Related papers: Enhancing the Vertical Mobility of a Robot Hexapod…
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…
Mountain slopes are perfect examples of harsh environments in which humans are required to perform difficult and dangerous operations such as removing unstable boulders, dangerous vegetation or deploying safety nets. A good replacement for…
Climbing Robots are being developed for applications ranging from cleaning to the inspection of difficult to reach constructions. Climbing robots should be capable of carrying a light payload and climbing on vertical surfaces with ability…
We present the design of a new robotic human augmentation system that will assist the operator in carrying a heavy payload, reaching and maintaining difficult postures, and ultimately better performing their job. The Extra Robotic Legs…
Mobility on asteroids by multi-limbed climbing robots is expected to achieve our exploration goals in such challenging environments. We propose a mobility strategy to improve the locomotion safety of climbing robots in such harsh…
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…
Climbing robots hold significant promise for applications such as industrial inspection and maintenance, particularly in hazardous or hard-to-reach environments. This paper describes the quadrupedal climbing robot Magnecko, developed with…
Motion planning for a multi-limbed climbing robot must consider the robot's posture, joint torques, and how it uses contact forces to interact with its environment. This paper focuses on motion planning for a robot that uses nontraditional…
Quadruped robots are proliferating in industrial environments where they carry sensor payloads and serve as autonomous inspection platforms. Despite the advantages of legged robots over their wheeled counterparts on rough and uneven…
Biped robots usually adopt feet with a rigid structure that simplifies walking on flat grounds and yet hinders ground adaptation in unstructured environments, thus jeopardizing stability. We recently explored in the SoftFoot the idea of…
While most insect-inspired robots come with a simple tarsus such as a hemispherical foot tip, insect legs have complex tarsal structures and claws, which enable them to walk on complex terrain. Their sharp claws can smoothly attach and…
In this paper, we propose a novel approach on controlling wheel-legged quadrupedal robots using pose optimization and force control via quadratic programming (QP). Our method allows the robot to leverage the whole-body motion and the wheel…
Snakes and their bio-inspired robot counterparts have demonstrated locomotion on a wide range of terrains. However, dynamic vertical climbing is one locomotion strategy that has received little attention in the existing snake robotics…
This paper presents a hierarchical control framework that enables robust quadrupedal locomotion on a dynamic rigid surface (DRS) with general and unknown vertical motions. The key novelty of the framework lies in its higher layer, which is…
Much current study of legged locomotion has rightly focused on foot traction forces, including on granular media. Future legged millirobots will need to go through terrain, such as brush or other vegetation, where the body contact forces…
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…
Although wheeled robots have been predominant for planetary exploration, their geometry limits their capabilities when traveling over steep slopes, through rocky terrains, and in microgravity. Legged robots equipped with grippers are a…
Traversing risky terrains with sparse footholds presents significant challenges for legged robots, requiring precise foot placement in safe areas. To acquire comprehensive exteroceptive information, prior studies have employed motion…
We present an open-source untethered quadrupedal soft robot platform for dynamic locomotion (e.g., high-speed running and backflipping). The robot is mostly soft (80 vol.%) while driven by four geared servo motors. The robot's soft body and…
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…