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Chao Tang

Publications and source records attributed to Chao Tang.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Easy-IIL: Reducing Human Operational Burden in Interactive Imitation Learning via Assistant Experts

Interactive Imitation Learning (IIL) typically relies on extensive human involvement for both offline demonstration and online interaction. Prior work primarily focuses on reducing human effort in passive monitoring rather than active operation. Interestingly, structured model-based imitation approaches achieve comparable performance with significantly fewer demonstrations than end-to-end imitation learning policies in the low-data regime. However, these methods are typically surpassed by end-to-end policies as the data increases. Leveraging this insight, we propose Easy-IIL, a framework that utilizes off-the-shelf model-based imitation methods as an assistant expert to replace active human operation for the majority of data collection. The human expert only provides a single demonstration to initialize the assistant expert and intervenes in critical states where the task is approaching failure. Furthermore, Easy-IIL can maintain IIL performance by preserving both offline and online data quality. Extensive simulation and real-world experiments demonstrate that Easy-IIL significantly reduces human operational burden while maintaining performance comparable to mainstream IIL baselines. User studies further confirm that Easy-IIL reduces subjective workload on the human expert. Project page: https://sites.google.com/view/easy-iil

cs.RO↗

HyperAIRI: a plug-and-play algorithm for precise hyperspectral image reconstruction in radio interferometry

The next-generation radio-interferometric (RI) telescopes require imaging algorithms capable of forming high-resolution high-dynamic-range images from large data volumes spanning wide frequency bands. Recently, AIRI, a plug-and-play (PnP) approach taking the forward-backward algorithmic structure (FB), has demonstrated state-of-the-art performance in monochromatic RI imaging by alternating a data-fidelity step with a regularization step via learned denoisers. In this work, we introduce HyperAIRI, its hyperspectral extension, underpinned by learned hyperspectral denoisers enforcing a power-law spectral model. For each spectral channel, the HyperAIRI denoiser takes as input its current image estimate, alongside estimates of its two immediate neighboring channels and the spectral index map, and provides as output its associated denoised image. To ensure convergence of HyperAIRI, the denoisers are trained with a Jacobian regularization enforcing non-expansiveness. To accommodate varying dynamic ranges, we assemble a shelf of pre-trained denoisers, each tailored to a specific dynamic range. At each HyperAIRI iteration, the spectral channels of the target image cube are updated in parallel using dynamic-range-matched denoisers from the pre-trained shelf. The denoisers are also endowed with a spatial image faceting functionality, enabling scalability to varied image sizes. Additionally, we formally introduce Hyper-uSARA, a variant of the optimization-based algorithm HyperSARA, promoting joint sparsity across spectral channels via the $\ell_{2,1}$-norm, also adopting FB. We evaluate HyperAIRI's performance on simulated and real observations. We showcase its superior performance compared to its optimization-based counterpart Hyper-uSARA, CLEAN's hyperspectral variant in WSClean, and the monochromatic imaging algorithms AIRI and uSARA.

astro-ph.IM↗

Dexterous Manipulation through Imitation Learning: A Survey

Dexterous manipulation, which refers to the ability of a robotic hand or multi-fingered end-effector to skillfully control, reorient, and manipulate objects through precise, coordinated finger movements and adaptive force modulation, enables complex interactions similar to human hand dexterity. With recent advances in robotics and machine learning, there is a growing demand for these systems to operate in complex and unstructured environments. Traditional model-based approaches struggle to generalize across tasks and object variations due to the high dimensionality and complex contact dynamics of dexterous manipulation. Although model-free methods such as reinforcement learning (RL) show promise, they require extensive training, large-scale interaction data, and carefully designed rewards for stability and effectiveness. Imitation learning (IL) offers an alternative by allowing robots to acquire dexterous manipulation skills directly from expert demonstrations, capturing fine-grained coordination and contact dynamics while bypassing the need for explicit modeling and large-scale trial-and-error. This survey provides an overview of dexterous manipulation methods based on imitation learning, details recent advances, and addresses key challenges in the field. Additionally, it explores potential research directions to enhance IL-driven dexterous manipulation. Our goal is to offer researchers and practitioners a comprehensive introduction to this rapidly evolving domain.

