Robotic hands are typically evaluated with static metrics such as workspace and grasp stability, which say little about dexterity as manipulation actually defines it: continuously changing an object’s pose in-hand while maintaining contact. KaRMA is a kinematic metric that quantifies the reachable in-hand translation and reorientation of a spherical object held in a two-finger precision pinch, subject to joint limits, collision, rolling contact, and antipodal force constraints. Evaluated across 16 widely used robotic hands, it separates hands that existing static measures rank identically.
@inproceedings{peticco2026karma,title={KaRMA: A Kinematic Metric for Fine Manipulation Ability in Robotic Hands},author={Peticco, Martin and Agrawal, Pulkit},booktitle={IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},year={2026},}
RA-L
DexWrist: A Robotic Wrist for Constrained and Dynamic Manipulation
Martin Peticco, Gabriella Ulloa, John Marangola, and 2 more authors
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), under review, 2026
DexWrist is a compliant, back-drivable 2-DoF robotic wrist for constrained and dynamic manipulation, combining quasi-direct-drive actuation with a decoupled parallel kinematic mechanism. At under 1 kg it delivers 3.75 Nm rated torque, 0.33 Nm backdrive torque, 10 Hz torque bandwidth, and +/-40 degrees of travel in both degrees of freedom. Its compliance makes contact-rich tasks safe to learn on without an explicit compliance controller, improving learned-policy success rates by 50 to 76 percent and reducing autonomous task completion times by 3 to 5 times over conventional wrists.
@article{peticco2025dexwrist,title={DexWrist: A Robotic Wrist for Constrained and Dynamic Manipulation},author={Peticco, Martin and Ulloa, Gabriella and Marangola, John and Dashora, Nitish and Agrawal, Pulkit},journal={IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), under review},year={2026},}
2025
RSS
Bridging the Sim-to-Real Gap for Athletic Loco-Manipulation
Nolan Fey, Gabriel B. Margolis, Martin Peticco, and 1 more author
Athletic loco-manipulation is driven by task rewards rather than tracking rewards, letting commands like "throw the ball as far as you can" elicit dynamic, goal-oriented behavior. A two-stage pipeline introduces the Unsupervised Actuator Net (UAN) to bridge the sim-to-real gap for complex actuation without torque sensing, then uses pre-training and fine-tuning against reference trajectories to guide exploration. The resulting robot athlete learns to lift, throw, and drag with high fidelity from simulation to reality.
@inproceedings{fey2025bridging,title={Bridging the Sim-to-Real Gap for Athletic Loco-Manipulation},author={Fey, Nolan and Margolis, Gabriel B. and Peticco, Martin and Agrawal, Pulkit},booktitle={Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS)},year={2025},}
2024
AIAA SciTech
To Boldly Go Where No Robots Have Gone Before – Part 3: The Screw Mobility System of EELS for Robust Surface and Subsurface Mobility on Highly Unknown Terrains
E. Marteau, L. P. Tosi, M. Veismann, and 4 more authors
@inproceedings{marteau2024eels3,title={To Boldly Go Where No Robots Have Gone Before -- Part 3: The Screw Mobility System of EELS for Robust Surface and Subsurface Mobility on Highly Unknown Terrains},author={Marteau, E. and Tosi, L. P. and Veismann, M. and Gavrilov, P. and Peticco, Martin and Hockman, B. and others},booktitle={AIAA SciTech Forum},year={2024},}
AIAA SciTech
To Boldly Go Where No Robots Have Gone Before – Part 1: EELS Robot to Spearhead a New One-Shot Exploration Paradigm with In-situ Adaptation
Masahiro Ono, Rohan Thakker, N. Georgiev, and 3 more authors
@inproceedings{ono2024eels1,title={To Boldly Go Where No Robots Have Gone Before -- Part 1: EELS Robot to Spearhead a New One-Shot Exploration Paradigm with In-situ Adaptation},author={Ono, Masahiro and Thakker, Rohan and Georgiev, N. and Gavrilov, P. and Peticco, Martin and others},booktitle={AIAA SciTech Forum},year={2024},}
IEEE Aero
2023 EELS Field Tests at Athabasca Glacier as an Icy Moon Analogue Environment
@inproceedings{paton2024athabasca,title={2023 EELS Field Tests at Athabasca Glacier as an Icy Moon Analogue Environment},author={Paton, M. and Rieber, R. and Cruz, S. and Gildner, M. and Peticco, Martin and others},booktitle={IEEE Aerospace Conference},year={2024},}
2023
AGU
Enabling Ocean Access with EELS
Masahiro Ono, M. L. Cable, L. J. Spilker, and 5 more authors
@inproceedings{ono2023ocean,title={Enabling Ocean Access with EELS},author={Ono, Masahiro and Cable, M. L. and Spilker, L. J. and Drevinskas, T. and Weber, J. and Malaska, M. and Peticco, Martin and others},booktitle={AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts},year={2023}}