Related papers: Terrain Recognition and Contact Force Estimation t…
Legged locomotion benefits from embodied sensing, where perception emerges from the physical interaction between body and environment. We present a soft-surfaced, vision-based tactile foot sensor that endows a bipedal robot with a skin-like…
The ability of bipedal robots to adapt to diverse and unstructured terrain conditions is crucial for their deployment in real-world environments. To this end, we present a novel, bio-inspired robot foot design with stabilizing tarsal…
Attaining animal-like legged locomotion on rough outdoor terrain with sparse foothold affordances -a primary use-case for legs vs other forms of locomotion- is a largely open problem. New advancements in control and perception have enabled…
Tactile sensing on human feet is crucial for motion control, however, has not been explored in robotic counterparts. This work is dedicated to endowing tactile sensing to legged robot's feet and showing that a single-legged robot can be…
The ability to perform locomotion in various terrains is critical for legged robots. However, the robot has to have a better understanding of the surface it is walking on to perform robust locomotion on different terrains. Animals and…
Legged robots need to make contact with irregular surfaces, when operating in unstructured natural terrains. Representing and perceiving these areas to reason about potential contact between a robot and its surrounding environment, is still…
Contact estimation is a key ability for limbed robots, where making and breaking contacts has a direct impact on state estimation and balance control. Existing approaches typically rely on gate-cycle priors or designated contact sensors. We…
Legged robots are well-suited for broad exploration tasks in complex environments with yielding terrain. Understanding robotic foot-terrain interactions is critical for safe locomotion and walking efficiency for legged robots. This paper…
Legged robot locomotion is a challenging task due to a myriad of sub-problems, such as the hybrid dynamics of foot contact and the effects of the desired gait on the terrain. Accurate and efficient state estimation of the floating base and…
This paper presents a novel method for smaller-sized humanoid robots to self-calibrate their foot force sensors. The method consists of two steps: 1. The robot is commanded to move along planned whole-body trajectories in different double…
Legged robots have demonstrated high efficiency and effectiveness in unstructured and dynamic environments. However, it is still challenging for legged robots to achieve rapid and efficient locomotion on deformable, yielding substrates,…
To function autonomously in the physical world, humanoid robots need high-fidelity sensing systems, especially for forces that cannot be easily modeled. Modeling forces in robot feet is particularly challenging due to static indeterminacy,…
This paper introduces a framework for state estimation on a humanoid robot platform using only common proprioceptive sensors and knowledge of leg kinematics. The presented approach extends that detailed in [1] on a quadruped platform by…
State-of-the-art robotic perception systems have achieved sufficiently good performance using Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs), cameras, and nonlinear optimization techniques, that they are now being deployed as technologies. However, many…
In this article, we propose a deep learning framework that provides a unified approach to the problem of leg contact detection in humanoid robot walking gaits. Our formulation accomplishes to accurately and robustly estimate the contact…
This paper introduces a novel six-axis force/torque sensor tailored for compact and lightweight legged robots. Unlike traditional strain gauge-based sensors, the proposed non-contact design employs photocouplers, enhancing resistance to…
Although haptic sensing has recently been used for legged robot localization in extreme environments where a camera or LiDAR might fail, the problem of efficiently representing the haptic signatures in a learned prior map is still open.…
Animals in nature combine multiple modalities, such as sight and feel, to perceive terrain and develop an understanding of how to walk on uneven terrain in a stable manner. Similarly, legged robots need to develop their ability to stably…
Achieving safe quadrupedal locomotion in real-world environments has attracted much attention in recent years. When walking over uneven terrain, achieving reliable estimation and realising safety-critical control based on the obtained…
This work develops a learning-based contact estimator for legged robots that bypasses the need for physical sensors and takes multi-modal proprioceptive sensory data as input. Unlike vision-based state estimators, proprioceptive state…