cs.RO↗

CTransformer: Deep-transformer-based 3D cell membrane tracking with subcellular-resolved molecular quantification

Deep learning segmentation and fluorescence imaging techniques allow the cellular morphology of living embryos to be constructed spatiotemporally. These development processes involve numerous molecules distributed at the subcellular scale, such as cell adhesion (E-cadherin), which accumulate at cell-cell interfaces to regulate intercellular connection. However, quantifying molecular distributions within specific subcellular regions across the entire embryo, where cell movement and molecular redistribution occur rapidly, is challenging due to the need for simultaneous cell morphology reconstruction and lineage tracing due to photobleaching and phototoxicity. We report a transformer-based pipeline, CTransformer, that establishes a 4D cellular morphology map before the 550-cell (late) stage. CTransformer constructed 4D cellular morphology atlases, reaching 80% accuracy at the 550-cell stage. Through this advanced architecture, we use only one channel to reconstruct cell morphology and achieve cell tracing. With each cell's morphology as a reference, the distribution of specific molecules throughout the cell body and at cell interfaces can be quantitatively measured in another fluorescence channel. We apply this methodology to track E-cadherin during embryonic development of the worm Caenorhabditis elegans, from fertilization to gastrulation. Our results reveal that E-cadherin is tightly regulated across individual embryos, both within single cells and at cell-cell interfaces, displaying an anterior-posterior gradient and cell- and lineage-specific patterns. Furthermore, its spatiotemporal heterogeneity influences cell mechanics and embryonic morphogenesis, helping explain how C. elegans achieves stereotypical developmental patterns at cellular resolution.

physics.bio-ph↗

CLASP: General-Purpose Clothes Manipulation with Semantic Keypoints

Clothes manipulation, such as folding or hanging, is a critical capability for home service robots. Despite recent advances, most existing methods remain limited to specific clothes types and tasks, due to the complex, high-dimensional geometry of clothes. This paper presents CLothes mAnipulation with Semantic keyPoints (CLASP), which aims at general-purpose clothes manipulation over diverse clothes types, T-shirts, shorts, skirts, long dresses, ..., as well as different tasks, folding, flattening, hanging, .... The core idea of CLASP is semantic keypoints-e.g., ''left sleeve'' and ''right shoulder''-a sparse spatial-semantic representation, salient for both perception and action. Semantic keypoints of clothes can be reliably extracted from RGB-D images and provide an effective representation for a wide range of clothes manipulation policies. CLASP uses semantic keypoints as an intermediate representation to connect high-level task planning and low-level action execution. At the high level, it exploits vision language models (VLMs) to predict task plans over the semantic keypoints. At the low level, it executes the plans with the help of a set of pre-built manipulation skills conditioned on the keypoints. Extensive simulation experiments show that CLASP outperforms state-of-the-art baseline methods on multiple tasks across diverse clothes types, demonstrating strong performance and generalization. Further experiments with a Franka dual-arm system on four distinct tasks-folding, flattening, hanging, and placing-confirm CLASP's performance on real-life clothes manipulation.

cs.RO↗

Unique Hierarchical Rotational Dynamics Induces Ultralow Lattice Thermal Conductivity in Cyanide-bridged Framework Materials

The pursuit of materials combining light constituent elements with ultralow lattice thermal conductivity ($κ_{\mathrm{L}}$) is crucial to advancing technologies like thermoelectrics and thermal barrier coatings, yet it remains a formidable challenge to date. Herein, we achieve ultralow $κ_{\mathrm{L}}$ in lightweight cyanide-bridged framework materials (CFMs) through the rational integration of properties such as the hierarchical vibrations exhibited in superatomic structures and rotational dynamics exhibited in perovskites. Unique hierarchical rotation behavior leads to multiple negative peaks in Grüneisen parameters across a wide frequency range, thereby inducing pronounced negative thermal expansion and strong cubic anharmonicity in CFMs. Meanwhile, the synergistic effect between large four-phonon scattering phase space (induced by phonon quasi-flat bands and wide bandgaps) and strong quartic anharmonicity (associated with rotation modes) leads to giant quartic anharmonic scattering rates in these materials. Consequently, the $κ_{\mathrm{L}}$ of these CFMs decreases by one to two orders of magnitude compared to the known perovskites or perovskite-like materials with equivalent average atomic masses. For instance, the Cd(CN)$_{2}$, NaB(CN)$_{4}$, LiIn(CN)$_{4}$, and AgX(CN)$_{4}$ (X = B, Al, Ga, In) exhibit ultralow room-temperature $κ_{\mathrm{L}}$ values ranging from 0.35 to 0.81 W/mK. This work not only establishes CFMs as a novel and rich platform for studying extreme phonon anharmonicity, but also provides a new paradigm for achieving ultralow thermal conductivity in lightweight materials via the conscious integration of hierarchical and rotational dynamics.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

