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Legged robots are well-suited for broad exploration tasks in complex environments with yielding terrain. Understanding robotic foot-terrain interactions is critical for safe locomotion and walking efficiency for legged robots. This paper…
Traversing terrains with sparse footholds like legged animals presents a promising yet challenging task for quadruped robots, as it requires precise environmental perception and agile control to secure safe foot placement while maintaining…
Balancing oneself using the spine is a physiological alignment of the body posture in the most efficient manner by the muscular forces for mammals. For this reason, we can see many disabled quadruped animals can still stand or walk even…
Manipulation with whole-body contact by humanoid robots offers distinct advantages, including enhanced stability and reduced load. On the other hand, we need to address challenges such as the increased computational cost of motion…
Legged locomotion enables robotic systems to traverse extremely challenging terrains. In many real-world scenarios, the terrain is not that difficult and these mixed terrain types introduce the need for flexible use of different walking…
Bio-inspired walking hexapod robots are a relatively young branch in robotics in both state of the art and applications. Despite their high degree of flexibility and adaptability derived by their redundant design, the research field that…
This paper evaluates the capabilities of a soft robotic pneumatic actuator derived from the terrain display haptic device, "The Smart Shoe." The bladder design of the Smart Shoe is upgraded to include a pressure supply and greater output…
Towards the role of humanoid robots as squad mates in urban operations and other domains, we identified doors as a major area lacking capability development. In this paper, we focus on the ability of humanoid robots to navigate and deal…
Legged robots are able to navigate complex terrains by continuously interacting with the environment through careful selection of contact sequences and timings. However, the combinatorial nature behind contact planning hinders the…
Legged robots face significant challenges in navigating complex environments, as they require precise real-time decisions for foothold selection and contact planning. While existing research has explored methods to select footholds based on…
Legged robots can pass through complex field environments by selecting gaits and discrete footholds carefully. Traditional methods plan gait and foothold separately and treat them as the single-step optimal process. However, such processing…
Humanoid robots operating in human-centered environments (e.g., homes, hospitals, and offices) must mitigate foot--ground impact transients, as impact-induced vibration and noise degrade user experience and repeated impacts accelerate…
Teleoperated humanoid robots hold significant potential as physical avatars for humans in hazardous and inaccessible environments, with the goal of channeling human intelligence and sensorimotor skills through these robotic counterparts.…
Celestial bodies such as the Moon and Mars are mainly covered by loose, granular soil, a notoriously challenging terrain to traverse with (wheeled) robotic systems. Here, we present experimental work on traversing steep, granular slopes…
Although recent years have seen significant progress of humanoid robots in walking and running, the frequent foot strikes with ground during these locomotion gaits inevitably generate high instantaneous impact forces, which leads to…
Quadruped robots have shown remarkable mobility on various terrains through reinforcement learning. Yet, in the presence of sparse footholds and risky terrains such as stepping stones and balance beams, which require precise foot placement…
Biped robots usually adopt feet with a rigid structure that simplifies walking on flat grounds and yet hinders ground adaptation in unstructured environments, thus jeopardizing stability. We recently explored in the SoftFoot the idea of…
In legged locomotion, the relationship between different gait behaviors and energy consumption must consider the full-body dynamics and the robot control as a whole, which cannot be captured by simple models. This work studies the robot…
Planning locomotion trajectories for legged microrobots is challenging because of their complex morphology, high frequency passive dynamics, and discontinuous contact interactions with their environment. Consequently, such research is often…
This study deals with the balance of humanoid or multi-legged robots in a multi-contact setting where a chosen subset of contacts is undergoing desired sliding-task motions. One method to keep balance is to hold the center-of-mass (CoM)…