Related papers: Integrable Whole-body Orientation Coordinates for …

The general problem of planning feasible trajectories for multimodal robots is still an open challenge. This paper presents a whole-body trajectory optimisation approach that addresses this challenge by combining methods and tools developed…

While it is expected to build robotic limbs with multiple degrees of freedom (DoF) inspired by nature, a single DoF design remains fundamental, providing benefits that include, but are not limited to, simplicity, robustness,…

Legged robots possess a unique ability to traverse rough terrains and navigate cluttered environments, making them well-suited for complex, real-world unstructured scenarios. However, such robots have not yet achieved the same level as seen…

Athletic robots demand a whole-body actuation system design that utilizes motors up to the boundaries of their performance. However, creating such robots poses challenges of integrating design principles and reasoning of practical design…

Contact planning is crucial in locomoting systems.Specifically, appropriate contact planning can enable versatile behaviors (e.g., sidewinding in limbless locomotors) and facilitate speed-dependent gait transitions (e.g., walk-trot-gallop…

Rigid body localization refers to a problem of estimating the position of a rigid body along with its orientation using anchors. We consider a setup in which a few sensors are mounted on a rigid body. The absolute position of the rigid body…

Real-world applications require light-weight, energy-efficient, fully autonomous robots. Yet, increasing autonomy is oftentimes synonymous with escalating computational requirements. It might thus be desirable to offload intensive…

For robots with low rigidity, determining the robot's state based solely on kinematics is challenging. This is particularly crucial for a robot whose entire body is in contact with the environment, as accurate state estimation is essential…

Multilegged robots have the ability to perform stable locomotion on relatively rough terrain. However, the complexity of legged robots over wheeled or tracked robots make them difficult to control. This paper presents OpenSHC (Open-source…

Simultaneous locomotion and manipulation enables robots to interact with their environment beyond the constraints of a fixed base. However, coordinating legged locomotion with arm manipulation, while considering safety and compliance during…

Robots need the capability of placing objects in arbitrary, specific poses to rearrange the world and achieve various valuable tasks. Object reorientation plays a crucial role in this as objects may not initially be oriented such that the…

The functional demands of robotic systems often require completing various tasks or behaviors under the effect of disturbances or uncertain environments. Of increasing interest is the autonomy for dynamic robots, such as multirotors, motor…

If robots are to become ubiquitous, they will need to be able to adapt to complex and dynamic environments. Robots that can adapt their bodies while deployed might be flexible and robust enough to meet this challenge. Previous work on…

Loco-manipulation demands coordinated whole-body motion to manipulate objects effectively while maintaining locomotion stability, presenting significant challenges for both planning and control. In this work, we propose a whole-body model…

The process of robot design is a complex task and the majority of design decisions are still based on human intuition or tedious manual tuning. A more informed way of facing this task is computational design methods where design parameters…

Exploiting interaction with the environment is a promising and powerful way to enhance stability of humanoid robots and robustness while executing locomotion and manipulation tasks. Recently some works have started to show advances in this…

A motion-based control interface promises flexible robot operations in dangerous environments by combining user intuitions with the robot's motor capabilities. However, designing a motion interface for non-humanoid robots, such as…

This paper presents a novel modular robot system that can self-reconfigure to achieve omnidirectional movements for collaborative object transportation. Each robotic module is equipped with a steerable omni-wheel for navigation and is…

In this letter, we propose a whole-body control strategy for humanoid robots in multi-contact settings that enables switching between fixed and sliding contacts under active balance. We compute, in real-time, a safe center-of-mass position…

In this paper, we propose a novel vision-based control algorithm for regulating the whole body shape of extensible multisection soft continuum manipulators. Contrary to existing vision-based control algorithms in the literature that…