When manipulating an unfamiliar object, we use the sense of touch to feel our way around it. We feel even what our eyes cannot reach, like the back of the object in our hands, and this is sufficient for us to recover the object’s shape. By touching, we discover just as much as with our eyes. Furthermore, humans are naturally smart explorers. We may do it subconsciously, but we plan our every movement, especially when gathering new information. By touching, we discover just as

The 16th IEEE/RAS-EMBS International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR 2019) [Toronto, Canada, June 24–28] is a bi-annual appointment on theoretical and experimental issues in the fields of Rehabilitation Robotics and Neuroscience applied to Healthcare. Prosthetic, assistive, diagnostic, and therapeutic robots continue to face challenges of adoption by the users. Karoline Heiwolt, a CNCR student, has developed under my supervision a novel approach to make myocontro

As robots make their way into our homes, the ability to predict how their actions affect the environment is a key skill that they need to possess to operate in safety and gain our trust. In this work, we review the robotic pushing literature. While focusing on work concerned with predicting the motion of pushed objects, we also cover relevant applications of pushing for planning and control. This paper is concerned with the evolution of forwards models (FMs) and their applica