Quadrupedal wheeled-legged robots combine the advantages of legged and wheeled locomotion to achieve superior mobility, but executing dynamic jumps remains a significant challenge due to the additional degrees of freedom introduced by wheeled legs. This paper develops a mini-sized wheeled-legged robot for agile motion and presents a novel motion control framework that integrates the Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) for locomotion and the Differential Evolution (DE) based trajectory optimization for jumping in quadrupedal wheeled-legged robots. The proposed controller utilizes wheel motion and locomotion to enhance jumping performance, achieving versatile maneuvers such as vertical jumping, forward jumping, and backflips. Extensive simulations and real-world experiments validate the effectiveness of the framework, demonstrating a forward jump over a 0.12 m obstacle and a vertical jump reaching 0.5 m.
@article{arxiv.2602.21612,
title = {Jumping Control for a Quadrupedal Wheeled-Legged Robot via NMPC and DE Optimization},
author = {Xuanqi Zeng and Lingwei Zhang and Linzhu Yue and Zhitao Song and Hongbo Zhang and Tianlin Zhang and Yun-Hui Liu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.21612},
year = {2026}
}