Toward a Robust R2D2 Paradigm for Radio-interferometric Imaging: Revisiting Deep Neural Network Training and Architecture

The R2D2 Deep Neural Network (DNN) series was recently introduced for image formation in radio interferometry. It can be understood as a learned version of CLEAN, whose minor cycles are substituted with DNNs. We revisit R2D2 on the grounds of series convergence, training methodology, and DNN architecture, improving its robustness in terms of generalizability beyond training conditions, capability to deliver high data fidelity, and epistemic uncertainty. First, while still focusing on telescope-specific training, we enhance the learning process by randomizing Fourier sampling integration times, incorporating multiscan multinoise configurations, and varying imaging settings, including pixel resolution and visibility-weighting scheme. Second, we introduce a convergence criterion whereby the reconstruction process stops when the data residual is compatible with noise, rather than simply using all available DNNs. This not only increases the reconstruction efficiency by reducing its computational cost, but also refines training by pruning out the data/image pairs for which optimal data fidelity is reached before training the next DNN. Third, we substitute R2D2's early U-Net DNN with a novel architecture (U-WDSR) combining U-Net and WDSR, which leverages wide activation, dense skip connections, weight normalization, and low-rank convolution to improve feature reuse and reconstruction precision. As previously, R2D2 was trained for monochromatic intensity imaging with the Very Large Array at fixed $512 \times 512$ image size. Simulations on a wide range of inverse problems and a case study on real data reveal that the new R2D2 model consistently outperforms its earlier version in image reconstruction quality, data fidelity, and epistemic uncertainty.

astro-ph.IM↗

MimicFunc: Imitating Tool Manipulation from a Single Human Video via Functional Correspondence

Imitating tool manipulation from human videos offers an intuitive approach to teaching robots, while also providing a promising and scalable alternative to labor-intensive teleoperation data collection for visuomotor policy learning. While humans can mimic tool manipulation behavior by observing others perform a task just once and effortlessly transfer the skill to diverse tools for functionally equivalent tasks, current robots struggle to achieve this level of generalization. A key challenge lies in establishing function-level correspondences, considering the significant geometric variations among functionally similar tools, referred to as intra-function variations. To address this challenge, we propose MimicFunc, a framework that establishes functional correspondences with function frame, a function-centric local coordinate frame constructed with keypoint-based abstraction, for imitating tool manipulation skills. Experiments demonstrate that MimicFunc effectively enables the robot to generalize the skill from a single RGB-D human video to manipulating novel tools for functionally equivalent tasks. Furthermore, leveraging MimicFunc's one-shot generalization capability, the generated rollouts can be used to train visuomotor policies without requiring labor-intensive teleoperation data collection for novel objects. Our code and video are available at https://sites.google.com/view/mimicfunc.

cs.RO↗

First-principles predictions of the diversity in atomic structures and electronic properties of the reconstructed Si(111)-7x7 surface

