Related papers: Learning Active Spine Behaviors for Dynamic and Ef…

The spine plays a crucial role in the dynamic locomotion of quadrupedal animals, improving the stability, speed, and efficiency of their gait, especially for fast-paced and highly agile movements. Therefore, the spine is also a promising…

The biological spine of quadrupeds enables sagittal flexion/extension, lateral bending, and axial rotation, playing a crucial role in highly agile and dexterous locomotion. While numerous studies have integrated active spinal joints into…

Quadruped robots have shown remarkable mobility on various terrains through reinforcement learning. Yet, in the presence of sparse footholds and risky terrains such as stepping stones and balance beams, which require precise foot placement…

Deep reinforcement learning has emerged as a popular and powerful way to develop locomotion controllers for quadruped robots. Common approaches have largely focused on learning actions directly in joint space, or learning to modify and…

Quadruped robots are designed to achieve agile and robust locomotion by drawing inspiration from legged animals. However, most existing control methods for quadruped robots lack a key capacity observed in animals: the ability to exhibit…

Quadruped mammals coordinate spinal bending and axial compression to enhance locomotion agility and efficiency. However, existing robotic spines typically lack the active compliance required to support such dynamic behaviours. We present…

Controlled execution of dynamic motions in quadrupedal robots, especially those with articulated soft bodies, presents a unique set of challenges that traditional methods struggle to address efficiently. In this study, we tackle these…

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…

In this paper, we consider a general task of jumping varying distances and heights for a quadrupedal robot in noisy environments, such as off of uneven terrain and with variable robot dynamics parameters. To accurately jump in such…

Recent advancements in legged locomotion research have made legged robots a preferred choice for navigating challenging terrains when compared to their wheeled counterparts. This paper presents a novel locomotion policy, trained using Deep…

Dynamic quadrupedal locomotion over rough terrains reveals remarkable progress over the last few decades. Small-scale quadruped robots are adequately flexible and adaptable to traverse uneven terrains along sagittal direction, such as…

Designing agile locomotion for quadruped robots often requires extensive expertise and tedious manual tuning. In this paper, we present a system to automate this process by leveraging deep reinforcement learning techniques. Our system can…

Quadruped robots are often designed with rigid feet to simplify control and maintain stable contact during locomotion. While this approach is straightforward, it limits the ability of the legs to absorb impact forces and reuse stored…

This study explores the dynamics of asymmetrical bounding gaits in quadrupedal robots, focusing on the integration of torso pitching and hip motion to enhance speed and stability. Traditional control strategies often enforce a fixed…

With the research into development of quadruped robots picking up pace, learning based techniques are being explored for developing locomotion controllers for such robots. A key problem is to generate leg trajectories for continuously…

Despite recent remarkable achievements in quadruped control, it remains challenging to ensure robust and compliant locomotion in the presence of unforeseen external disturbances. Existing methods prioritize locomotion robustness over…

Designing control policies for legged locomotion is complex due to the under-actuated and non-continuous robot dynamics. Model-free reinforcement learning provides promising tools to tackle this challenge. However, a major bottleneck of…

This paper proposes a modular framework to generate robust biped locomotion using a tight coupling between an analytical walking approach and deep reinforcement learning. This framework is composed of six main modules which are…

Learning various motor skills for quadrupedal robots is a challenging problem that requires careful design of task-specific mathematical models or reward descriptions. In this work, we propose to learn a single capable policy using deep…

This paper introduces a way to systematically investigate the effect of compliant prismatic spines in quadrupedal robot locomotion. We develop a novel spring-loaded lockable spine module, together with a new Spinal Compliance-Integrated…