Related papers: Generating a Terrain-Robustness Benchmark for Legg…

Legged robots have the potential to traverse complex terrain and access confined spaces beyond the reach of traditional platforms thanks to their ability to carefully select footholds and flexibly adapt their body posture while walking.…

Having good knowledge of terrain information is essential for improving the performance of various downstream tasks on complex terrains, especially for the locomotion and navigation of legged robots. We present a novel framework for neural…

Recent advancements in legged locomotion research have made legged robots a preferred choice for navigating challenging terrains when compared to their wheeled counterparts. This paper presents a novel locomotion policy, trained using Deep…

In this paper, we present a general learning framework for controlling a quadruped robot that can mimic the behavior of real animals and traverse challenging terrains. Our method consists of two steps: an imitation learning step to learn…

Curriculum learning allows complex tasks to be mastered via incremental progression over `stepping stone' goals towards a final desired behaviour. Typical implementations learn locomotion policies for challenging environments through…

Legged robots have unparalleled mobility on unstructured terrains. However, it remains an open challenge to design locomotion controllers that can operate in a large variety of environments. In this paper, we address this challenge of…

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…

To proactively navigate and traverse various terrains, active use of visual perception becomes indispensable. We aim to investigate the feasibility and performance of using sparse visual observations to achieve perceptual locomotion over a…

Dynamic locomotion in rough terrain requires accurate foot placement, collision avoidance, and planning of the underactuated dynamics of the system. Reliably optimizing for such motions and interactions in the presence of imperfect and…

In the first part of this thesis, we present our efforts on experimental validation of the predictive performance of mechanics-based mathematical models on a physical one-legged hopping robot platform. We extend upon a recently proposed…

Precise trajectory tracking for legged robots can be challenging due to their high degrees of freedom, unmodeled nonlinear dynamics, or random disturbances from the environment. A commonly adopted solution to overcome these challenges is to…

As both legged robots and embedded compute have become more capable, researchers have started to focus on field deployment of these robots. Robust autonomy in unstructured environments requires perception of the world around the robot in…

Humanoid robots can, in principle, use their legs to go almost anywhere. Developing controllers capable of traversing diverse terrains, however, remains a considerable challenge. Classical controllers are hard to generalize broadly while…

Quadruped robots have shown remarkable mobility on various terrains through reinforcement learning. Yet, in the presence of sparse footholds and risky terrains such as stepping stones and balance beams, which require precise foot placement…

One of the fundamental challenges in realizing the potential of legged robots is generating plans to traverse challenging terrains. Control actions must be carefully selected so the robot will not crash or slip. The high dimensionality of…

To traverse complex three-dimensional terrainwith large obstacles, animals and robots must transition across different modes. However, the most mechanistic understanding of terrestrial locomotion concerns how to generate and stabilize…

While the transport of matter by wheeled vehicles or legged robots can be guaranteed in engineered landscapes like roads or rails, locomotion prediction in complex environments like collapsed buildings or crop fields remains challenging.…

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…

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…

Some of the most challenging environments on our planet are accessible to quadrupedal animals but remain out of reach for autonomous machines. Legged locomotion can dramatically expand the operational domains of robotics. However,…