The 7x7 reconstruction of Si(111) surface is widely understood by the dimer-adatom-stacking-fault model (DAS), but the predicted metallicity of DAS contradicts experimental signs of insulation. It is still challenge to predict DAS-like reconstructions by traditional method to solve such a puzzle. Here, we show that low-energy reconstructions of Si(111)-7x7 surface with (DAS-d8-T12, DAS-d8-T9H3-A, DAS-d8-T9H3-B and DAS-d8-T6H6) and without (AB-d10-T12, AB-d10-T9H3, AA-d10-T12 and AA-d10-T9H3) stacking-fault can be quickly discovered by graph theory as implemented in RG2 code for crystal structure prediction. They exhibit comparable stability to the DAS (DAS-d8-T12) model and similar STM patterns, offering a plausible explanation for the observed Si(111)-7x7 reconstruction. All these reconstructions exhibit metallic behavior in the nonmagnetic (NM) state with isolated narrow bands crossing the Fermi level in varying occupancy. And they are further confirmed as ferromagnetic (FM) metals (DAS-d8-T9H3-B), half-metals (DAS-d8-T12, AB-d10-T9H3, AA-d10-T12 and AA-d10-T9H3), half-semimetals (DAS-d8-T9H3-A and DAS-d8-T6H6) and even insulators (AB-d10-T12), depending their occupancies of the NM band structures. These findings not only demonstrate the rich electromagnetic phases of reconstructed Si(111) surfaces and their potential for spintronic applications, but also provide a plausible physical explanation for the metal-insulator transition observed on the Si(111) surface.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Photometric redshift estimation for emission line galaxies of DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys by CNN-MLP

Emission Line Galaxies (ELGs) are crucial for cosmological studies, particularly in understanding the large-scale structure of the Universe and the role of dark energy. ELGs form an essential component of the target catalogue for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), a major astronomical survey. However, the accurate selection of ELGs for such surveys is challenging due to the inherent uncertainties in determining their redshifts with photometric data. In order to improve the accuracy of photometric redshift estimation for ELGs, we propose a novel approach CNN-MLP that combines Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) with Multilayer Perceptrons (MLPs). This approach integrates both images and photometric data derived from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys Data Release 10. By leveraging the complementary strengths of CNNs (for image data processing) and MLPs (for photometric feature integration), the CNN-MLP model achieves a $σ_{\mathrm{NMAD}}$ (normalised median absolute deviation) of 0.0140 and an outlier fraction of 2.57%. Compared to other models, CNN-MLP demonstrates a significant improvement in the accuracy of ELG photometric redshift estimation, which directly benefits the target selection process for DESI. In addition, we explore the photometric redshifts of different galaxy types (Starforming, Starburst, AGN, Broadline). Furthermore, this approach will contribute to more reliable photometric redshift estimation in ongoing and future large-scale sky surveys (e.g. LSST, CSST, Euclid), enhancing the overall efficiency of cosmological research and galaxy surveys.

astro-ph.IM↗

An Empirical Study of GPT-4o Image Generation Capabilities

The landscape of image generation has rapidly evolved, from early GAN-based approaches to diffusion models and, most recently, to unified generative architectures that seek to bridge understanding and generation tasks. Recent advances, especially the GPT-4o, have demonstrated the feasibility of high-fidelity multimodal generation, their architectural design remains mysterious and unpublished. This prompts the question of whether image and text generation have already been successfully integrated into a unified framework for those methods. In this work, we conduct an empirical study of GPT-4o's image generation capabilities, benchmarking it against leading open-source and commercial models. Our evaluation covers four main categories, including text-to-image, image-to-image, image-to-3D, and image-to-X generation, with more than 20 tasks. Our analysis highlights the strengths and limitations of GPT-4o under various settings, and situates it within the broader evolution of generative modeling. Through this investigation, we identify promising directions for future unified generative models, emphasizing the role of architectural design and data scaling. For a high-definition version of the PDF, please refer to the link on GitHub: \href{https://github.com/Ephemeral182/Empirical-Study-of-GPT-4o-Image-Gen}{https://github.com/Ephemeral182/Empirical-Study-of-GPT-4o-Image-Gen}.

cs.CV↗

Robot Character Generation and Adaptive Human-Robot Interaction with Personality Shaping

