Related papers: Versatile modular neural locomotion control with f…
Legged robots are physically capable of navigating a diverse variety of environments and overcoming a wide range of obstructions. For example, in a search and rescue mission, a legged robot could climb over debris, crawl through gaps, and…
Designing control policies for legged locomotion is complex due to the under-actuated and non-continuous robot dynamics. Model-free reinforcement learning provides promising tools to tackle this challenge. However, a major bottleneck of…
Dynamic locomotion of legged robots is a critical yet challenging topic in expanding the operational range of mobile robots. It requires precise planning when possible footholds are sparse, robustness against uncertainties and disturbances,…
The challenge of robotic reproduction -- making of new robots by recombining two existing ones -- has been recently cracked and physically evolving robot systems have come within reach. Here we address the next big hurdle: producing an…
We exploit the complementary strengths of vision and proprioception to develop a point-goal navigation system for legged robots, called VP-Nav. Legged systems are capable of traversing more complex terrain than wheeled robots, but to fully…
Robotics would gain by replicating the remarkable agility of arthropods in navigating complex environments. Here we consider the control of multi-legged systems which have 6 or more legs. Current multi-legged control strategies in robots…
Hexapod robots are potentially suitable for carrying out tasks in cluttered environments since they are stable, compact, and light weight. They also have multi-joint legs and variable height bodies that make them good candidates for tasks…
We present an imitation learning framework that extracts distinctive legged locomotion behaviors and transitions between them from unlabeled real-world motion data. By automatically discovering behavioral modes and mapping user steering…
Legged robots must exhibit robust and agile locomotion across diverse, unstructured terrains, a challenge exacerbated under blind locomotion settings where terrain information is unavailable. This work introduces a hierarchical…
The complexity of a legged robot's environment or task can inform how specialised its gait must be to ensure success. Evolving specialised robotic gaits demands many evaluations - acceptable for computer simulations, but not for physical…
When do locomotion controllers require reasoning about nonlinearities? In this work, we show that a whole-body model-predictive controller using a simple linear time-invariant approximation of the whole-body dynamics is able to execute…
Natural systems integrate the work of many sub-units (cells) toward a large-scale unified goal (morphological and behavioral), which can counteract the effects of unexpected experiences, damage, or simply changes in tasks demands. In this…
The remarkable athletic intelligence displayed by humans in complex dynamic movements such as dancing and gymnastics suggests that the balance mechanism in biological beings is decoupled from specific movement patterns. This decoupling…
Learned locomotion policies can rapidly adapt to diverse environments similar to those experienced during training but lack a mechanism for fast tuning when they fail in an out-of-distribution test environment. This necessitates a slow and…
Legged robots navigating cluttered environments must be jointly agile for efficient task execution and safe to avoid collisions with obstacles or humans. Existing studies either develop conservative controllers (< 1.0 m/s) to ensure safety,…
We present a novel approach for image-goal navigation, where an agent navigates with a goal image rather than accurate target information, which is more challenging. Our goal is to decouple the learning of navigation goal planning,…
Millirobots are a promising robotic platform for many applications due to their small size and low manufacturing costs. Legged millirobots, in particular, can provide increased mobility in complex environments and improved scaling of…
Deep reinforcement learning has seen successful implementations on humanoid robots to achieve dynamic walking. However, these implementations have been so far successful in simple environments void of obstacles. In this paper, we aim to…
Legged robots possess inherent advantages in traversing complex 3D terrains. However, previous work on low-cost quadruped robots with egocentric vision systems has been limited by a narrow front-facing view and exteroceptive noise,…
Recurrent neural network-based reinforcement learning systems are capable of complex motor control tasks such as locomotion and manipulation, however, much of their underlying mechanisms still remain difficult to interpret. Our aim is to…