Related papers: Overconstrained Locomotion
A central question in robotics is how to design a control system for an agile mobile robot. This paper studies this question systematically, focusing on a challenging setting: autonomous drone racing. We show that a neural network…
Muscle-actuated control is a research topic that spans multiple domains, including biomechanics, neuroscience, reinforcement learning, robotics, and graphics. This type of control is particularly challenging as bodies are often overactuated…
Supernumerary robotic limbs (SRLs) are robotic structures integrated closely with the user's body, which augment human physical capabilities and necessitate seamless, naturalistic human-machine interaction. For effective assistance in…
Inspired by the necessity of morphological adaptation in animals, a growing body of work has attempted to expand robot training to encompass physical aspects of a robot's design. However, reinforcement learning methods capable of optimizing…
Developing robust locomotion controllers for bipedal robots with closed kinematic chains presents unique challenges, particularly since most reinforcement learning (RL) approaches simplify these parallel mechanisms into serial models during…
Navigating fluently around pedestrians is a necessary capability for mobile robots deployed in human environments, such as buildings and homes. While research on social navigation has focused mainly on the scalability with the number of…
For locomotion, is an arm on a legged robot a liability or an asset for locomotion? Biological systems evolved additional limbs beyond legs that facilitates postural control. This work shows how a manipulator can be an asset for legged…
This study introduces a novel approach to autonomous motion planning, informing an analytical algorithm with a reinforcement learning (RL) agent within a Frenet coordinate system. The combination directly addresses the challenges of…
Motion planning and obstacle avoidance is a key challenge in robotics applications. While previous work succeeds to provide excellent solutions for known environments, sensor-based motion planning in new and dynamic environments remains…
We propose a robust dynamic walking controller consisting of a dynamic locomotion planner, a reinforcement learning process for robustness, and a novel whole-body locomotion controller (WBLC). Previous approaches specify either the position…
In search of a simple baseline for Deep Reinforcement Learning in locomotion tasks, we propose a model-free open-loop strategy. By leveraging prior knowledge and the elegance of simple oscillators to generate periodic joint motions, it…
We present computational and experimental results on how artificial intelligence (AI) learns to control an Acrobot using reinforcement learning (RL). Thereby the experimental setup is designed as an embedded system, which is of interest for…
A robotic system can be viewed as a collection of lower-dimensional systems that are coupled via reaction forces (Lagrange multipliers) enforcing holonomic constraints. Inspired by this viewpoint, this paper presents a novel formulation for…
Humanoid locomotion requires not only accurate command tracking for navigation but also compliant responses to external forces during human interaction. Despite significant progress, existing RL approaches mainly emphasize robustness,…
Supernumerary robotic limbs (SRLs) offer substantial potential in both the rehabilitation of hemiplegic patients and the enhancement of functional capabilities for healthy individuals. Designing a general-purpose SRL device is inherently…
The heavy-load legged robot has strong load carrying capacity and can adapt to various unstructured terrains. But the large weight results in higher requirements for motion stability and environmental perception ability. In order to utilize…
To succeed in the real world, robots must deal with situations that differ from those seen during training. Those out-of-distribution situations for legged robot mainly include challenging dynamic gaps and perceptual gaps. Here we study the…
While quadruped robots usually have good stability and load capacity, bipedal robots offer a higher level of flexibility / adaptability to different tasks and environments. A multi-modal legged robot can take the best of both worlds. In…
Recent work on sim-to-real learning for bipedal locomotion has demonstrated new levels of robustness and agility over a variety of terrains. However, that work, and most prior bipedal locomotion work, have not considered locomotion under a…
Environments with large terrain height variations present great challenges for legged robot locomotion. Drawing inspiration from fire ants' collective assembly behavior, we study strategies that can enable two ``connectable'' robots to…