Martin Peticco

2026

1. IROS

   KaRMA: A Kinematic Metric for Fine Manipulation Ability in Robotic Hands

   Martin Peticco and Pulkit Agrawal

   In IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2026

   Abs arXiv Bib HTML

   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},
   }

2. 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

   Abs arXiv Bib HTML Website

   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

1. RSS

   Bridging the Sim-to-Real Gap for Athletic Loco-Manipulation

   Nolan Fey, Gabriel B. Margolis, Martin Peticco, and 1 more author

   In Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), 2025

   Abs arXiv Bib HTML

   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

1. 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

   In AIAA SciTech Forum, 2024

   Bib HTML

   @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},
   }

2. 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

   In AIAA SciTech Forum, 2024

   Bib HTML

   @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},
   }

3. IEEE Aero

   2023 EELS Field Tests at Athabasca Glacier as an Icy Moon Analogue Environment

   M. Paton, R. Rieber, S. Cruz, and 3 more authors

   In IEEE Aerospace Conference, 2024

   Bib HTML

   @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

1. AGU

   Enabling Ocean Access with EELS

   Masahiro Ono, M. L. Cable, L. J. Spilker, and 5 more authors

   In AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts, 2023

   Bib

   @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}
   }