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Related papers: STANCE: Locomotion Adaptation over Soft Terrain

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Model predictive control (MPC) has demonstrated effectiveness for humanoid bipedal locomotion; however, its applicability in challenging environments, such as rough and slippery terrain, is limited by the difficulty of modeling terrain…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-09-24 Junnosuke Kamohara , Feiyang Wu , Chinmayee Wamorkar , Seth Hutchinson , Ye Zhao

Locomotion robots with active or passive compliance can show robustness to uncertain scenarios, which can be promising for agricultural, research and environmental industries. However, state estimation for these robots is challenging due to…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-10-02 Valentin Yuryev , Max Polzin , Josie Hughes

Recent advances in quadrupedal locomotion have focused on improving stability and performance across diverse environments. However, existing methods often lack adequate safety analysis and struggle to adapt to varying payloads and complex…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-11-07 Ananya Trivedi , Sarvesh Prajapati , Mark Zolotas , Michael Everett , Taskin Padir

Legged robots leverage ground contacts and the reaction forces they provide to achieve agile locomotion. However, uncertainty coupled with contact discontinuities can lead to failure, especially in real-world environments with unexpected…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-09-11 Yanhao Yang , Joseph Norby , Justin K. Yim , Aaron M. Johnson

This letter presents a control framework for legged robots that enables self-perception and resistance to external disturbances and model uncertainties. First, a novel disturbance estimator is proposed, integrating adaptive control and…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-08-28 Bolin Li , Wentao Zhang , Xuecong Huang , Lijun Zhu , Han Ding

Soft pneumatic legged robots show promise in their ability to traverse a range of different types of terrain, including natural unstructured terrain met in applications like precision agriculture. They can adapt their body morphology to the…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-08-04 Zhichao Liu , Konstantinos Karydis

To traverse complex three-dimensional terrainwith large obstacles, animals and robots must transition across different modes. However, the most mechanistic understanding of terrestrial locomotion concerns how to generate and stabilize…

Biological Physics · Physics 2025-09-23 Ratan Othayoth , Qihan Xuan , Yaqing Wang , Chen Li

Developing natural and diverse locomotion controllers for quadruped robots that can adapt to complex terrains while preserving motion style remains a significant challenge. Existing imitation-based methods face a fundamental optimization…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-04-21 Zhiquan Wang , Yunyu Liu , Dipam Patel , Ayush Kumar , Aniket Bera , Bedrich Benes

This extended abstract provides a short introduction on our recently developed perception-based controller for quadrupedal locomotion. Compared to our previous approach based on Visual Foothold Adaptation (VFA) and Model Predictive Control…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-07-28 Shafeef Omar , Lorenzo Amatucci , Giulio Turrisi , Victor Barasuol , Claudio Semini

Multi-legged elongate robots hold promise for maneuvering through complex environments. Prior work has demonstrated that reliable locomotion can be achieved using open-loop body undulation and foot placement on rugose terrain. However,…

This study proposes a step adaptation framework for running through spring-mass trajectories and deadbeat control gain libraries. It includes four main parts: (1) Automatic spring-mass trajectory library generation; (2) Deadbeat control…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-12-16 Sait Sovukluk , Johannes Englsberger , Christian Ott

When robots operate in real-world off-road environments with unstructured terrains, the ability to adapt their navigational policy is critical for effective and safe navigation. However, off-road terrains introduce several challenges to…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-07-29 Sriram Siva , Maggie Wigness , John G. Rogers , Long Quang , Hao Zhang

Legged robots need to be capable of walking on diverse terrain conditions. In this paper, we present a novel reinforcement learning framework for learning locomotion on non-rigid dynamic terrains. Specifically, our framework can generate…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-07-08 Taehei Kim , Sung-Hee Lee

Ground robots require the crucial capability of traversing unstructured and unprepared terrains and avoiding obstacles to complete tasks in real-world robotics applications such as disaster response. When a robot operates in off-road field…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-11-15 Sriram Siva , Maggie Wigness , John G. Rogers , Long Quang , Hao Zhang

Accurate ground reaction force (GRF) estimation can significantly improve the adaptability of legged robots in various real-world applications. For instance, with estimated GRF and contact kinematics, the locomotion control and planning…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-03-18 Jiarong Kang , Xiaobin Xiong

To traverse complex scenarios reliably a legged robot needs to move its base aided by the ground reaction forces, which can only be generated by the legs that are momentarily in contact with the ground. A proper selection of footholds is…

Learning a general whole-body controller for humanoid robots remains challenging due to the diversity of motion distributions, the difficulty of fast adaptation, and the need for robust balance in high-dynamic scenarios. Existing approaches…

Dynamic balancing under uncertain disturbances is important for a humanoid robot, which requires a good capability of coordinating the entire body redundancy to execute multi tasks. Whole-body control (WBC) based on hierarchical…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-08-10 Yan Xie , Jiajun Wang , Hao Dong , Xiaoyu Ren , Liqun Huang , Mingguo Zhao

Snakes can move through almost any terrain. Although their locomotion on flat surfaces using planar gaits is inherently stable, when snakes deform their body out of plane to traverse complex terrain, maintaining stability becomes a…

Biological Physics · Physics 2025-09-18 Qiyuan Fu , Chen Li

Autonomous mobile robots operating in remote, unstructured environments must adapt to new, unpredictable terrains that can change rapidly during operation. In such scenarios, a critical challenge becomes estimating the robot's dynamics on…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-07-18 William Ward , Sarah Etter , Tyler Ingebrand , Christian Ellis , Adam J. Thorpe , Ufuk Topcu