Related papers: Overconstrained Locomotion
We are considering the geometric amoebot model where a set of $n$ amoebots is placed on the triangular grid. An amoebot is able to send information to its neighbors, and to move via expansions and contractions. Since amoebots and…
Reorientation (turning in plane) plays a critical role for all robots in any field application, especially those that in confined spaces. While important, reorientation remains a relatively unstudied problem for robots, including limbless…
Generating natural and physically feasible motions for legged robots has been a challenging problem due to its complex dynamics. In this work, we introduce a novel learning-based framework of autoregressive motion planner (ARMP) for…
We generalize the well-studied problem of gait learning in modular robots in two dimensions. Firstly, we address locomotion in a given target direction that goes beyond learning a typical undirected gait. Secondly, rather than studying one…
Stable gait generation is a crucial problem for legged robot locomotion as this impacts other critical performance factors such as, e.g. mobility over an uneven terrain and power consumption. Gait generation stability results from the…
Legged machines are becoming increasingly agile and adaptive but they have so far lacked the morphological diversity of legged animals, which have been rearranged and reshaped to fill millions of niches. Unlike their biological…
Humans are able to negotiate downstep behaviors -- both planned and unplanned -- with remarkable agility and ease. The goal of this paper is to systematically study the translation of this human behavior to bipedal walking robots, even if…
Natural organisms utilize distributed actuation through their musculoskeletal systems to adapt their gait for traversing diverse terrains or to morph their bodies for varied tasks. A longstanding challenge in robotics is to emulate this…
Supernumerary Robotic Limbs (SRLs) are wearable robots augmenting human capabilities by acting as a co-worker, reaching objects, support human arms, etc. However, existing SRLs lack the mechanical backdrivability and bandwidth required for…
Model-free reinforcement learning is a promising approach for autonomously solving challenging robotics control problems, but faces exploration difficulty without information of the robot's kinematics and dynamics morphology. The…
Jumping poses a significant challenge for quadruped robots, despite being crucial for many operational scenarios. While optimisation methods exist for controlling such motions, they are often time-consuming and demand extensive knowledge of…
As both legged robots and embedded compute have become more capable, researchers have started to focus on field deployment of these robots. Robust autonomy in unstructured environments requires perception of the world around the robot in…
Whole-body loco-manipulation for quadruped robots with arms remains a challenging problem, particularly in achieving multi-task control. To address this, we propose MLM, a reinforcement learning framework driven by both real-world and…
Legged robots navigating crowded scenes and complex terrains in the real world are required to execute dynamic leg movements while processing visual input for obstacle avoidance and path planning. We show that a quadruped robot can acquire…
Recent research on mobile robots has focused on increasing their adaptability to unpredictable and unstructured environments using soft materials and structures. However, the determination of key design parameters and control over these…
Exploring planetary bodies with lower gravity, such as the moon and Mars, allows legged robots to utilize jumping as an efficient form of locomotion thus giving them a valuable advantage over traditional rovers for exploration. Motivated by…
Limbless locomotors, from microscopic worms to macroscopic snakes, traverse complex, heterogeneous natural environments typically using undulatory body wave propagation. Theoretical and robophysical models typically emphasize body…
Reinforcement learning (RL)-based motion imitation methods trained on demonstration data can effectively learn natural and expressive motions with minimal reward engineering but often struggle to generalize to novel environments. We address…
Bio-hybrid systems---close couplings of natural organisms with technology---are high potential and still underexplored. In existing work, robots have mostly influenced group behaviors of animals. We explore the possibilities of mixing…
This work presents a reinforcement learning-based switching control mechanism to autonomously move a ferromagnetic object (representing a milliscale robot) around obstacles within a constrained environment in the presence of disturbances.…