Related papers: CLOVER Robot: A Minimally Actuated Jumping Robotic…
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…
Achieving controlled jumping behaviour for a quadruped robot is a challenging task, especially when introducing passive compliance in mechanical design. This study addresses this challenge via imitation-based deep reinforcement learning…
Although wheeled robots have been predominant for planetary exploration, their geometry limits their capabilities when traveling over steep slopes, through rocky terrains, and in microgravity. Legged robots equipped with grippers are a…
While single-agent legged locomotion has witnessed remarkable progress, individual robots remain fundamentally constrained by physical actuation limits. To transcend these boundaries, we introduce Co-jump, a cooperative task where two…
Enabling robots to walk and run on yielding terrain is increasingly vital to endeavors ranging from disaster response to extraterrestrial exploration. While dynamic legged locomotion on rigid ground is challenging enough, yielding terrain…
There is invariably a trade-off between safety and efficiency for collaborative robots (cobots) in human-robot collaborations. Robots that interact minimally with humans can work with high speed and accuracy but cannot adapt to new tasks or…
Autonomous exploration of subterranean environments constitutes a major frontier for robotic systems as underground settings present key challenges that can render robot autonomy hard to achieve. This has motivated the DARPA Subterranean…
Quadruped robots are becoming increasingly essential for various applications, including industrial inspection and catastrophe search and rescue. These scenarios require robots to possess enhanced agility and obstacle-navigation skills.…
Exploring planetary bodies with lower gravity, such as the moon and Mars, allows legged robots to utilize jumping as an efficient form of locomotion thus giving them a valuable advantage over traditional rovers for exploration. Motivated by…
Previous design methodologies for spring-driven jumping robots focused on jump height optimization for specific tasks. In doing so, numerous designs have been proposed including using nonlinear spring-linkages to increase the elastic energy…
Human-robot co-carrying tasks reveal their potential in both industrial and everyday applications by leveraging the strengths of both parties. Effective control of robots in these tasks requires managing the energy level in the closed-loop…
Rescue missions in mountain environments are hardly achievable by standard legged robots-because of the high slopes-or by flying robots-because of limited payload capacity. We present a concept for a rope-aided climbing robot which can…
Planetary exploration missions require robots capable of navigating extreme and unknown environments. While wheeled rovers have dominated past missions, their mobility is limited to traversable surfaces. Legged robots, especially…
Performing highly agile acrobatic motions with a long flight phase requires perfect timing, high accuracy, and coordination of the full-body motion. To address these challenges, we present a novel approach on timings and trajectory…
In developing mobile robots for exploration on the planetary surface, it is crucial to evaluate the robot's performance, demonstrating the harsh environment in which the robot will actually be deployed. Repeatable experiments in a…
This paper presents a first contribution to the design of a small aerial robot for inhabited microgravity environments, such as orbiting space stations. In particular, we target a fleet of robots for collaborative tasks with humans, such as…
Generating dynamic jumping motions on legged robots remains a challenging control problem as the full flight phase and large landing impact are expected. Compared to quadrupedal robots or other multi-legged robots, bipedal robots place…
Contact-based motion planning for manipulation, object exploration or balancing often requires finding sequences of fixed and sliding contacts and planning the transition from one contact in the environment to another. However, most…
In this paper, we study a wheeled robot with a prismatic extension joint. This allows the robot to build up momentum to perform jumps over obstacles and to swing up to the upright position after the loss of balance. We propose a template…
Jumping is essential for legged robots to traverse through difficult terrains. In this work, we propose a hierarchical framework that combines optimal control and reinforcement learning to learn continuous jumping motions for quadrupedal…