Related papers: Evolved embodied phase coordination enables robust…

This paper provides an overview of evolutionary robotics techniques applied to on-line distributed evolution for robot collectives -- namely, embodied evolution. It provides a definition of embodied evolution as well as a thorough…

Safety concerns during the operation of legged robots must be addressed to enable their widespread use. Machine learning-based control methods that use model-based constraints provide promising means to improve robot safety. This study…

Recently several hierarchical inverse dynamics controllers based on cascades of quadratic programs have been proposed for application on torque controlled robots. They have important theoretical benefits but have never been implemented on a…

Control of wheeled humanoid locomotion is a challenging problem due to the nonlinear dynamics and under-actuated characteristics of these robots. Traditionally, feedback controllers have been utilized for stabilization and locomotion.…

Legged robots offer several advantages when navigating unstructured environments, but they often fall short of the efficiency achieved by wheeled robots. One promising strategy to improve their energy economy is to leverage their natural…

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…

Serially connected robots are promising candidates for performing tasks in confined spaces such as search-and-rescue in large-scale disasters. Such robots are typically limbless, and we hypothesize that the addition of limbs could improve…

Robots are becoming increasingly essential for traversing complex environments such as disaster areas, extraterrestrial terrains, and marine environments. Yet, their potential is often limited by mobility and adaptability constraints. In…

A great advantage of legged robots is their ability to operate on particularly difficult and obstructed terrain, which demands dynamic, robust, and precise movements. The study of obstacle courses provides invaluable insights into the…

It has always been expected that a robot can be easily deployed to unknown scenarios, accomplishing robotic grasping tasks without human intervention. Nevertheless, existing grasp detection approaches are typically off-body techniques and…

Automatic optimization of robotic behavior has been the long-standing goal of Evolutionary Robotics. Allowing the problem at hand to be solved by automation often leads to novel approaches and new insights. A common problem encountered with…

Modern quadrupeds are skillful in traversing or even sprinting on uneven terrains in a remote uncontrolled environment. However, survival in the wild requires not only maneuverability, but also the ability to handle potential critical…

The ability to modify morphology in response to environmental changes represents a highly advantageous feature in biological organisms, facilitating their adaptation to diverse environmental conditions. While some robots have the capability…

Flexible manufacturing processes demand robots to easily adapt to changes in the environment and interact with humans. In such dynamic scenarios, robotic tasks may be programmed through learning-from-demonstration approaches, where a…

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has seen many recent successes for quadruped robot control. The imitation of reference motions provides a simple and powerful prior for guiding solutions towards desired solutions without the need for meticulous…

Convex optimization is crucial in controlling legged robots, where stability and optimal control are vital. Many control problems can be formulated as convex optimization problems, with a convex cost function and constraints capturing…

The automatic design of robots has existed for 30 years but has been constricted by serial non-differentiable design evaluations, premature convergence to simple bodies or clumsy behaviors, and a lack of sim2real transfer to physical…

Some of the most challenging environments on our planet are accessible to quadrupedal animals but remain out of reach for autonomous machines. Legged locomotion can dramatically expand the operational domains of robotics. However,…

Robotic manipulation demands precise control over both contact forces and motion trajectories. While force control is essential for achieving compliant interaction and high-frequency adaptation, it is limited to operations in close…

There is a growing interest in learning a velocity command tracking controller of quadruped robot using reinforcement learning due to its robustness and scalability. However, a single policy, trained end-to-end, usually shows a single gait…