Related papers: Rigid vs compliant contact: An experimental study …
The ability of bipedal robots to adapt to diverse and unstructured terrain conditions is crucial for their deployment in real-world environments. To this end, we present a novel, bio-inspired robot foot design with stabilizing tarsal…
In this work, we demonstrate robust walking in the bipedal robot Digit on uneven terrains by just learning a single linear policy. In particular, we propose a new control pipeline, wherein the high-level trajectory modulator shapes the…
This paper proposes a method to learn from human demonstration compliant contact motions, which take advantage of interaction forces between workpieces to align them, even when contact force may occur from different directions on different…
In this paper, we develop a principled method to model line and surface contact with point contact (we call this point, equivalent contact point) that is consistent with physics-based models of surface (line) contact. Assuming that the set…
Haptic upper limb exoskeletons are robots that assist human operators during task execution while having the ability to render virtual or remote environments. Therefore, the stability of such robots in physical human-robot-environment…
Imitation learning has been actively studied in recent years. In particular, skill acquisition by a robot with a fixed body, whose root link position and posture and camera angle of view do not change, has been realized in many cases. On…
Sprawling locomotion in vertebrates, particularly salamanders, demonstrates how body undulation and spinal mobility enhance stability, maneuverability, and adaptability across complex terrains. While prior work has separately explored…
Legged robots have the potential to become vital in maintenance, home support, and exploration scenarios. In order to interact with and manipulate their environments, most legged robots are equipped with a dedicated robot arm, which means…
This paper presents a Non-Linear Model Predictive Controller for humanoid robot locomotion with online step adjustment capabilities. The proposed controller considers the Centroidal Dynamics of the system to compute the desired contact…
Quadruped robots are often designed with rigid feet to simplify control and maintain stable contact during locomotion. While this approach is straightforward, it limits the ability of the legs to absorb impact forces and reuse stored…
In this study, seated walk, a movement of walking while sitting on a chair with casters, is realized on a musculoskeletal humanoid from human teaching. The body is balanced by using buttock-contact sensors implemented on the planar…
Humanoid robots have great potential for real-world applications due to their ability to operate in environments built for humans, but their deployment is hindered by the challenge of controlling their underlying high-dimensional nonlinear…
As robots shift from industrial to human-centered spaces, adopting mobile manipulators, which expand workspace capabilities, becomes crucial. In these settings, seamless interaction with humans necessitates compliant control. Two common…
Soft growing robots, commonly referred to as vine robots, have demonstrated remarkable ability to interact safely and robustly with unstructured and dynamic environments. It is therefore natural to exploit contact with the environment for…
A standard motion control with feedback of the output displacement cannot handle unforeseen contact with environment without penetrating into the soft, i.e. viscoelastic, materials or even damaging the fragile materials. Robotics and…
This work presents an extended framework for learning-based bipedal locomotion that incorporates a heuristic step-planning strategy guided by desired torso velocity tracking. The framework enables precise interaction between a humanoid…
Soft robotic snakes made of compliant materials can continuously deform their bodies and, therefore, mimic the biological snakes' flexible and agile locomotion gaits better than their rigid-bodied counterparts. Without wheel support, to…
Humans are able to negotiate downstep behaviors -- both planned and unplanned -- with remarkable agility and ease. The goal of this paper is to systematically study the translation of this human behavior to bipedal walking robots, even if…
Drawing inspiration from human multi-domain walking, this work presents a novel reduced-order model based framework for realizing multi-domain robotic walking. At the core of our approach is the viewpoint that human walking can be…
The design of physical compliance -- its location, degree, and structure -- affects robot performance and robustness in contact-rich tasks. While compliance is often used in the robot's joints, flange, or end-effector, this paper proposes…