Related papers: Demonstrating Autonomous 3D Path Planning on a Nov…
This work proposes a novel multi-robot task allocation framework for robots that can switch between multiple modes, e.g., flying, driving, or walking. We first provide a method to encode the multi-mode property of robots as a graph, where…
Autonomous navigation is needed for several robotics applications. In this paper we present an autonomous Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) system which purely relies on cost-effective and light-weight passive visual and inertial sensors to…
Traversing environments with arbitrary obstacles poses significant challenges for bipedal robots. In some cases, whole body motions may be necessary to maneuver around an obstacle, but most existing footstep planners can only select from a…
We present a novel outdoor navigation algorithm to generate stable and efficient actions to navigate a robot to reach a goal. We use a multi-stage training pipeline and show that our approach produces policies that result in stable and…
With the increasing presence of social robots in various environments and applications, there is an increasing need for these robots to exhibit socially-compliant behaviors. Legible motion, characterized by the ability of a robot to clearly…
Multirotor aerial robots excel at maneuvering in three-dimensional space, and recent advances enable nimble navigation in cluttered and confined environments, especially for small airframes. By contrast, platforms built for high-altitude…
Advances in planetary robotics have led to wheeled robots that have beamed back invaluable science data from the surface of the Moon and Mars. However, these large wheeled robots are unable to access rugged environments such as cliffs,…
Soft growing robots, are a type of robots that are designed to move and adapt to their environment in a similar way to how plants grow and move with potential applications where they could be used to navigate through tight spaces, dangerous…
In this paper, we propose a path re-planning algorithm that makes robots able to work in scenarios with moving obstacles. The algorithm switches between a set of pre-computed paths to avoid collisions with moving obstacles. It also improves…
Advances in hardware technology have facilitated more integration of sophisticated software toward augmenting the development of Unmanned Vehicles (UVs) and mitigating constraints for onboard intelligence. As a result, UVs can operate in…
Terrestrial-aerial bimodal vehicles, which integrate the high mobility of aerial robots with the long endurance of ground robots, offer significant potential for autonomous exploration. Given the inherent energy and time constraints in…
Optimizing gait stability for legged robots is a difficult problem. Even on level surfaces, effectively traversing across different textures (e.g., carpet) rests on dynamically tuning parameters in multidimensional space. Inspired by…
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…
We propose an online motion planner for legged robot locomotion with the primary objective of achieving energy efficiency. The conceptual idea is to leverage a placement set of footstep positions based on the robot's body position to…
Modular robotics research has long been preoccupied with perfecting the modules themselves -- their actuation methods, connectors, controls, communication, and fabrication. This inward focus results, in part, from the complexity of the task…
Motion planning is a key element of robotics since it empowers a robot to navigate autonomously. Particle Swarm Optimization is a simple, yet a very powerful optimization technique which has been effectively used in many complex…
Autonomous exploration of unknown space is an essential component for the deployment of mobile robots in the real world. Safe navigation is crucial for all robotics applications and requires accurate and consistent maps of the robot's…
Much of the Earth and many surfaces of extraterrestrial bodies are composed of in-cohesive particle matter. Locomoting on granular terrain is challenging for common robotic devices, either wheeled or legged. In this work, we discover a…
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…
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…