoidance algorithm was activated, was reduced by 81%., Comment: Accepted to 17th International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE). 2021. IEEE copyright

The paper proposes a novel concept of docking drones to make this process as safe and fast as possible. The idea behind the project is that a robot with a soft gripper grasps the drone in midair. The human operator navigates the robotic arm with the ML-based gesture recognition interface. The 3-finger robot hand with soft fingers is equipped with touch sensors, making it possible to achieve safe drone catching and avoid inadvertent damage to the drone's propellers and motors. Additionally, the soft hand is featured with a unique color-based force estimation technology based on a computer vision (CV) system. Moreover, the visual color-changing system makes it easier for the human operator to interpret the applied forces. Without any additional programming, the operator has full real-time control of the robot's motion and task execution by wearing a mocap glove with gesture recognition, which was developed and applied for the high-level control of DroneTrap. The experimental results revealed that the developed color-based force estimation can be applied for rigid object capturing with high precision (95.3\%). The proposed technology can potentially revolutionize the landing and deployment of drones for parcel delivery on uneven ground, structure maintenance and inspection, risque operations, and etc., Comment: Published in: 2021 IEEE 4th International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft), https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9479353, IEEE copyright, "(c) 20XX IEEE...", 7 pages, 15 figures

We present ZoomTouch - a breakthrough technology for multi-user control of robot from Zoom in real-time by DNN-based gesture recognition. The users from digital world can have a video conferencing and manipulate the robot to make the dexterous manipulations with tangible objects. As the scenario, we proposed the remote COVID-19 test Laboratory to considerably reduce the time to receive the data and substitute medical assistant working in protective gear in close proximity with infected cells. The proposed technology suggests a new type of reality, where multi-users can jointly interact with remote object, e.g. make a new building design, joint cooking in robotic kitchen, etc, and discuss/modify the results at the same time., Comment: Accepted to the ACM SIGGRAPH ASIA 2020 conference (Emerging Technologies section), ACM copyright, 2 pages, 2 figures

The projection mapping systems on the human face is limited by the latency and the movement of the users. The area of the projection is restricted by the position of the projectors and the cameras. We are introducing MaskBot, a real-time projection mapping system operated by a 6 Degrees of Freedom (DoF) collaborative robot. The collaborative robot locates the projector and camera in normal position to the face of the user to increase the projection area and to reduce the latency of the system. A webcam is used to detect the face and to sense the robot-user distance to modify the projection size and orientation. MaskBot projects different images on the face of the user, such as face modifications, make-up, and logos. In contrast to the existing methods, the presented system is the first that introduces a robotic projection mapping. One of the prospective applications is to acquire a dataset of adversarial images to challenge face detection DNN systems, such as Face ID., Comment: Accepted to the ACM SIGGRAPH ASIA 2020 conference (Emerging Technologies section), ACM copyright, 2 pages, 2 figures

In industrial applications, complex tasks require human collaboration since the robot doesn't have enough dexterity. However, the robots are still implemented as tools and not as collaborative intelligent systems. To ensure safety in the human-robot collaboration, we introduce a system that presents a new method that integrates low-cost wearable mocap, and an improved collision avoidance algorithm based on the artificial potential fields. Wearable optical motion capturing allows to track the human hand position with high accuracy and low latency on large working areas. To increase the efficiency of the proposed algorithm, two obstacle types are discriminated according to their collision probability. A preliminary experiment was performed to analyze the algorithm behavior and to select the best values for the obstacle's threshold angle $\theta_{OBS}$, and for the avoidance threshold distance $d_{AT}$. The second experiment was carried out to evaluate the system performance with $d_{AT}$ = 0.2 m and $\theta_{OBS}$ = 45 degrees. The third experiment evaluated the system in a real collaborative task. The results demonstrate the robust performance of the robotic arm generating smooth collision-free trajectories. The proposed technology will allow consumer robots to safely collaborate with humans in cluttered environments, e.g., factories, kitchens, living rooms, and restaurants., Comment: Accepted to 2020 IEEE 16th International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE)

The user's palm plays an important role in object detection and manipulation. The design of a robust multi-contact tactile display must consider the sensation and perception of of the stimulated area aiming to deliver the right stimuli at the correct location. To the best of our knowledge, there is no study to obtain the human palm data for this purpose. The objective of this work is to introduce the method to investigate the user's palm sensations during the interaction with objects. An array of fifteen Force Sensitive Resistors (FSRs) was located at the user's palm to get the area of interaction, and the normal force delivered to four different convex surfaces. Experimental results showed the active areas at the palm during the interaction with each of the surfaces at different forces. The obtained results can be applied in the development of multi-contact wearable tactile and haptic displays for the palm, and in training a machine-learning algorithm to predict stimuli aiming to achieve a highly immersive experience in Virtual Reality.

Semiconductor fabrication is a mainstay of modern civilization, enabling the myriad applications and technologies that underpin everyday life. However, while sub-10 nanometer devices are already entering the mainstream, the end of the Moore's Law roadmap still lacks tools capable of bulk semiconductor fabrication on sub-nanometer and atomic levels, with probe-based manipulation being explored as the only known pathway. Here we demonstrate that the atomic-sized focused beam of a scanning transmission electron microscope can be used to manipulate semiconductors such as Si on the atomic level, inducing growth of crystalline Si from the amorphous phase, reentrant amorphization, milling, and dopant-front motion. These phenomena are visualized in real time with atomic resolution. We further implement active feedback control based on real-time image analytics to control the e-beam motion, enabling shape control and providing a pathway for atom-by-atom correction of fabricated structures in the near future. These observations open a new epoch for atom-by-atom manufacturing in bulk, the long-held dream of nanotechnology.