Related papers: How to run on rough terrains
Planning accurate manipulation for deformable objects requires prediction of their state. The prediction is often complicated by a loss of stability that may result in collapse of the deformable object. In this work, stability of a fabric…
We present a novel outdoor navigation algorithm to generate stable and efficient actions to navigate a robot to reach a goal. We use a multi-stage training pipeline and show that our approach produces policies that result in stable and…
Non-geometric mobility hazards such as rover slippage and sinkage posing great challenges to costly planetary missions are closely related to the mechanical properties of terrain. In-situ proprioceptive processes for rovers to estimate…
Future urban transportation concepts include a mixture of ground and air vehicles with varying degrees of autonomy in a congested environment. In such dynamic environments, occupancy maps alone are not sufficient for safe path planning.…
Motivated by a possible convergence of terrestrial limbless locomotion strategies ultimately determined by interfacial effects, we show how both 3D gait alterations and locomotory adaptations to heterogeneous terrains can be understood…
A fatigue-failure process is hypothesized to govern the development of tibial stress fractures, where bone damage is highly dependent on the peak strain magnitude. To date, much of the work examining tibial strains during running has…
Understanding physical phenomena is a key competence that enables humans and animals to act and interact under uncertain perception in previously unseen environments containing novel objects and their configurations. Developmental…
Robots that traverse natural terrain must interpret contact forces generated under highly dynamic conditions. However, most terrain characterization approaches rely on quasi-static assumptions that neglect velocity- and…
Bipedal animals have diverse morphologies and advanced locomotion abilities. Terrestrial birds, in particular, display agile, efficient, and robust running motion, in which they exploit the interplay between the body segment masses and…
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…
From serving a cup of coffee to positioning mechanical parts during assembly, stable object placement is a crucial skill for future robots. It becomes particularly challenging under geometric uncertainties, e.g., when the object pose or…
Humans typically walk at low speeds and run at higher speeds. Previous studies of transitions between walking and running were mostly on treadmills, but real-world locomotion allows more flexibility. Here, we study overground locomotion…
In this paper, we investigate a pursuit-evasion game in which a mobile observer tries to track a target in an environment containing obstacles. We formulate the game as an optimal control problem with state inequality constraint in a simple…
This paper presents a novel robust trajectory optimization method for constrained nonlinear dynamical systems subject to unknown bounded disturbances. In particular, we seek optimal control policies that remain robustly feasible with…
Small obstacles on the ground often lead to a fall when caught with commercial prosthetic feet. Despite some recently developed feet can actively control the ankle angle, for instance over slopes, their flat and rigid sole remains a cause…
We present a unified model-based and data-driven approach for quadrupedal planning and control to achieve dynamic locomotion over uneven terrain. We utilize on-board proprioceptive and exteroceptive feedback to map sensory information and…
The safety of mobile robots in dynamic environments is predicated on making sure that they do not collide with obstacles. In support of such safety arguments, we analyze and formally verify a series of increasingly powerful safety…
Motile biological cells in tissue often display the phenomenon of durotaxis, i.e. they tend to move towards stiffer parts of substrate tissue. The mechanism for this behavior is not completely understood. We consider simplified models for…
Limbless terrestrial animals exhibit exceptional locomotor versatility and control, currently unmatched by engineered counterparts. Here, we introduce a computational framework that enables soft synthetic snakes to navigate unstructured,…
Aerial robots are a well-established solution for exploration, monitoring, and inspection, thanks to their superior maneuverability and agility. However, in many environments, they risk crashing and sustaining damage after collisions.…