arXiv subjects

Priyanka Rao

Publications and source records attributed to Priyanka Rao.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Do Rigid-Body Simulators Dream of Soft Robots? Learning Contact-Rich Manipulation for Tendon-Driven Continuum Robots

Learning contact-rich, whole-body manipulation for soft continuum robots is held back by the lack of simulation infrastructure that has accelerated rigid-robot manipulation. Existing soft robot simulators are physically grounded but lack the contact handling, actuation support, or learning integration needed for contact-rich manipulation; rigid-body approximations offer these capabilities but sacrifice physical grounding. We bridge this gap for tendon-driven continuum robots (TDCRs) by deriving a continuum-mechanics-informed discretization that places the soft robot natively inside MuJoCo, unifying tendon forces, body contact, and dynamics in a single physics pipeline. We validate the simulator against a Cosserat rod reference (static and dynamic) and real TDCR hardware. We then train state-based imitation learning policies via teleoperation in simulation and deploy them zero-shot to a physical 3-segment TDCR on a 7-DoF Franka arm across two contact-rich manipulation tasks. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of sim-to-real transfer for contact-rich manipulation with continuum robots.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2025

Distribution of lowest eigenvalue in $k$-body bosonic random matrix ensembles

We present numerical investigations demonstrating the result that the distribution of the lowest eigenvalue of finite many-boson systems (say we have $m$ number of bosons) with $k$-body interactions, modeled by Bosonic Embedded Gaussian Orthogonal [BEGOE($k$)] and Unitary [BEGUE($k$)] random matrix Ensembles of $k$-body interactions, exhibits a smooth transition from Gaussian like (for $k = 1$) to a modified Gumbel like (for intermediate values of $k$) to the well-known Tracy-Widom distribution (for $k = m$) form. We also provide ansatz for centroids and variances of the lowest eigenvalue distributions. In addition, we show that the distribution of normalized spacing between the lowest and the next lowest eigenvalues exhibits a transition from Wigner's surmise (for $k = 1$) to Poisson (for intermediate $k$ values with $k \le m/2$) to Wigner's surmise (starting from $k = m/2$ to $k = m$) form. We analyze these transitions as a function of $q$ parameter defining $q$-normal distribution for eigenvalue densities.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Towards Contact-Aided Motion Planning for Tendon-Driven Continuum Robots

Tendon-driven continuum robots (TDCRs), with their flexible backbones, offer the advantage of being used for navigating complex, cluttered environments. However, to do so, they typically require multiple segments, often leading to complex actuation and control challenges. To this end, we propose a novel approach to navigate cluttered spaces effectively for a single-segment long TDCR which is the simplest topology from a mechanical point of view. Our key insight is that by leveraging contact with the environment we can achieve multiple curvatures without mechanical alterations to the robot. Specifically, we propose a search-based motion planner for a single-segment TDCR. This planner, guided by a specially designed heuristic, discretizes the configuration space and employs a best-first search. The heuristic, crucial for efficient navigation, provides an effective cost-to-go estimation while respecting the kinematic constraints of the TDCR and environmental interactions. We empirically demonstrate the efficiency of our planner-testing over 525 queries in environments with both convex and non-convex obstacles, our planner is demonstrated to have a success rate of about 80% while baselines were not able to obtain a success rate higher than 30%. The difference is attributed to our novel heuristic which is shown to significantly reduce the required search space.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2023

Thermalization in many-fermion quantum systems with one- plus random $k$-body interactions

