English
Related papers

Related papers: On Terrain-Aware Locomotion for Legged Robots

200 papers

Legged robots with egocentric forward-facing depth cameras can couple exteroception and proprioception to achieve robust forward agility on complex terrain. When these robots walk backward, the forward-only field of view provides no…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-03-04 Shixin Luo , Songbo Li , Yuan Hao , Yaqi Wang , Jun Zheng , Jun Wu , Qiuguo Zhu

We exploit the complementary strengths of vision and proprioception to develop a point-goal navigation system for legged robots, called VP-Nav. Legged systems are capable of traversing more complex terrain than wheeled robots, but to fully…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-07-26 Zipeng Fu , Ashish Kumar , Ananye Agarwal , Haozhi Qi , Jitendra Malik , Deepak Pathak

Traversing risky terrains with sparse footholds presents significant challenges for legged robots, requiring precise foot placement in safe areas. To acquire comprehensive exteroceptive information, prior studies have employed motion…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Ruiqi Yu , Qianshi Wang , Yizhen Wang , Zhicheng Wang , Jun Wu , Qiuguo Zhu

Legged robots have enormous potential in their range of capabilities, from navigating unstructured terrains to high-speed running. However, designing robust controllers for highly agile dynamic motions remains a substantial challenge for…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-04-20 Laura Smith , J. Chase Kew , Tianyu Li , Linda Luu , Xue Bin Peng , Sehoon Ha , Jie Tan , Sergey Levine

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…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-05-27 Fernando Acero , Kai Yuan , Zhibin Li

Planning whole-body motions while taking into account the terrain conditions is a challenging problem for legged robots since the terrain model might produce many local minima. Our coupled planning method uses stochastic and…

Robotics · Computer Science 2020-06-30 Carlos Mastalli , Ioannis Havoutis , Michele Focchi , Darwin G. Caldwell , Claudio Semini

Despite the progress in legged robotic locomotion, autonomous navigation in unknown environments remains an open problem. Ideally, the navigation system utilizes the full potential of the robots' locomotion capabilities while operating…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-02-15 Jonas Frey , David Hoeller , Shehryar Khattak , Marco Hutter

For full-size humanoid robots, even with recent advances in reinforcement learning-based control, achieving reliable locomotion on complex terrains, such as long staircases, remains challenging. In such settings, limited perception,…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-12-09 Haolin Song , Hongbo Zhu , Tao Yu , Yan Liu , Mingqi Yuan , Wengang Zhou , Hua Chen , Houqiang Li

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…

Biological Physics · Physics 2025-09-23 Ratan Othayoth , Qihan Xuan , Yaqing Wang , Chen Li

Legged robots that can operate autonomously in remote and hazardous environments will greatly increase opportunities for exploration into under-explored areas. Exteroceptive perception is crucial for fast and energy-efficient locomotion:…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-01-21 Takahiro Miki , Joonho Lee , Jemin Hwangbo , Lorenz Wellhausen , Vladlen Koltun , Marco Hutter

Deep reinforcement learning (RL) based controllers for legged robots have demonstrated impressive robustness for walking in different environments for several robot platforms. To enable the application of RL policies for humanoid robots in…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-11-01 Rohan Pratap Singh , Mehdi Benallegue , Mitsuharu Morisawa , Rafael Cisneros , Fumio Kanehiro

Wheeled-legged robots have the potential for highly agile and versatile locomotion. The combination of legs and wheels might be a solution for any real-world application requiring rapid, and long-distance mobility skills on challenging…

Robotics · Computer Science 2020-02-07 Marko Bjelonic , Prajish K. Sankar , C. Dario Bellicoso , Heike Vallery , Marco Hutter

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.…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-03-04 Takahiro Miki , Joonho Lee , Lorenz Wellhausen , Marco Hutter

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,…

Robotics · Computer Science 2020-10-23 Joonho Lee , Jemin Hwangbo , Lorenz Wellhausen , Vladlen Koltun , Marco Hutter

Legged navigation is typically examined within open-world, off-road, and challenging environments. In these scenarios, estimating external disturbances requires a complex synthesis of multi-modal information. This underlines a major…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-09-30 Junli Ren , Yikai Liu , Yingru Dai , Junfeng Long , Guijin Wang

Dynamic quadrupedal locomotion over rough terrains reveals remarkable progress over the last few decades. Small-scale quadruped robots are adequately flexible and adaptable to traverse uneven terrains along sagittal direction, such as…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-10-27 Hongwu Zhu , Dong Wang , Nathan Boyd , Ziyi Zhou , Lecheng Ruan , Aidong Zhang , Ning Ding , Ye Zhao , Jianwen Luo

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…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-08-18 Ruben Grandia , Fabian Jenelten , Shaohui Yang , Farbod Farshidian , Marco Hutter

Reinforcement learning (RL) has demonstrated remarkable capability in acquiring robot skills, but learning each new skill still requires substantial data collection for training. The pretrain-and-finetune paradigm offers a promising…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-03-25 Ziang Zheng , Guojian Zhan , Bin Shuai , Shengtao Qin , Jiangtao Li , Tao Zhang , Shengbo Eben Li

We show dynamic locomotion strategies for wheeled quadrupedal robots, which combine the advantages of both walking and driving. The developed optimization framework tightly integrates the additional degrees of freedom introduced by the…

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…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-01-04 Ye Zhao , Yinan Li , Luis Sentis , Ufuk Topcu , Jun Liu