Related papers: Decentralized Control of a Hexapod Robot Using a W…
In swarm robotics, decentralized control is often proposed as a more scalable and fault-tolerant alternative to centralized control. However, centralized behaviors are often faster and more efficient than their decentralized counterparts.…
Decentralized heading control is crucial for robotic network operations such as surveillance, exploration, and cooperative construction. However, few results consider decentralized heading control when the speed of heading adjustment is…
Animals locomote robustly and agile, albeit significant sensorimotor delays of their nervous system. The sensorimotor control of legged robots is implemented with much higher frequencies-often in the kilohertz range-and sensor and actuator…
In this work, we consider a group of robots working together to manipulate a rigid object to track a desired trajectory in $SE(3)$. The robots do not know the mass or friction properties of the object, or where they are attached to the…
This paper presents a layered control approach for real-time trajectory planning and control of robust cooperative locomotion by two holonomically constrained quadrupedal robots. A novel interconnected network of reduced-order models, based…
This paper seeks insight into stabilization mechanisms for periodic walking gaits in 3D bipedal robots. Based on this insight, a control strategy based on virtual constraints, which imposes coordination between joints rather than a temporal…
This paper develops a decentralized approach to mobile sensor coverage by a multi-robot system. We consider a scenario where a team of robots with limited sensing range must position itself to effectively detect events of interest in a…
Robot controllers are often optimised for a single robot in a single environment. This approach proves brittle, as such a controller will often fail to produce sensible behavior for a new morphology or environment. In comparison, animal…
Stable bipedal walking is a key prerequisite for humanoid robots to reach their potential of being versatile helpers in our everyday environments. Bipedal walking is, however, a complex motion that requires the coordination of many degrees…
We present a model of the central pattern generator (CPG) network that can control gait transitions in hexapod robots in a simple manner based on phase reduction. The CPG network consists of six weakly coupled limit-cycle oscillators, whose…
A motion-based control interface promises flexible robot operations in dangerous environments by combining user intuitions with the robot's motor capabilities. However, designing a motion interface for non-humanoid robots, such as…
We study the problem of monitoring distributed systems where computers communicate using message passing and share an almost synchronized clock. This is a realistic scenario for networks where the speed of the monitoring is sufficiently…
This paper aims to develop distributed feedback control algorithms that allow cooperative locomotion of quadrupedal robots which are coupled to each other by holonomic constraints. These constraints can arise from collaborative manipulation…
We consider the setting where a team of robots is tasked with tracking multiple targets with the following property: approaching the targets enables more accurate target position estimation, but also increases the risk of sensor failures.…
A common approach to the generation of walking patterns for humanoid robots consists in adopting a layered control architecture. This paper proposes an architecture composed of three nested control loops. The outer loop exploits a robot…
Multi-robot teams can achieve more dexterous, complex and heavier payload tasks than a single robot, yet effective collaboration is required. Multi-robot collaboration is extremely challenging due to the different kinematic and dynamics…
An external magnetic field can be used to remotely control small-scaled robots, making them promising candidates for diverse biomedical and engineering applications. We showed that our magnetically actuated millirobot is highly agile and…
Legged locomotion is widespread in nature and has inspired the design of current robots. The controller of these legged robots is often realized as one centralized instance. However, in nature, control of movement happens in a hierarchical…
Bipedal robots promise the ability to traverse rough terrain quickly and efficiently, and indeed, humanoid robots can now use strong ankles and careful foot placement to traverse discontinuous terrain. However, more agile underactuated…
Locomotion on dynamic rigid surface (i.e., rigid surface accelerating in an inertial frame) presents complex challenges for controller design, which are essential for deploying humanoid robots in dynamic real-world environments such as…