We present a novel framework for designing emotionally agile robots with dynamic personalities and memory-based learning, with the aim of performing adaptive and non-deterministic interactions with humans while conforming to shared social understanding. While existing work has largely focused on emotion recognition and static response systems, many approaches rely on sentiment analysis and action mapping frameworks that are pre-defined with limited dimensionality and fixed configurations, lacking the flexibility of dynamic personality traits and memory-enabled adaptation. Other systems are often restricted to limited modes of expression and fail to develop a causal relationship between human behavior and the robot's proactive physical actions, resulting in constrained adaptability and reduced responsiveness in complex, dynamic interactions. Our methodology integrates the Big Five Personality Traits, Appraisal Theory, and abstracted memory layers through Large Language Models (LLMs). The LLM generates a parameterized robot personality based on the Big Five, processes human language and sentiments, evaluates human behavior using Appraisal Theory, and generates emotions and selects appropriate actions adapted by historical context over time. We validated the framework by testing three robots with distinct personalities in identical background contexts and found that personality, appraisal, and memory influence the adaptability of human-robot interactions. The impact of the individual components was further validated through ablation tests. We conclude that this system enables robots to engage in meaningful and personalized interactions with users, and holds significant potential for applications in domains such as pet robots, assistive robots, educational robots, and collaborative functional robots, where cultivating tailored relationships and enriching user experiences are essential.

cs.HC↗

DiffSensei: Bridging Multi-Modal LLMs and Diffusion Models for Customized Manga Generation

Story visualization, the task of creating visual narratives from textual descriptions, has seen progress with text-to-image generation models. However, these models often lack effective control over character appearances and interactions, particularly in multi-character scenes. To address these limitations, we propose a new task: \textbf{customized manga generation} and introduce \textbf{DiffSensei}, an innovative framework specifically designed for generating manga with dynamic multi-character control. DiffSensei integrates a diffusion-based image generator with a multimodal large language model (MLLM) that acts as a text-compatible identity adapter. Our approach employs masked cross-attention to seamlessly incorporate character features, enabling precise layout control without direct pixel transfer. Additionally, the MLLM-based adapter adjusts character features to align with panel-specific text cues, allowing flexible adjustments in character expressions, poses, and actions. We also introduce \textbf{MangaZero}, a large-scale dataset tailored to this task, containing 43,264 manga pages and 427,147 annotated panels, supporting the visualization of varied character interactions and movements across sequential frames. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DiffSensei outperforms existing models, marking a significant advancement in manga generation by enabling text-adaptable character customization. The project page is https://jianzongwu.github.io/projects/diffsensei/.

cs.CV↗

FlowPlan: Zero-Shot Task Planning with LLM Flow Engineering for Robotic Instruction Following

Robotic instruction following tasks require seamless integration of visual perception, task planning, target localization, and motion execution. However, existing task planning methods for instruction following are either data-driven or underperform in zero-shot scenarios due to difficulties in grounding lengthy instructions into actionable plans under operational constraints. To address this, we propose FlowPlan, a structured multi-stage LLM workflow that elevates zero-shot pipeline and bridges the performance gap between zero-shot and data-driven in-context learning methods. By decomposing the planning process into modular stages--task information retrieval, language-level reasoning, symbolic-level planning, and logical evaluation--FlowPlan generates logically coherent action sequences while adhering to operational constraints and further extracts contextual guidance for precise instance-level target localization. Benchmarked on the ALFRED and validated in real-world applications, our method achieves competitive performance relative to data-driven in-context learning methods and demonstrates adaptability across diverse environments. This work advances zero-shot task planning in robotic systems without reliance on labeled data. Project website: https://instruction-following-project.github.io/.

cs.RO↗

HGDiffuser: Efficient Task-Oriented Grasp Generation via Human-Guided Grasp Diffusion Models

Task-oriented grasping (TOG) is essential for robots to perform manipulation tasks, requiring grasps that are both stable and compliant with task-specific constraints. Humans naturally grasp objects in a task-oriented manner to facilitate subsequent manipulation tasks. By leveraging human grasp demonstrations, current methods can generate high-quality robotic parallel-jaw task-oriented grasps for diverse objects and tasks. However, they still encounter challenges in maintaining grasp stability and sampling efficiency. These methods typically rely on a two-stage process: first performing exhaustive task-agnostic grasp sampling in the 6-DoF space, then applying demonstration-induced constraints (e.g., contact regions and wrist orientations) to filter candidates. This leads to inefficiency and potential failure due to the vast sampling space. To address this, we propose the Human-guided Grasp Diffuser (HGDiffuser), a diffusion-based framework that integrates these constraints into a guided sampling process. Through this approach, HGDiffuser directly generates 6-DoF task-oriented grasps in a single stage, eliminating exhaustive task-agnostic sampling. Furthermore, by incorporating Diffusion Transformer (DiT) blocks as the feature backbone, HGDiffuser improves grasp generation quality compared to MLP-based methods. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach significantly improves the efficiency of task-oriented grasp generation, enabling more effective transfer of human grasping strategies to robotic systems. To access the source code and supplementary videos, visit https://sites.google.com/view/hgdiffuser.

