Matej Hoffmann
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View article: Unsupervised Discovery of Behavioral Primitives from Sensorimotor Dynamic Functional Connectivity
Unsupervised Discovery of Behavioral Primitives from Sensorimotor Dynamic Functional Connectivity Open
The movements of both animals and robots give rise to streams of high-dimensional motor and sensory information. Imagine the brain of a newborn or the controller of a baby humanoid robot trying to make sense of unprocessed sensorimotor tim…
View article: Learning with pyCub: A New Simulation and Exercise Framework for Humanoid Robotics
Learning with pyCub: A New Simulation and Exercise Framework for Humanoid Robotics Open
We present pyCub, an open-source physics-based simulation of the humanoid robot iCub, along with exercises to teach students the basics of humanoid robotics. Compared to existing iCub similators (iCub SIM, iCub Gazebo), which require C++ c…
View article: Wandering around: a bioinspired approach to visual attention through object motion sensitivity
Wandering around: a bioinspired approach to visual attention through object motion sensitivity Open
Active vision enables dynamic and robust visual perception, offering an alternative to the static, passive nature of feedforward architectures commonly used in computer vision, which depend on large datasets and high computational resource…
View article: Embodied AI in Machine Learning -- is it Really Embodied?
Embodied AI in Machine Learning -- is it Really Embodied? Open
Embodied Artificial Intelligence (Embodied AI) is gaining momentum in the machine learning communities with the goal of leveraging current progress in AI (deep learning, transformers, large language and visual-language models) to empower r…
View article: A computational model of infant sensorimotor exploration in the mobile paradigm
A computational model of infant sensorimotor exploration in the mobile paradigm Open
We present a computational model of the mechanisms that may determine infants' behavior in the "mobile paradigm". This paradigm has been used in developmental psychology to explore how infants learn the sensory effects of their actions. In…
View article: MuBlE: MuJoCo and Blender simulation Environment and Benchmark for Task Planning in Robot Manipulation
MuBlE: MuJoCo and Blender simulation Environment and Benchmark for Task Planning in Robot Manipulation Open
Current embodied reasoning agents struggle to plan for long-horizon tasks that require to physically interact with the world to obtain the necessary information (e.g. 'sort the objects from lightest to heaviest'). The improvement of the ca…
View article: Wandering around: A bioinspired approach to visual attention through object motion sensitivity
Wandering around: A bioinspired approach to visual attention through object motion sensitivity Open
Active vision enables dynamic visual perception, offering an alternative to static feedforward architectures in computer vision, which rely on large datasets and high computational resources. Biological selective attention mechanisms allow…
View article: Shaping the developing homunculus: the roles of deprivation and compensatory behaviour in sensory remapping
Shaping the developing homunculus: the roles of deprivation and compensatory behaviour in sensory remapping Open
Some of the most dramatic examples of neuroplasticity in the human brain follow congenital sensory deprivation, though we have limited understanding of the plasticity mechanisms driving such large-scale remapping. Hand loss due to congenit…
View article: Empirical Comparison of Four Stereoscopic Depth Sensing Cameras for Robotics Applications
Empirical Comparison of Four Stereoscopic Depth Sensing Cameras for Robotics Applications Open
Depth sensing is an essential technology in robotics and many other fields. Many depth sensing (or RGB-D) cameras are available on the market and selecting the best one for your application can be challenging. In this work, we tested four …
View article: Enhancing Robustness in Manipulability Assessment: The Pseudo-Ellipsoid Approach
Enhancing Robustness in Manipulability Assessment: The Pseudo-Ellipsoid Approach Open
Manipulability analysis is a methodology employed to assess the capacity of an articulated system, at a specific configuration, to produce motion or exert force in diverse directions. The conventional method entails generating a virtual el…
View article: Shaping the developing homunculus: the roles of deprivation and compensatory behaviour in sensory remapping
Shaping the developing homunculus: the roles of deprivation and compensatory behaviour in sensory remapping Open
Some of the most dramatic examples of neuroplasticity in the human brain follow congenital sensory deprivation, though we have limited understanding of the plasticity mechanisms driving such large-scale remapping. Hand loss due to congenit…
View article: Enhancing Robustness in Manipulability Assessment: The Pseudo-Ellipsoid Approach
Enhancing Robustness in Manipulability Assessment: The Pseudo-Ellipsoid Approach Open
Manipulability analysis is a methodology employed to assess the capacity of an articulated system, at a specific configuration, to produce motion or exert force in diverse directions. The conventional method entails generating a virtual el…
View article: Adaptive Collision Sensitivity for Efficient and Safe Human-Robot Collaboration
Adaptive Collision Sensitivity for Efficient and Safe Human-Robot Collaboration Open
What is considered safe for a robot operator during physical human-robot collaboration (HRC) is specified in corresponding HRC standards (e.g., ISO/TS 15066). The regime that allows collisions between the moving robot and the operator, cal…
View article: Adaptive Electronic Skin Sensitivity for Safe Human-Robot Interaction
Adaptive Electronic Skin Sensitivity for Safe Human-Robot Interaction Open
