Related papers: Autonomous Functional Locomotion in a Tendon-Drive…
Legged robots are physically capable of traversing a wide range of challenging environments, but designing controllers that are sufficiently robust to handle this diversity has been a long-standing challenge in robotics. Reinforcement…
Enabling robots to autonomously perform hybrid motions in diverse environments can be beneficial for long-horizon tasks such as material handling, household chores, and work assistance. This requires extensive exploitation of intrinsic…
Tendon-driven robots, where one or more tendons under tension bend and manipulate a flexible backbone, can improve minimally invasive surgeries involving difficult-to-reach regions in the human body. Planning motions safely within…
Robots which make use of soft or compliant inter- actions often leverage tendon-driven actuation which enables actuators to be placed more flexibly, and compliance to be maintained. However, controlling complex tendon systems is…
Inspired by animals that co-adapt their brain and body to interact with the environment, we present a tendon-driven and over-actuated (i.e., n joint, n+1 actuators) bipedal robot that (i) exploits its backdrivable mechanical properties to…
Legged machines are becoming increasingly agile and adaptive but they have so far lacked the morphological diversity of legged animals, which have been rearranged and reshaped to fill millions of niches. Unlike their biological…
We present an approach to learn fast and dynamic robot motions without exceeding limits on the position $\theta$, velocity $\dot{\theta}$, acceleration $\ddot{\theta}$ and jerk $\dddot{\theta}$ of each robot joint. Movements are generated…
Precise trajectory tracking for legged robots can be challenging due to their high degrees of freedom, unmodeled nonlinear dynamics, or random disturbances from the environment. A commonly adopted solution to overcome these challenges is to…
Teaching an anthropomorphic robot from human example offers the opportunity to impart humanlike qualities on its movement. In this work we present a reinforcement learning based method for teaching a real world bipedal robot to perform…
Legged robots have significant potential to operate in highly unstructured environments. The design of locomotion control is, however, still challenging. Currently, controllers must be either manually designed for specific robots and tasks,…
Despite the progress in legged robotic locomotion, autonomous navigation in unknown environments remains an open problem. Ideally, the navigation system utilizes the full potential of the robots' locomotion capabilities while operating…
Reproducing the diverse and agile locomotion skills of animals has been a longstanding challenge in robotics. While manually-designed controllers have been able to emulate many complex behaviors, building such controllers involves a…
One of the open challenges in designing robots that operate successfully in the unpredictable human environment is how to make them able to predict what actions they can perform on objects, and what their effects will be, i.e., the ability…
Learning multiple gaits is non-trivial for legged robots, especially when encountering different terrains and velocity commands. In this work, we present an end-to-end training framework for learning multiple gaits for quadruped robots,…
Autonomous wheeled-legged robots have the potential to transform logistics systems, improving operational efficiency and adaptability in urban environments. Navigating urban environments, however, poses unique challenges for robots,…
Operations in hazardous environments put humans, animals, and machines at high risk for physically damaging consequences. In contrast to humans and animals, quadruped robots cannot naturally identify and adjust their locomotion to a…
Assistive robot arms enable people with disabilities to conduct everyday tasks on their own. These arms are dexterous and high-dimensional; however, the interfaces people must use to control their robots are low-dimensional. Consider…
Amphibious legged robots inspired by salamanders are promising in applications in complex amphibious environments. However, despite the significant success of training controllers that achieve diverse locomotion behaviors in conventional…
With a slender redundant body, the tendon-driven robot (TDR) has a large workspace and great maneuverability while working in complex environments. TDR comprises multiple independently controlled robot segments, each with a set of driving…
Locomotion has seen dramatic progress for walking or running across challenging terrains. However, robotic quadrupeds are still far behind their biological counterparts, such as dogs, which display a variety of agile skills and can use the…