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Radar and lidar, provided by two different range sensors, each has pros and cons of various perception tasks on mobile robots or autonomous driving. In this paper, a Monte Carlo system is used to localize the robot with a rotating radar…
Traversing risky terrains with sparse footholds presents significant challenges for legged robots, requiring precise foot placement in safe areas. To acquire comprehensive exteroceptive information, prior studies have employed motion…
Proprioceptive-only state estimation is attractive for legged robots since it is computationally cheaper and is unaffected by perceptually degraded conditions. The history of joint-level measurements contains rich information that can be…
Legged robots can sense terrain through force interactions during locomotion, offering more reliable traversability estimates than remote sensing and serving as scouts for guiding wheeled rovers in challenging environments. However, even…
Legged robots need to make contact with irregular surfaces, when operating in unstructured natural terrains. Representing and perceiving these areas to reason about potential contact between a robot and its surrounding environment, is still…
This paper introduces a novel proprioceptive state estimator for legged robots based on a learned displacement measurement from IMU data. Recent research in pedestrian tracking has shown that motion can be inferred from inertial data using…
In order to fully function in human environments, robot perception will need to account for the uncertainty caused by translucent materials. Translucency poses several open challenges in the form of transparent objects (e.g., drinking…
Attaining animal-like legged locomotion on rough outdoor terrain with sparse foothold affordances -a primary use-case for legs vs other forms of locomotion- is a largely open problem. New advancements in control and perception have enabled…
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…
To dynamically traverse challenging terrain, legged robots need to continually perceive and reason about upcoming features, adjust the locations and timings of future footfalls and leverage momentum strategically. We present a pipeline that…
Legged robots, specifically quadrupeds, are becoming increasingly attractive for industrial applications such as inspection. However, to leave the laboratory and to become useful to an end user requires reliability in harsh conditions. From…
We present AMCO, a novel navigation method for quadruped robots that adaptively combines vision-based and proprioception-based perception capabilities. Our approach uses three cost maps: general knowledge map; traversability history map;…
Indoor localization is one of the crucial enablers for deployment of service robots. Although several successful techniques for indoor localization have been proposed, the majority of them relies on maps generated from data gathered with…
Legged navigation is typically examined within open-world, off-road, and challenging environments. In these scenarios, estimating external disturbances requires a complex synthesis of multi-modal information. This underlines a major…
Self-localization is a fundamental capability that mobile robot navigation systems integrate to move from one point to another using a map. Thus, any enhancement in localization accuracy is crucial to perform delicate dexterity tasks. This…
Legged robots can pass through complex field environments by selecting gaits and discrete footholds carefully. Traditional methods plan gait and foothold separately and treat them as the single-step optimal process. However, such processing…
We present a footstep planning policy for quadrupedal locomotion that is able to directly take into consideration a-priori safety information in its decisions. At its core, a learning process analyzes terrain patches, classifying each…
Entanglements like vines and branches in natural settings or cords and pipes in human spaces prevent mobile robots from accessing many environments. Legged robots should be effective in these settings, and more so than wheeled or tracked…
State estimation for legged robots remains challenging because legged odometry generally suffers from limited observability and therefore depends critically on measurement constraints to suppress drift. When exteroceptive sensors are…
Locomotion mechanics of legged robots are suitable when pacing through difficult terrains. Recognising terrains for such robots are important to fully yoke the versatility of their movements. Consequently, robotic terrain classification…