Artificial electronic skins covering complete robot bodies can make physical human-robot collaboration safe and hence possible. Standards for collaborative robots (e.g., ISO/TS 15066) prescribe permissible forces and pressures during conta…
View article: Automatic infant 2D pose estimation from videos: comparing seven deep neural network methods
Automatic infant 2D pose estimation from videos: comparing seven deep neural network methods Open
Automatic markerless estimation of infant posture and motion from ordinary videos carries great potential for movement studies “in the wild”, facilitating understanding of motor development and massively increasing the chances of early dia…
View article: Online elasticity estimation and material sorting using standard robot grippers
Online elasticity estimation and material sorting using standard robot grippers Open
Stiffness or elasticity estimation of everyday objects using robot grippers is highly desired for object recognition or classification in application areas like food handling and single-stream object sorting. However, standard robot grippe…
View article: Closed Loop Interactive Embodied Reasoning for Robot Manipulation
Closed Loop Interactive Embodied Reasoning for Robot Manipulation Open
Embodied reasoning systems integrate robotic hardware and cognitive processes to perform complex tasks, typically in response to a natural language query about a specific physical environment. This usually involves changing the belief abou…
View article: Interactive Learning of Physical Object Properties Through Robot Manipulation and Database of Object Measurements
Interactive Learning of Physical Object Properties Through Robot Manipulation and Database of Object Measurements Open
This work presents a framework for automatically extracting physical object properties, such as material composition, mass, volume, and stiffness, through robot manipulation and a database of object measurements. The framework involves exp…
View article: Online Elasticity Estimation and Material Sorting Using Standard Robot Grippers
Online Elasticity Estimation and Material Sorting Using Standard Robot Grippers Open
We experimentally evaluated the accuracy with which material properties can be estimated through object compression by two standard parallel jaw grippers and a force/torque sensor mounted at the robot wrist, with a professional biaxial com…
View article: HARMONIOUS -- Human-like reactive motion control and multimodal perception for humanoid robots
HARMONIOUS -- Human-like reactive motion control and multimodal perception for humanoid robots Open
For safe and effective operation of humanoid robots in human-populated environments, the problem of commanding a large number of Degrees of Freedom (DoF) while simultaneously considering dynamic obstacles and human proximity has still not …
View article: Efficient Visuo-Haptic Object Shape Completion for Robot Manipulation
Efficient Visuo-Haptic Object Shape Completion for Robot Manipulation Open
For robot manipulation, a complete and accurate object shape is desirable. Here, we present a method that combines visual and haptic reconstruction in a closed-loop pipeline. From an initial viewpoint, the object shape is reconstructed usi…
View article: Perirobot space representation for HRI: measuring and designing collaborative workspace coverage by diverse sensors
Perirobot space representation for HRI: measuring and designing collaborative workspace coverage by diverse sensors Open
Two regimes permitting safe physical human-robot interaction, speed and separation monitoring and safety-rated monitored stop, depend on reliable perception of the space surrounding the robot. This can be accomplished by visual sensors (li…
View article: PreCNet: Next-Frame Video Prediction Based on Predictive Coding
PreCNet: Next-Frame Video Prediction Based on Predictive Coding Open
Predictive coding, currently a highly influential theory in neuroscience, has not been widely adopted in machine learning yet. In this work, we transform the seminal model of Rao and Ballard (1999) into a modern deep learning framework whi…
View article: Tactile training facilitates infants' ability to reach to targets on the body
Tactile training facilitates infants' ability to reach to targets on the body Open
This longitudinal study investigated the effect of experience with tactile stimulation on infants' ability to reach to targets on the body, an important adaptive skill. Infants were provided weekly tactile stimulation on eight body locatio…
View article: Learning body models: from humans to humanoids
Learning body models: from humans to humanoids Open
Humans and animals excel in combining information from multiple sensory modalities, controlling their complex bodies, adapting to growth, failures, or using tools. These capabilities are also highly desirable in robots. They are displayed …
View article: Body models in humans and robots
Body models in humans and robots Open
Humans excel in combining information from multiple sensory modalities, controlling their complex bodies, adapting to growth, failures, or using tools. These capabilities are also highly desirable in robots. They are displayed by machines …
View article: Recognizing object surface material from impact sounds for robot manipulation
Recognizing object surface material from impact sounds for robot manipulation Open
We investigated the use of impact sounds generated during exploratory behaviors in a robotic manipulation setup as cues for predicting object surface material and for recognizing individual objects. We collected and make available the YCB-…
View article: A normative model of peripersonal space encoding as performing impact prediction
A normative model of peripersonal space encoding as performing impact prediction Open
Accurately predicting contact between our bodies and environmental objects is paramount to our evolutionary survival. It has been hypothesized that multisensory neurons responding both to touch on the body, and to auditory or visual stimul…