Related papers: First Steps Towards Full Model Based Motion Planni…
Safe path and gait planning are essential for bipedal robots to navigate complex real-world environments. The prevailing approaches often plan the path and gait separately in a hierarchical fashion, potentially resulting in unsafe movements…
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…
Safety guarantees are valuable in the control of walking robots, as falling can be both dangerous and costly. Unfortunately, set-based tools for generating safety guarantees (such as sums-of-squares optimization) are typically restricted to…
We present an integrated approach to locomotion and balancing of humanoid robots based on direct centroidal control. Our method uses a five-mass description of a humanoid. It generates whole-body motions from desired foot trajectories and…
We establish stability results for PD tracking control laws in bipedal walking robots. Stability of PD control laws for continuous robotic systems is an established result, and we extend this for hybrid robotic systems, an alternating…
Humanoid robots maintain balance and navigate by controlling the contact wrenches applied to the environment. While it is possible to plan dynamically-feasible motion that applies appropriate wrenches using existing methods, a humanoid may…
This paper presents a generalized flexible Hybrid Cable-Driven Robot (HCDR). For the proposed HCDR, the derivation of the equations of motion and proof provide a very effective way to find items for generalized system modeling. The proposed…
This paper presents a distributed inverse dynamics controller (DIDC) for quadruped robots that addresses the limitations of existing reactive controllers: simplified dynamical models, the inability to handle exact friction cone constraints,…
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…
Traditional motion planning approaches for multi-legged locomotion divide the problem into several stages, such as contact search and trajectory generation. However, reasoning about contacts and motions simultaneously is crucial for the…
Legged robot locomotion requires the planning of stable reference trajectories, especially while traversing uneven terrain. The proposed trajectory optimization framework is capable of generating dynamically stable base and footstep…
In this work we present a whole-body Nonlinear Model Predictive Control approach for Rigid Body Systems subject to contacts. We use a full dynamic system model which also includes explicit contact dynamics. Therefore, contact locations,…
A motion-based control interface promises flexible robot operations in dangerous environments by combining user intuitions with the robot's motor capabilities. However, designing a motion interface for non-humanoid robots, such as…
We present Triple Zero Path Planning (TZPP), a collaborative framework for heterogeneous multi-robot systems that requires zero training, zero prior knowledge, and zero simulation. TZPP employs a coordinator--explorer architecture: a…
In this paper, we present a hardware-control co-design approach that enables efficient and versatile roller skating on quadrupedal robots equipped with passive wheels. Passive-wheel skating reduces leg inertia and improves energy…
Dynamic legged locomotion is a challenging topic because of the lack of established control schemes which can handle aerial phases, short stance times, and high-speed leg swings. In this paper, we propose a controller combining whole-body…
The integration of Supernumerary Limbs (SLs) on humanoid robots poses a significant stability challenge due to the dynamic perturbations they introduce. This thesis addresses this issue by designing a novel hierarchical control architecture…
A vast number of applications for legged robots entail tasks in complex, dynamic environments. But these environments put legged robots at high risk for limb damage. This paper presents an empirical study of fault tolerant dynamic gaits…
As legged robots take on roles in industrial and autonomous construction, collaborative loco-manipulation is crucial for handling large and heavy objects that exceed the capabilities of a single robot. However, ensuring the safety of these…
Fully leveraging the loco-manipulation capabilities of a quadruped robot equipped with a robotic arm is non-trivial, as it requires controlling all degrees of freedom (DoFs) of the quadruped robot to achieve effective whole-body…