Related papers: Energy-Efficient Slithering Gait Exploration for a…
Learning to walk -- i.e., learning locomotion under performance and energy constraints continues to be a challenge in legged robotics. Methods such as stochastic gradient, deep reinforcement learning (RL) have been explored for bipeds,…
In this paper, with a view toward fast deployment of locomotion gaits in low-cost hardware, we use a linear policy for realizing end-foot trajectories in the quadruped robot, Stoch $2$. In particular, the parameters of the end-foot…
Snake robots have the potential to maneuver through tightly packed and complex environments. One challenge in enabling them to do so is the complexity in determining how to coordinate their many degrees-of-freedom to create purposeful…
Techniques based on Reinforcement Learning (RL) are increasingly being used to design control policies for robotic systems. RL fundamentally relies on state-based reward functions to encode desired behavior of the robot and bad reward…
Hybrid locomotion of wheeled-legged robots has recently attracted increasing attention due to their advantages of combining the agility of legged locomotion and the efficiency of wheeled motion. But along with expanded performance, the…
Soft microrobots based on photoresponsive materials and controlled by light fields can generate a variety of different gaits. This inherent flexibility can be exploited to maximize their locomotion performance in a given environment and…
Recent advances in deep reinforcement learning (RL) based techniques combined with training in simulation have offered a new approach to developing robust controllers for legged robots. However, the application of such approaches to real…
Automatically configuring a robotic prosthesis to fit its user's needs and physical conditions is a great technical challenge and a roadblock to the adoption of the technology. Previously, we have successfully developed reinforcement…
Object manipulation has been extensively studied in the context of fixed base and mobile manipulators. However, the overactuated locomotion modality employed by snake robots allows for a unique blend of object manipulation through…
Building capable household and industrial robots requires mastering the control of versatile, high-degree-of-freedom (DoF) systems such as mobile manipulators. While reinforcement learning (RL) holds promise for autonomously acquiring robot…
Contact-rich problems, such as snake robot locomotion, offer unexplored yet rich opportunities for optimization-based trajectory and acyclic contact planning. So far, a substantial body of control research has focused on emulating snake…
Training reinforcement learning (RL) policies for legged locomotion often requires extensive environment interactions, which are costly and time-consuming. We propose Symmetry-Guided Memory Augmentation (SGMA), a framework that improves…
Reliable and stable locomotion has been one of the most fundamental challenges for legged robots. Deep reinforcement learning (deep RL) has emerged as a promising method for developing such control policies autonomously. In this paper, we…
This paper studies the design, control, and learning of a novel robotic limb that produces overconstrained locomotion by employing the Bennett linkage for motion generation, capable of parametric reconfiguration between a reptile- and…
Optimizing accelerator control is a critical challenge in experimental particle physics, requiring significant manual effort and resource expenditure. Traditional tuning methods are often time-consuming and reliant on expert input,…
Snake robots are inspired by the ability of biological snakes to move over rock, grass, leaves, soil, up trees, along pavement and more. Their ability to move in multiple distinct environments is due to their legless locomotion strategy,…
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,…
This paper focuses on the scalable robot learning for manipulation in the dexterous robot arm-hand systems, where the remote human-robot interactions via augmented reality (AR) are established to collect the expert demonstration data for…
We propose MIMOC: Motion Imitation from Model-Based Optimal Control. MIMOC is a Reinforcement Learning (RL) controller that learns agile locomotion by imitating reference trajectories from model-based optimal control. MIMOC mitigates…
This paper is dedicated to the development of a novel adaptive torsion spring mechanism for optimizing energy consumption in legged robots. By adjusting the equilibrium position and stiffness of the spring, the system improves energy…