We study the mechanism of thermalization in finite many-fermion systems with random $k$-body interactions in presence of a mean-field. The system Hamiltonian $H$, for $m$ fermions in $N$ single particle states with $k$-body interactions, is modeled by mean field one-body $h(1)$ and a random $k$-body interaction $V(k)$ with strength $λ$. Following the recent application of $q$-Hermite polynomials to these ensembles, a complete analytical description of parameter $q$, which describes the change in the shape of state density from Gaussian for $q=1$ to semi-circle for $q=0$ and intermediate for $0<q<1$, and variance of the strength function are obtained in terms of model parameters. The latter gives the thermalization marker $λ_t$ defining the thermodynamic region. For $λ\ge λ_t$, the smooth part of the strength functions is very well represented by conditional $q$-normal distribution ($f_{CN}$), which describes the transition in strength functions from Gaussian to semi-circle as the $k$-body interaction changes from $k = 2$ to $m$ in $H$. In the thermodynamic region, ensemble averaged results for the first four moments of the strength functions and inverse participation ratio (IPR) are found to be in good agreement with the corresponding smooth forms. For higher body rank of interaction $k$, system thermalizes faster.

nlin.CD↗

arXiv2021

Eigenstate structure in many-body bosonic systems: Analysis using random matrices and $q$-Hermite polynomials

We analyze the structure of eigenstates in many-body bosonic systems by modeling the Hamiltonian of these complex systems using Bosonic Embedded Gaussian Orthogonal Ensembles (BEGOE) defined by a mean-field plus $k$-body random interactions. The quantities employed are the number of principal components (NPC), the localization length ($l_H$) and the entropy production $S(t)$. The numerical results are compared with the analytical formulas obtained using random matrices which are based on bivariate $q$-Hermite polynomials for local density of states $F_k(E|q)$ and the bivariate $q$-Hermite polynomial form for bivariate eigenvalue density $ρ_{biv:q}(E,E_k)$ that are valid in the strong interaction domain. We also compare transport efficiency in many-body bosonic systems using BEGOE in absence and presence of centrosymmetry. It is seen that the centrosymmetry enhances quantum efficiency.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Ordered Level Spacing Distribution in Embedded Random Matrix Ensembles

The probability distribution of the closest neighbor and farther neighbor spacings from a given level have been studied for interacting fermion/boson systems with and without spin degree of freedom constructed using an embedded GOE of one plus random two-body interactions. Our numerical results demonstrate a very good consistency with the recently derived analytical expressions using a $3 \times 3$ random matrix model and other related quantities by Srivastava et. al [{\it J. Phys. A: Math. Theor.} {\bf 52} 025101 (2019)]. This establishes conclusively that local level fluctuations generated by embedded ensembles (EE) follow the results of classical Gaussian ensembles.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2021

Structure of wavefunction for interacting bosons in mean-field with random $k$-body interactions

Wavefunction structure is analyzed for dense interacting many-boson systems using Hamiltonian $H$, which is a sum of one-body $h(1)$ and an embedded GOE of $k$-body interaction $V(k)$ with strength $λ$. In the first analysis, a complete analytical description of the variance of the strength function as a function of $λ$ and $k$ is derived and the marker $λ_t$ defining thermalization region is obtained. In the strong coupling limit ($λ> λ_t$), the conditional $q$-normal density describes Gaussian to semi-circle transition in strength functions as body rank $k$ of the interaction increases. In the second analysis, this interpolating form of the strength function is utilized to describe the fidelity decay after $k$-body interaction quench and also to obtain the smooth form for the number of principal components, a measure of chaos in finite interacting many-particle systems. The smooth form very well describes embedded ensemble results for all $k$ values.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2019

Distribution of Higher Order Spacing Ratios in Interacting Many Particle Systems

We study the distribution of non-overlapping spacing ratios of higher-orders for complex interacting many-body quantum systems, with and without spin degree of freedom (in addition to the particle number). The Hamiltonian of such systems is well represented by embedded one- plus two-body random matrix ensembles (with and without spin degree of freedom) for fermionic as well as bosonic systems. We obtain a very good correspondence between the numerical results and a recently proposed generalized Wigner surmise like scaling relation. These results confirm that the proposed scaling relation is universal in understanding spacing ratios in complex many-body quantum systems. Using spin ensembles, we demonstrate that the higher order spacing ratio distributions can also reveal quantitative information about the underlying symmetry structure.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