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Planning motions to grasp an object in cluttered and uncertain environments is a challenging task, particularly when a collision-free trajectory does not exist and objects obstructing the way are required to be carefully grasped and moved…
Geometric mechanics provides valuable insights into how biological and robotic systems use changes in shape to move by mechanically interacting with their environment. In high-friction environments it provides that the entire interaction is…
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…
Reconstructing the 3D geometry, pose, and motion of animals is a long-standing problem, which has a wide range of applications, from biology, livestock management, and animal conservation and welfare to content creation in digital…
Wheeled robots have recently demonstrated superior mechanical capability to traverse vertically challenging terrain (e.g., extremely rugged boulders comparable in size to the vehicles themselves). Negotiating such terrain introduces…
Enabling robots to walk and run on yielding terrain is increasingly vital to endeavors ranging from disaster response to extraterrestrial exploration. While dynamic legged locomotion on rigid ground is challenging enough, yielding terrain…
High-speed legged navigation in discrete and geometrically complex environments is a challenging task because of the high-degree-of-freedom dynamics and long-horizon, nonconvex nature of the optimization problem. In this work, we propose a…
Legged robots have demonstrated high efficiency and effectiveness in unstructured and dynamic environments. However, it is still challenging for legged robots to achieve rapid and efficient locomotion on deformable, yielding substrates,…
In this paper, we present a general learning framework for controlling a quadruped robot that can mimic the behavior of real animals and traverse challenging terrains. Our method consists of two steps: an imitation learning step to learn…
Muddy terrains present significant challenges for terrestrial robots, as subtle changes in composition and water content can lead to large variations in substrate strength and force responses, causing the robot to slip or get stuck. This…
The development of mobile robot platforms for inspection has gained traction in recent years with the rapid advancement in hardware and software. However, conventional mobile robots are unable to address the challenge of operating in…
Inspired by human behavior when traveling over unknown terrain, this study proposes the use of probing strategies and integrates them into a traversability analysis framework to address safe navigation on unknown rough terrain. Our…
Legged robots can traverse challenging terrain, use perception to plan their safe foothold positions, and navigate the environment. Such unique mobility capabilities make these platforms a perfect candidate for scenarios such as search and…
Thanks to the rapid evolvement of robotic technologies, robot mowing is emerging to liberate humans from the tedious and time-consuming landscape work. Traditionally, robot mowing is perceived as a "Coverage Path Planning" problem, with a…
Achieving effective locomotion on diverse terrestrial substrates can require subtle changes of limb kinematics. Biologically inspired legged robots (physical models of organisms) have shown impressive mobility on hard ground but suffer…
Legged locomotion is commonly studied and expressed as a discrete set of gait patterns, like walk, trot, gallop, which are usually treated as given and pre-programmed in legged robots for efficient locomotion at different speeds. However,…
Navigation and motion control of a robot to a destination are tasks that have historically been performed with the assumption that contact with the environment is harmful. This makes sense for rigid-bodied robots where obstacle collisions…
Locomotion by shape changes (spermatozoon swimming, snake slithering, bird flapping) or gas expulsion (rocket firing) is assumed to require environmental interaction, due to conservation of momentum. As first noted in (Wisdom, 2003) and…
Construction throughout history typically assumes that its blueprints and building blocks are pre-determined. However, recent work suggests that alternative approaches can enable new paradigms for structure formation. Aleatory…
Uncertainty-aware robot motion prediction is crucial for downstream traversability estimation and safe autonomous navigation in unstructured, off-road environments, where terrain is heterogeneous and perceptual uncertainty is high. Most…