Related papers: Learning Stabilizing Control Policies for a Tenseg…
Animals can finely modulate their leg stiffness to interact with complex terrains and absorb sudden shocks. In feats like leaping and sprinting, animals demonstrate a sophisticated interplay of opposing muscle pairs that actively modulate…
Robots built from cable-driven tensegrity (`tension-integrity') structures have many of the advantages of soft robots, such as flexibility and robustness, while still obeying simple statics and dynamics models. However, existing tensegrity…
There is a surge of research interest in the field of tensegrity robotics. Robots developed under this paradigm provide many advantages and have distinguishing features in terms of structural compliance, dexterity, safety, and weight…
Conventional mobile tensegrity robots constructed with straight links offer mobility at the cost of locomotion speed. While spherical robots provide highly effective rolling behavior, they often lack the stability required for navigating…
In this paper, we consider a general task of jumping varying distances and heights for a quadrupedal robot in noisy environments, such as off of uneven terrain and with variable robot dynamics parameters. To accurately jump in such…
We study the problem of devising a closed-loop strategy to control the position of a robot that is tracking a possibly moving target. The robot is capable of obtaining noisy measurements of the target's position. The key idea in active…
Recent work has shown that decentralized algorithms can deliver superior performance over centralized ones in the context of machine learning. The two approaches, with the main difference residing in their distinct communication patterns,…
We propose a hybrid control algorithm that guarantees fast convergence and uniform global asymptotic stability of the unique minimizer of a continuously differentiable, convex objective function. The algorithm, developed using hybrid system…
In both industrial and service domains, a central benefit of the use of robots is their ability to quickly and reliably execute repetitive tasks. However, even relatively simple peg-in-hole tasks are typically subject to stochastic…
This paper presents a control methodology for achieving orbital stabilization with simultaneous time synchronization of periodic trajectories in underactuated robotic systems. The proposed approach extends the classical transverse…
The single wheel, gyroscopically stabilized robot - Gyrover, is a dynamically stable but statically unstable, underactuated system. In this paper, based on the dynamic model of the robot, we investigate two classes of nonholonomic…
This paper presents the concept of a tethered variable inertial attitude control mechanism for a modular jumping-limbed robot designed for planetary exploration in low-gravity environments. The system, named SPLITTER, comprises two sub-10…
Quadruped robots are machines intended for challenging and harsh environments. Despite the progress in locomotion strategy, safely recovering from unexpected falls or planned drops is still an open problem. It is further made more difficult…
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…
Reinforcement learning (RL) policies are prone to high-frequency oscillations, especially undesirable when deploying to hardware in the real-world. In this paper, we identify, categorize, and compare methods from the literature that aim to…
Achieving both target accuracy and robustness in dynamic maneuvers with long flight phases, such as high or long jumps, has been a significant challenge for legged robots. To address this challenge, we propose a novel learning-based control…
While humans are highly capable of recovering from external disturbances and uncertainties that result in large tracking errors, humanoid robots have yet to reliably mimic this level of robustness. Essential to this is the ability to…
A great advantage of legged robots is their ability to operate on particularly difficult and obstructed terrain, which demands dynamic, robust, and precise movements. The study of obstacle courses provides invaluable insights into the…
Tensegrity structures are lightweight, can undergo large deformations, and have outstanding robustness capabilities. These unique properties inspired roboticists to investigate their use. However, the morphological design, control,…
Future robots will navigate perilous, remote environments with resilience and autonomy. Researchers have proposed building robots with compliant bodies to enhance robustness, but this approach often sacrifices the autonomous capabilities…