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Legged robot research is presently focused on bipedal or quadrupedal robots, despite capabilities to build robots with many more legs to potentially improve locomotion performance. This imbalance is not necessarily due to hardware…
A multi-joint enabled robot requires extensive mathematical calculations to determine the end effector's position with respect to the other connective joints involved and their corresponding frames in a specific coordinate system. If a…
We present a model predictive controller (MPC) that automatically discovers collision-free locomotion while simultaneously taking into account the system dynamics, friction constraints, and kinematic limitations. A relaxed barrier function…
Motion control is essential for all autonomous mobile robots, and even more so for spherical robots. Due to the uniqueness of the spherical robot, its motion control must not only ensure accurate tracking of the target commands, but also…
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…
Agile-legged robots have proven to be highly effective in navigating and performing tasks in complex and challenging environments, including disaster zones and industrial settings. However, these applications normally require the capability…
Dynamic jumping with legged robots poses a challenging problem in planning and control. Formulating the jump optimization to allow fast online execution is difficult; efficiently using this capability to generate long-horizon motion plans…
Task space trajectory tracking for quadruped robots plays a crucial role on achieving dexterous maneuvers in unstructured environments. To fulfill the control objective, the robot should apply forces through the contact of the legs with the…
Step adjustment can improve the gait robustness of biped robots, however the adaptation of step timing is often neglected as it gives rise to non-convex problems when optimized over several footsteps. In this paper, we argue that it is not…
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…
In this paper, we present an efficient Dynamic Programing framework for optimal planning and control of legged robots. First we formulate this problem as an optimal control problem for switched systems. Then we propose a multi--level…
State-of-the-art approaches to footstep planning assume reduced-order dynamics when solving the combinatorial problem of selecting contact surfaces in real time. However, in exchange for computational efficiency, these approaches ignore…
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 the context of legged robots, adaptive behavior involves adaptive balancing and adaptive swing foot reflection. While adaptive balancing counteracts perturbations to the robot, adaptive swing foot reflection helps the robot to navigate…
Modern robotic systems are endowed with superior mobility and mechanical skills that make them suited to be employed in real-world scenarios, where interactions with heavy objects and precise manipulation capabilities are required. For…
Legged robots are typically in rigid contact with the environment at multiple locations, which add a degree of complexity to their control. We present a method to control the motion and a subset of the contact forces of a floating-base…
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…
Highly dynamic tasks that require large accelerations and precise tracking usually rely on accurate models and/or high gain feedback. While kinematic optimization allows for efficient representation and online generation of hitting…
Many methods exist for a bipedal robot to keep its balance while walking. In addition to step size and timing, other strategies are possible that influence the stability of the robot without interfering with the target direction and speed…
This paper presents a novel controller for the bipedal robot Bolt. Our approach leverages a whole-body model predictive controller in conjunction with a footstep sequencer to achieve robust locomotion. Simulation results demonstrate…