Related papers: Geometric Mechanics of Contact-Switching Systems
Symmetry manifests itself in legged locomotion in a variety of ways. No matter where a legged system begins to move periodically, the torso and limbs coordinate with each other's movements in a similar manner. Also, in many gaits observed…
Successfully achieving bipedal locomotion remains challenging due to real-world factors such as model uncertainty, random disturbances, and imperfect state estimation. In this work, we propose a novel metric for locomotive robustness -- the…
Miniature-legged robots are constrained by their onboard computation and control, thus motivating the need for simple, first-principles-based geometric models that connect \emph{periodic actuation or gaits} (a universal robot control…
Serially connected robots are promising candidates for performing tasks in confined spaces such as search-and-rescue in large-scale disasters. Such robots are typically limbless, and we hypothesize that the addition of limbs could improve…
Legged robot research is presently focused on bipedal or quadrupedal robots, despite capabilities to build robots with many more legs to potentially improve locomotion performance. This imbalance is not necessarily due to hardware…
Taking inspiration from the natural gait transition mechanism of quadrupeds, devising a good gait transition strategy is important for quadruped robots to achieve energy-efficient locomotion on various terrains and velocities. While…
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…
The human foot serves as the critical interface between the body and environment during locomotion. Existing musculoskeletal models typically oversimplify foot-ground contact mechanics, limiting their ability to accurately simulate human…
Generating stable walking gaits that yield natural locomotion when executed on robotic-assistive devices is a challenging task that often requires hand-tuning by domain experts. This paper presents an alternative methodology, where we…
This paper aims to develop distributed feedback control algorithms that allow cooperative locomotion of quadrupedal robots which are coupled to each other by holonomic constraints. These constraints can arise from collaborative manipulation…
Both legged locomotion and slithering motions typically utilize periodic gaits -- repeating cycles of body shape change that produce a net motion through the world. Legged locomotion can be viewed from the perspective of piece-wise contact…
This work developed a learning framework for perceptive legged locomotion that combines visual feedback, proprioceptive information, and active gait regulation of foot-ground contacts. The perception requires only one forward-facing camera…
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…
Crawling is a common locomotion mechanism in soft robots and nonskeletal animals. In this work we propose modeling soft-robotic legged locomotion by approximating it with an equivalent articulated robot with elastic joints. For concreteness…
Planning locomotion trajectories for legged microrobots is challenging because of their complex morphology, high frequency passive dynamics, and discontinuous contact interactions with their environment. Consequently, such research is often…
Gaits engineered for snake-like robots to rotate in-place instrumentally fill a gap in the set of locomotive gaits that have traditionally prioritized translation. This paper designs a Turn-in-Place gait and demonstrates the ability of a…
Learning-based approaches have recently shown notable success in legged locomotion. However, these approaches often lack accountability, necessitating empirical tests to determine their effectiveness. In this work, we are interested in…
Multi-legged robots with six or more legs are not in common use, despite designs with superior stability, maneuverability, and a low number of actuators being available for over 20 years. This may be in part due to the difficulty in…
Quadrupedal robots exhibit a wide range of viable gaits, but generating specific footfall sequences often requires laborious expert tuning of numerous variables, such as touch-down and lift-off events and holonomic constraints for each leg.…
Quadrupedal robots exhibit a wide range of viable gaits, but generating specific footfall sequences often requires laborious expert tuning of numerous variables, such as touch-down and lift-off events and holonomic constraints for each leg.…