Merge pull request #198 from nataliya-dev/master

cat-rrt updates

_data/publications.yml

@@ -1,8 +1,15 @@
+ - title: "CAT-RRT: Motion Planning that Admits Contact One Linke at a Time"
+   authors: Nataliya Nechyporenko, Caleb Escobedo, Shreyas Kadekodi, Alessandro Roncone
+   year: 2023
+   venue: "IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems [IROS]"
+   where: Detroit, MI, USA, Oct 1-5
+   pdf: "2023_Nechyporenko_IROS_CAT-RRT"
+   subteams: [control and artificial skin, nataliya, caleb]
  - title: "Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning for Ad Hoc Teaming"
    authors: Stéphane Aroca-Ouellette, Miguel Aroca-Ouellette, Upasana Biswas, Katharina Kann, Alessandro Roncone
    year: 2023
    venue: "International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems [AAMAS]"
-   where: London, Uk, May 28-June 02
+   where: London, UK, May 28-June 02
    pdf: "2023_Aroca-Ouellette_AAMAS_HAHA"
    description: Extended abstract
    subteams: [algorithmic and social hri, learning and modeling, stephane]

_posts/news/2023-10-09-IROS-2023-CAT-RRT.md

@@ -0,0 +1,23 @@
+---
+title: "📑 Paper on motion planning for contact published at IROS 2023!"
+description: CAT-RRT Motion Planning that Admits Contact One Link at a Time
+tags: [news]
+author: Nataliya Nechyporenko
+---
+Due to the strict nature of collision checking robots are limited in their ability to make contact with their surroundings. This makes is difficult to complete real-world tasks, such as:
+- Reaching in clutter
+- Rearranging objects
+- Navigating tight spaces
+
+To address these issues, we present a novel sampling-based optimization planner named *Contact Admissible Transition-based RRT (CAT-RRT)*, which:
+- Uses a per-link cost heuristic to prioritize motion with links that are unrestricted by contact
+- Generates feasible trajectories that admit contact with objects
+
+We show that this approach lead to paths with a better balance between path length, computation cost, and contact.
+
+Take a look at the [project website](https://nataliya.dev/cat-rrt) for more information and supplementary material!
+
+
+{% include image.html url="research/planning/cat-rrt-demos.png" %}
+<p style="text-align: center; font-style: italic; font-size: 20px;">Screenshots of CAT-RRT operating on a real-life robot. The planner allows the robot to make soft contact with the red balloon by mitigating the reliance on collision queries through a novel cost function.</p>
+

papers/2023_Nechyporenko_IROS_CAT-RRT.bib

@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+@inproceedings{nechyporenko2023catrrt,
+  title={CAT-RRT: Motion Planning that Admits Contact One Linke at a Time},
+  author={Nechyporenko, Nataliya and Escobedo, Caleb and Kadekodi, Shreyas and Roncone, Alessandro},
+  booktitle={2023 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
+  year={2023}
+  }