Related papers: Deploying COTS Legged Robot Platforms into a Heter…
Legged robots promise higher versatility and the ability to traverse much more difficult terrains than their wheeled counterparts. Even though the use of legged robots have increased drastically in the last few years, they are still not…
Environments with large terrain height variations present great challenges for legged robot locomotion. Drawing inspiration from fire ants' collective assembly behavior, we study strategies that can enable two ``connectable'' robots to…
Legged robotic systems can play an important role in real-world applications due to their superior load-bearing capabilities, enhanced autonomy, and effective navigation on uneven terrain. They offer an optimal trade-off between mobility…
This paper presents a novel strategy for autonomous teamed exploration of subterranean environments using legged and aerial robots. Tailored to the fact that subterranean settings, such as cave networks and underground mines, often involve…
Taking inspiration from the natural gait transition mechanism of quadrupeds, devising a good gait transition strategy is important for quadruped robots to achieve energy-efficient locomotion on various terrains and velocities. While…
Animals, such as birds, widely use multi-modal locomotion by combining legged and aerial mobility with dominant inertial effects. The robotic biomimicry of this multi-modal locomotion feat can yield ultra-flexible systems in terms of their…
Animals locomote robustly and agile, albeit significant sensorimotor delays of their nervous system. The sensorimotor control of legged robots is implemented with much higher frequencies-often in the kilohertz range-and sensor and actuator…
Quadruped robots are proliferating in industrial environments where they carry sensor payloads and serve as autonomous inspection platforms. Despite the advantages of legged robots over their wheeled counterparts on rough and uneven…
Legged locomotion benefits from embodied sensing, where perception emerges from the physical interaction between body and environment. We present a soft-surfaced, vision-based tactile foot sensor that endows a bipedal robot with a skin-like…
The ability to perform locomotion in various terrains is critical for legged robots. However, the robot has to have a better understanding of the surface it is walking on to perform robust locomotion on different terrains. Animals and…
Most legged robots are built with leg structures from serially mounted links and actuators and are controlled through complex controllers and sensor feedback. In comparison, animals developed multi-segment legs, mechanical coupling between…
Wheeled-legged robots have the potential for highly agile and versatile locomotion. The combination of legs and wheels might be a solution for any real-world application requiring rapid, and long-distance mobility skills on challenging…
Multi-robot systems are increasingly deployed in high-risk missions such as reconnaissance, disaster response, and subterranean operations. Protecting a human operator while navigating unknown and adversarial environments remains a critical…
The use of a team of humanoid robots to collaborate in completing a task is an increasingly important field of research. One of the challenges in achieving collaboration, is mutual identification and tracking of the robots. This work…
Heterogeneous multi-robot systems are advantageous for operations in unknown environments because functionally specialised robots can gather environmental information, while others perform tasks. We define this decomposition as the…
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…
Heterogeneous Robot Teams can provide a wide range of capabilities and therefore significant benefits when handling a mission. However, they also require new approaches to capability and mission definition that are not only suitable to…
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…
Recent work has shown results on learning navigation policies for idealized cylinder agents in simulation and transferring them to real wheeled robots. Deploying such navigation policies on legged robots can be challenging due to their…
Heterogeneous multi-robot systems feature significant adaptability for complex environments. However, effective collaboration that fully exploits the robots' potential remains a core challenge. This paper proposes a decentralized…