Related papers: Learning to Locomote with Deep Neural-Network and …
All vertebrates are capable of performing various types of physical activity. Locomotor patterns are created by the cyclical coordinated work of the skeletal muscles. The organization of such a system in living organisms is responsible for…
Locomotion is a crucial challenge for legged robots that is addressed "effortlessly" by biological networks abundant in nature, named central pattern generators (CPG). The multitude of CPG network models that have so far become biomimetic…
In recent years, locomotion mechanisms exhibited by vertebrate animals have been the inspiration for the improvement in the performance of robotic systems. These mechanisms include the adaptability of their locomotion to any change…
Snake robots offer exceptional mobility across extreme terrain inaccessible to conventional rovers, yet their highly articulated bodies present fundamental challenges for autonomous navigation in environments lacking external tracking…
An originally chaotic system can be controlled into various periodic dynamics. When it is implemented into a legged robot's locomotion control as a central pattern generator (CPG), sophisticated gait patterns arise so that the robot can…
Entrainment of movement to a periodic stimulus is a characteristic intelligent behaviour in humans and an important goal for adaptive robotics. We demonstrate a quadruped central pattern generator (CPG), consisting of modified Matsuoka…
Central Pattern Generators (CPGs) models have been long used to investigate both the neural mechanisms that underlie animal locomotion as well as a tool for robotic research. In this work we propose a spiking CPG neural network and its…
This paper introduces a new wheel-legged robot and develops motion controllers based on central pattern generators (CPGs) for the robot to navigate over a range of terrains. A transformable leg-wheel design is considered and characterized…
Locomotion is a prime example for adaptive behavior in animals and biological control principles have inspired control architectures for legged robots. While machine learning has been successfully applied to many tasks in recent years, Deep…
Modular robotics enables the development of versatile and adaptive robotic systems with autonomous reconfiguration. This paper presents a modular robotic system in which each module has independent actuation, battery power, and control,…
This paper addresses the challenge of terrain-adaptive dynamic locomotion in humanoid robots, a problem traditionally tackled by optimization-based methods or reinforcement learning (RL). Optimization-based methods, such as model-predictive…
Central Pattern Generators (CPGs) have several properties desirable for locomotion: they generate smooth trajectories, are robust to perturbations and are simple to implement. Although conceptually promising, we argue that the full…
Snakes are a remarkable evolutionary success story. Many snake-inspired robots have been proposed over the years. Soft robotic snakes (SRS) with their continuous and smooth bending capability better mimic their biological counterparts'…
Robust closed-loop locomotion remains challenging for soft quadruped robots due to high-dimensional dynamics, actuator hysteresis, and difficult-to-model contact interactions, while conventional proprioception provides limited information…
Snake robots have the potential to maneuver through tightly packed and complex environments. One challenge in enabling them to do so is the complexity in determining how to coordinate their many degrees-of-freedom to create purposeful…
We propose a robust dynamic walking controller consisting of a dynamic locomotion planner, a reinforcement learning process for robustness, and a novel whole-body locomotion controller (WBLC). Previous approaches specify either the position…
Typical legged locomotion controllers are designed or trained offline. This is in contrast to many animals, which are able to locomote at birth, and rapidly improve their locomotion skills with few real-world interactions. Such motor…
Object manipulation has been extensively studied in the context of fixed base and mobile manipulators. However, the overactuated locomotion modality employed by snake robots allows for a unique blend of object manipulation through…
Legged robots have significant potential to operate in highly unstructured environments. The design of locomotion control is, however, still challenging. Currently, controllers must be either manually designed for specific robots and tasks,…
We present a model of the central pattern generator (CPG) network that can control gait transitions in hexapod robots in a simple manner based on phase reduction. The CPG network consists of six weakly coupled limit-cycle oscillators, whose…