cs.RO↗

FUNCTO: Function-Centric One-Shot Imitation Learning for Tool Manipulation

Learning tool use from a single human demonstration video offers a highly intuitive and efficient approach to robot teaching. While humans can effortlessly generalize a demonstrated tool manipulation skill to diverse tools that support the same function (e.g., pouring with a mug versus a teapot), current one-shot imitation learning (OSIL) methods struggle to achieve this. A key challenge lies in establishing functional correspondences between demonstration and test tools, considering significant geometric variations among tools with the same function (i.e., intra-function variations). To address this challenge, we propose FUNCTO (Function-Centric OSIL for Tool Manipulation), an OSIL method that establishes function-centric correspondences with a 3D functional keypoint representation, enabling robots to generalize tool manipulation skills from a single human demonstration video to novel tools with the same function despite significant intra-function variations. With this formulation, we factorize FUNCTO into three stages: (1) functional keypoint extraction, (2) function-centric correspondence establishment, and (3) functional keypoint-based action planning. We evaluate FUNCTO against exiting modular OSIL methods and end-to-end behavioral cloning methods through real-robot experiments on diverse tool manipulation tasks. The results demonstrate the superiority of FUNCTO when generalizing to novel tools with intra-function geometric variations. More details are available at https://sites.google.com/view/functo.

cs.RO↗

Balancing reaction-diffusion network for cell polarization pattern with stability and asymmetry

Cell polarization is a critical process that separates molecular species into two distinct regions in prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, guiding biological processes such as cell division and cell differentiation. Although several underlying antagonistic reaction-diffusion networks capable of setting up cell polarization have been identified experimentally and theoretically, our understanding of how to manipulate pattern stability and asymmetry remains incomplete, especially when only a subset of network components are known. Here we present numerical results to show that the polarized pattern of an antagonistic 2-node network collapses into a homogeneous state when subjected to single-sided self-regulation, single-sided additional regulation, or unequal system parameters. However, polarity restoration can be achieved by combining two modifications with opposing effects. Additionally, spatially inhomogeneous parameters favoring respective domains stabilize their interface at designated locations. To connect our findings to cell polarity studies of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans zygote, we reconstituted a 5-node network where a 4-node circuit with full mutual inhibitions between anterior and posterior is modified by a mutual activation in the anterior and an additional mutual inhibition between the anterior and the posterior. Once again, a generic set of kinetic parameters moves the interface towards either the anterior or posterior end, yet a polarized pattern can be stabilized through spatial tuning of one or more parameters coupled to intracellular or extracellular cues. A user-friendly software, PolarSim, is introduced to facilitate the exploration of networks with alternative node numbers, parameter values, and regulatory pathways.

q-bio.MN↗

FoundationGrasp: Generalizable Task-Oriented Grasping with Foundation Models

Task-oriented grasping (TOG), which refers to synthesizing grasps on an object that are configurationally compatible with the downstream manipulation task, is the first milestone towards tool manipulation. Analogous to the activation of two brain regions responsible for semantic and geometric reasoning during cognitive processes, modeling the intricate relationship between objects, tasks, and grasps necessitates rich semantic and geometric prior knowledge about these elements. Existing methods typically restrict the prior knowledge to a closed-set scope, limiting their generalization to novel objects and tasks out of the training set. To address such a limitation, we propose FoundationGrasp, a foundation model-based TOG framework that leverages the open-ended knowledge from foundation models to learn generalizable TOG skills. Extensive experiments are conducted on the contributed Language and Vision Augmented TaskGrasp (LaViA-TaskGrasp) dataset, demonstrating the superiority of FoundationGrasp over existing methods when generalizing to novel object instances, object classes, and tasks out of the training set. Furthermore, the effectiveness of FoundationGrasp is validated in real-robot grasping and manipulation experiments on a 7-DoF robotic arm. Our code, data, appendix, and video are publicly available at https://sites.google.com/view/foundationgrasp.

cs.RO↗