Related papers: Proprioception and reaction for walking among enta…

Legged robot navigation in extreme environments can hinder the use of cameras and laser scanners due to darkness, air obfuscation or sensor damage. In these conditions, proprioceptive sensing will continue to work reliably. In this paper,…

Although robots with flexible bodies are superior in terms of the contact and adaptability, it is difficult to control them precisely. On the other hand, human beings make use of the surrounding environments to stabilize their bodies and…

Limitations in actuation, sensing, and computation have forced small legged robots to rely on carefully tuned, mechanically mediated leg trajectories for effective locomotion. Recent advances in manufacturing, however, have enabled the…

Learning controllers that reproduce legged locomotion in nature has been a long-time goal in robotics and computer graphics. While yielding promising results, recent approaches are not yet flexible enough to be applicable to legged systems…

Reliable perception is essential for robots that interact with the world. But sensors alone are often insufficient to provide this capability, and they are prone to errors due to various conditions in the environment. Furthermore, there is…

Humanoid robots maintain balance and navigate by controlling the contact wrenches applied to the environment. While it is possible to plan dynamically-feasible motion that applies appropriate wrenches using existing methods, a humanoid may…

Legged robots can have a unique role in manipulating objects in dynamic, human-centric, or otherwise inaccessible environments. Although most legged robotics research to date typically focuses on traversing these challenging environments,…

To use robots in more unstructured environments, we have to accommodate for more complexities. Robotic systems need more awareness of the environment to adapt to uncertainty and variability. Although cameras have been predominantly used in…

We tackle the problem of perceptive locomotion in dynamic environments. In this problem, a quadrupedal robot must exhibit robust and agile walking behaviors in response to environmental clutter and moving obstacles. We present a…

Stable bipedal walking is a key prerequisite for humanoid robots to reach their potential of being versatile helpers in our everyday environments. Bipedal walking is, however, a complex motion that requires the coordination of many degrees…

Tactile sensing on human feet is crucial for motion control, however, has not been explored in robotic counterparts. This work is dedicated to endowing tactile sensing to legged robot's feet and showing that a single-legged robot can be…

Parkour tasks for quadrupeds have emerged as a promising benchmark for agile locomotion. While human athletes can effectively perceive environmental characteristics to select appropriate footholds for obstacle traversal, endowing legged…

Many-legged elongated robots show promise for reliable mobility on rugged landscapes. However, most studies on these systems focus on planar motion planning without addressing rapid vertical motion. Despite their success on mild rugged…

Legged robots can sense terrain through force interactions during locomotion, offering more reliable traversability estimates than remote sensing and serving as scouts for guiding wheeled rovers in challenging environments. However, even…

Legged robots have the ability to adapt their walking posture to navigate confined spaces due to their high degrees of freedom. However, this has not been exploited in most common multilegged platforms. This paper presents a deformable…

Recent literature in the robotics community has focused on learning robot behaviors that abstract out lower-level details of robot control. To fully leverage the efficacy of such behaviors, it is necessary to select and sequence them to…

In collective motion, perceptually-limited individuals move in an ordered manner, without centralized control. The perception of each individual is highly localized, as is its ability to interact with others. While natural collective motion…

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…

Attaining animal-like legged locomotion on rough outdoor terrain with sparse foothold affordances -a primary use-case for legs vs other forms of locomotion- is a largely open problem. New advancements in control and perception have enabled…

Contemporary robots have become exceptionally skilled at achieving specific tasks in structured environments. However, they often fail when faced with the limitless permutations of real-world unstructured environments. This motivates…