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The Angular-Momentum Linear Inverted Pendulum (ALIP) model is a promising motion planner for bipedal robots. However, it relies on two assumptions: (1) the robot has point-contact feet or passive ankles, and (2) the angular momentum around…
A new control paradigm using angular momentum and foot placement as state variables in the linear inverted pendulum model has expanded the realm of possibilities for the control of bipedal robots. This new paradigm, known as the ALIP model,…
The control of bipedal robotic walking remains a challenging problem in the domains of computation and experiment, due to the multi-body dynamics and various sources of uncertainty. In recent years, there has been a rising trend towards…
Robots need lightweight legs for agile locomotion, and intrinsic series elastic compliance has proven to be a major ingredient for energy-efficient locomotion and robust locomotion control. Animals' anatomy and locomotion capabilities…
Humanoids are versatile robotic platforms owing to their limbs with multiple degrees of freedom. Although humanoids can walk like humans, they are relatively slow, and cannot run over large barriers. To address these limitations, we aim to…
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…
Humanoid robots offer significant versatility for performing a wide range of tasks, yet their basic ability to walk and run, especially at high velocities, remains a challenge. This letter presents a novel method that combines deep…
The ability to realize nonlinear controllers with formal guarantees on dynamic robotic systems has the potential to enable more complex robotic behaviors -- yet, realizing these controllers is often practically challenging. To address this…
A safety-critical measure of legged locomotion performance is a robot's ability to track its desired time-varying position trajectory in an environment, which is herein termed as "global-position tracking". This paper introduces a nonlinear…
Quadruped robots have shown remarkable mobility on various terrains through reinforcement learning. Yet, in the presence of sparse footholds and risky terrains such as stepping stones and balance beams, which require precise foot placement…
In this paper, with a view toward fast deployment of locomotion gaits in low-cost hardware, we use a linear policy for realizing end-foot trajectories in the quadruped robot, Stoch $2$. In particular, the parameters of the end-foot…
The application of biomechanic and motor control models in the control of bidedal robots (humanoids, and exoskeletons) has revealed limitations of our understanding of human locomotion. A recently proposed model uses the potential energy…
This paper presents a stochastic/robust nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) to enhance the robustness of model-based legged locomotion against contact uncertainties. We integrate the contact uncertainties into the covariance…
This paper describes the control, and evaluation of a new human-scaled biped robot with liquid cooled viscoelastic actuators (VLCA). Based on the lessons learned from previous work from our team on VLCA [1], we present a new system design…
The problem of navigating a bipedal robot to a desired destination in various environments is very important. However, it is very difficult to solve the navigation problem in real time because the computation time is very long due to the…
Despite the rise of billion-parameter foundation models trained across thousands of GPUs, similar scaling gains have not been shown for humanoid control. Current neural controllers for humanoids remain modest in size, target a limited set…
Exoskeletons have been shown to effectively assist humans during steady locomotion. However, their effects on non-steady locomotion, characterized by nonlinear phase progression within a gait cycle, remain insufficiently explored,…
The ability of legged systems to traverse highly-constrained environments depends by and large on the performance of their motion and balance controllers. This paper presents a controller that excels in a scenario that most state-of-the-art…
We introduce a robust control architecture for the whole-body motion control of torque controlled robots with arms and legs. The method is based on the robust control of contact forces in order to track a planned Center of Mass trajectory.…
(Simplified Abstract) To accomplish breakthroughs in dynamic whole-body locomotion, legged robots have to be terrain aware. Terrain-Aware Locomotion (TAL) implies that the robot can perceive the terrain with its sensors, and can take…