Related papers: Data-Driven Safety Verification for Legged Robots
Learning-based methods have been successful in solving complex control tasks without significant prior knowledge about the system. However, these methods typically do not provide any safety guarantees, which prevents their use in…
Safe navigation in real-time is an essential task for humanoid robots in real-world deployment. Since humanoid robots are inherently underactuated thanks to unilateral ground contacts, a path is considered safe if it is obstacle-free and…
Collapsing terrains, often present in search and rescue missions or planetary exploration, pose significant challenges for quadruped robots. This paper introduces a robust locomotion framework for safe navigation over unstable surfaces by…
This paper presents a data-driven strategy to streamline the deployment of model-based controllers in legged robotic hardware platforms. Our approach leverages a model-free safe learning algorithm to automate the tuning of control gains,…
We present a reusable formally verified safety net that provides end-to-end safety and liveness guarantees for 2D waypoint-following of Dubins-type ground robots with tolerances and acceleration. We: i) Model a robot in differential dynamic…
Serially connected robots are promising candidates for performing tasks in confined spaces such as search-and-rescue in large-scale disasters. Such robots are typically limbless, and we hypothesize that the addition of limbs could improve…
Contact-based decision and planning methods are becoming increasingly important to endow higher levels of autonomy for legged robots. Formal synthesis methods derived from symbolic systems have great potential for reasoning about high-level…
Robots are increasingly used to carry out critical missions in extreme environments that are hazardous for humans. This requires a high degree of operational autonomy under uncertain conditions, and poses new challenges for assuring the…
Continued adoption of agricultural robots postulates the farmer's trust in the reliability, robustness and safety of the new technology. This motivates our work on safety assurance of agricultural robots, particularly their ability to…
Hybrid systems with both discrete and continuous dynamics are an important model for real-world cyber-physical systems. The key challenge is to ensure their correct functioning w.r.t. safety requirements. Promising techniques to ensure…
In this article, we propose a deep learning framework that provides a unified approach to the problem of leg contact detection in humanoid robot walking gaits. Our formulation accomplishes to accurately and robustly estimate the contact…
Legged locomotion is a complex control problem that requires both accuracy and robustness to cope with real-world challenges. Legged systems have traditionally been controlled using trajectory optimization with inverse dynamics. Such…
Safe operation of systems such as robots requires them to plan and execute trajectories subject to safety constraints. When those systems are subject to uncertainties in their dynamics, it is challenging to ensure that the constraints are…
Industrial human-robot collaborative systems must be validated thoroughly with regard to safety. The sooner potential hazards for workers can be exposed, the less costly is the implementation of necessary changes. Due to the complexity of…
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…
Ensuring human safety in collaborative robotics can compromise efficiency because traditional safety measures increase robot cycle time when human interaction is frequent. This paper proposes a safety-aware approach to mitigate efficiency…
The enhanced mobility brought by legged locomotion empowers quadrupedal robots to navigate through complex and unstructured environments. However, optimizing agile locomotion while accounting for the varying energy costs of traversing…
The deployment of autonomous systems that operate in unstructured environments necessitates algorithms to verify their safety. This can be challenging due to, e.g., black-box components in the control software, or undermodelled dynamics…
Operations in hazardous environments put humans, animals, and machines at high risk for physically damaging consequences. In contrast to humans and animals, quadruped robots cannot naturally identify and adjust their locomotion to a…
Legged robots have demonstrated remarkable agility on rigid, stationary ground, but their locomotion reliability remains limited in non-inertial environments, where the supporting ground moves, tilts, or accelerates. Such conditions arise…