Related papers: Highly Dynamic Quadruped Locomotion via Whole-Body…
Model Predictive Control (MPC) is a common tool for the control of nonlinear, real-world systems, such as legged robots. However, solving MPC quickly enough to enable its use in real-time is often challenging. One common solution is given…
This study presents a whole-body model predictive control (MPC) of robotic systems with rigid contacts, under a given contact sequence using online switching time optimization (STO). We treat robot dynamics with rigid contacts as a switched…
Non-linear model predictive control (nMPC) is a powerful approach to control complex robots (such as humanoids, quadrupeds, or unmanned aerial manipulators (UAMs)) as it brings important advantages over other existing techniques. The…
Husky Carbon, a robot developed by Northeastern University, serves as a research platform to explore unification of posture manipulation and thrust vectoring. Unlike conventional quadrupeds, its joint actuators and thrusters enable enhanced…
The paper presents a method to stabilize dynamic gait for a legged robot with embodied compliance. Our approach introduces a unified description for rigid and compliant bodies to approximate their deformation and a formulation for…
In this paper, we present a novel two-level variable Horizon Model Predictive Control (VH-MPC) framework for bipedal locomotion. In this framework, the higher level computes the landing location and timing (horizon length) of the swing foot…
Wheel-legged robots with integrated manipulators hold great promise for mobile manipulation in logistics, industrial automation, and human-robot collaboration. However, unified control of such systems remains challenging due to the…
Model Predictive Control (MPC) relies heavily on the robot model for its control law. However, a gap always exists between the reduced-order control model with uncertainties and the real robot, which degrades its performance. To address…
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…
This paper presents a novel method to control humanoid robot dynamic loco-manipulation with multiple contact modes via multi-contact Model Predictive Control (MPC) framework. The proposed framework includes a multi-contact dynamics model…
Legged robots have shown remarkable advantages in navigating uneven terrain. However, realizing effective locomotion and manipulation tasks on quadruped robots is still challenging. In addition, object and terrain parameters are generally…
Despite their remarkable advancement in locomotion and manipulation, humanoid robots remain challenged by a lack of synchronized loco-manipulation control, hindering their full dynamic potential. In this work, we introduce a versatile and…
Amphibious legged robots inspired by salamanders are promising in applications in complex amphibious environments. However, despite the significant success of training controllers that achieve diverse locomotion behaviors in conventional…
This work presents the coordinated motion control and obstacle-crossing problem for the four wheel-leg independent motor-driven robotic systems via a model predictive control (MPC) approach based on an event-triggering mechanism. The…
We introduce a robust control architecture for the whole-body motion control of torque controlled robots with arms and legs. The method is based on the robust control of contact forces in order to track a planned Center of Mass trajectory.…
This paper addresses the modeling and attitude control of jumping quadrupeds in low-gravity environments. First, a convex decomposition procedure is presented to generate high-accuracy and low-cost collision geometries for quadrupeds…
Humans can balance very well during walking, even when perturbed. But it seems difficult to achieve robust walking for bipedal robots. Here we describe the simplest balance controller that leads to robust walking for a linear inverted…
Model predictive control (MPC) has shown great success for controlling complex systems such as legged robots. However, when closing the loop, the performance and feasibility of the finite horizon optimal control problem (OCP) solved at each…
We demonstrate the surprising real-world effectiveness of a very simple approach to whole-body model-predictive control (MPC) of quadruped and humanoid robots: the iterative LQR (iLQR) algorithm with MuJoCo dynamics and finite-difference…
Advancements in optimization solvers and computing power have led to growing interest in applying whole-body model predictive control (WB-MPC) to bipedal robots. However, the high degrees of freedom and inherent model complexity of bipedal…