Related papers: A Legged Soft Robot Platform for Dynamic Locomotio…
Torque and continuous rotation are fundamental methods of actuation and manipulation in rigid robots. Soft robot arms use soft materials and structures to mimic the passive compliance of biological arms that bend and extend. This use of…
Snapping instabilities in soft structures offer a powerful pathway to achieve rapid and energy-efficient actuation. In this study, an eccentric dome-shaped snapping actuator is developed to generate controllable asymmetric motion through…
This research focuses on developing reinforcement learning approaches for the locomotion generation of small-size quadruped robots. The rat robot NeRmo is employed as the experimental platform. Due to the constrained volume, small-size…
Unknown dynamic load carrying is one important practical application for quadruped robots. Such a problem is non-trivial, posing three major challenges in quadruped locomotion control. First, how to model or represent the dynamics of the…
This paper presents a hierarchical control framework that enables robust quadrupedal locomotion on a dynamic rigid surface (DRS) with general and unknown vertical motions. The key novelty of the framework lies in its higher layer, which is…
Soft robots are distinguished by their flexibility and adaptability, allowing them to perform nearly impossible tasks for rigid robots. However, controlling their behavior is challenging due to their nonlinear material response and infinite…
We propose a learning-based system for enabling quadrupedal robots to manipulate large, heavy objects using their whole body. Our system is based on a hierarchical control strategy that uses the deep latent variable embedding which captures…
Compared to conventional wheeled transportation systems designed for flat surfaces, soft robots exhibit exceptional adaptability to various terrains, enabling stable movement in complex environments. However, due to the risk of collision…
Quadrupedal robots resemble the physical ability of legged animals to walk through unstructured terrains. However, designing a controller for quadrupedal robots poses a significant challenge due to their functional complexity and requires…
Locomotion on granular slopes such as sand dunes remains a fundamental challenge for legged robots due to reduced shear strength and gravity-induced anisotropic yielding of granular media. Using a hexapedal robot on a tiltable granular bed,…
Hybrid track/wheel-legged robots combine the advantages of wheel-based and leg-based locomotion, granting adaptability across varied terrains through efficient transitions between rolling and walking modes. However, automating these…
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…
This work represents an initial benchmark of a large-scale soft robot performing physical, collaborative manipulation of a long, extended object with a human partner. The robot consists of a pneumatically-actuated, three-link continuum soft…
Legged robots are well-suited for broad exploration tasks in complex environments with yielding terrain. Understanding robotic foot-terrain interactions is critical for safe locomotion and walking efficiency for legged robots. This paper…
Soft robots have drawn significant attention recently for their ability to achieve rich shapes when interacting with complex environments. However, their elasticity and flexibility compared to rigid robots also pose significant challenges…
Soft robotic systems have gained widespread attention due to their inherent flexibility, adaptability, and safety, making them well-suited for varied applications. Among bioinspired designs, earthworm locomotion has been extensively studied…
Recent advancements in legged locomotion research have made legged robots a preferred choice for navigating challenging terrains when compared to their wheeled counterparts. This paper presents a novel locomotion policy, trained using Deep…
This study presents an innovative approach to optimal gait control for a soft quadruped robot enabled by four Compressible Tendon-driven Soft Actuators (CTSAs). Improving our previous studies of using model-free reinforcement learning for…
Soft robots are known for their ability to perform tasks with great adaptability, enabled by their distributed, non-uniform stiffness and actuation. Bending is the most fundamental motion for soft robot design, but creating robust, and…
Learning controllers that reproduce legged locomotion in nature has been a long-time goal in robotics and computer graphics. While yielding promising results, recent approaches are not yet flexible enough to be applicable to legged systems…