Related papers: On Safety Testing, Validation, and Characterizatio…
Robust locomotion control depends on accurate state estimations. However, the sensors of most legged robots can only provide partial and noisy observations, making the estimation particularly challenging, especially for external states like…
We provide finite-sample performance guarantees for control policies executed on stochastic robotic systems. Given an open- or closed-loop policy and a finite set of trajectory rollouts under the policy, we bound the expected value,…
Legged robots are able to navigate complex terrains by continuously interacting with the environment through careful selection of contact sequences and timings. However, the combinatorial nature behind contact planning hinders the…
We present an optimization-based method to plan the motion of an autonomous robot under the uncertainties associated with dynamic obstacles, such as humans. Our method bounds the marginal risk of collisions at each point in time by…
Legged locomotion holds the premise of universal mobility, a critical capability for many real-world robotic applications. Both model-based and learning-based approaches have advanced the field of legged locomotion in the past three…
Balancing safety and efficiency when planning in crowded scenarios with uncertain dynamics is challenging where it is imperative to accomplish the robot's mission without incurring any safety violations. Typically, chance constraints are…
This study investigates formal-method-based trajectory optimization (TO) for bipedal locomotion, focusing on scenarios where the robot encounters external perturbations at unforeseen times. Our key research question centers around the…
Unknown dynamic load carrying is one important practical application for quadruped robots. Such a problem is non-trivial, posing three major challenges in quadruped locomotion control. First, how to model or represent the dynamics of the…
Many robot control scenarios involve assessing system robustness against a task specification. If either the controller or environment are composed of "black-box" components with unknown dynamics, we cannot rely on formal verification to…
Inspired by human behavior when traveling over unknown terrain, this study proposes the use of probing strategies and integrates them into a traversability analysis framework to address safe navigation on unknown rough terrain. Our…
This paper presents the application of the concepts and approaches of linear graph (LG) theory in the modeling and simulation of a 4-wheel skid-steer mobile robotic system. An LG representation of the system is proposed and the accompanying…
Legged robot locomotion requires the planning of stable reference trajectories, especially while traversing uneven terrain. The proposed trajectory optimization framework is capable of generating dynamically stable base and footstep…
Legged robots can traverse a wide variety of terrains, some of which may be challenging for wheeled robots, such as stairs or highly uneven surfaces. However, quadruped robots face stability challenges on slippery surfaces. This can be…
Embodied AI systems, including AI-powered robots that autonomously interact with the physical world, stand to be significantly advanced by Large Language Models (LLMs), which enable robots to better understand complex language commands and…
In this manuscript, we present a novel method for estimating the stochastic stability characteristics of metastable legged systems using the unscented transformation. Prior methods for stability analysis in such systems often required…
Recent large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated promising capabilities in modeling real-world knowledge and enhancing knowledge-based generation tasks. In this paper, we further explore the potential of using LLMs to aid in the design…
Model-based reinforcement learning (RL) has emerged as a promising tool for developing controllers for real world systems (e.g., robotics, autonomous driving, etc.). However, real systems often have constraints imposed on their state space…
In this paper, a strategy to handle the human safety in a multi-robot scenario is devised. In the presented framework, it is foreseen that robots are in charge of performing any cooperative manipulation task which is parameterized by a…
Control systems are critical to modern technological infrastructure, spanning industries from aerospace to healthcare. This survey explores the landscape of safe robot learning, investigating methods that balance high-performance control…
This paper presents a framework for the safety-critical control of robotic systems, when safety is defined on safe regions in the configuration space. To maintain safety, we synthesize a safe velocity based on control barrier function…