Related papers: Terrain Recognition and Contact Force Estimation t…
In nature, legged animals have developed the ability to adapt to challenging terrains through perception, allowing them to plan safe body and foot trajectories in advance, which leads to safe and energy-efficient locomotion. Inspired by…
Legged navigation is typically examined within open-world, off-road, and challenging environments. In these scenarios, estimating external disturbances requires a complex synthesis of multi-modal information. This underlines a major…
Nature has evolved humans to walk on different terrains by developing a detailed understanding of their physical characteristics. Similarly, legged robots need to develop their capability to walk on complex terrains with a variety of…
This work introduces a hierarchical strategy for terrain-aware bipedal locomotion that integrates reduced-dimensional perceptual representations to enhance reinforcement learning (RL)-based high-level (HL) policies for real-time gait…
Achieving robust legged locomotion on complex terrains poses challenges due to the high uncertainty in robot-environment interactions. Recent advances in bipedal and quadrupedal robots demonstrate good mobility on rugged terrains but rely…
We present a method for humanoid robot walking on partial footholds such as small stepping stones and rocks with sharp surfaces. Our algorithm does not rely on prior knowledge of the foothold, but information about an expected foothold can…
Parkour tasks for quadrupeds have emerged as a promising benchmark for agile locomotion. While human athletes can effectively perceive environmental characteristics to select appropriate footholds for obstacle traversal, endowing legged…
Soft robotic fingers can improve adaptability in grasping and manipulation, compensating for geometric variation in object or environmental contact, but today lack force capacity and fine dexterity. Integrated tactile sensors can provide…
Humanoid robots operating in human-centered environments (e.g., homes, hospitals, and offices) must mitigate foot--ground impact transients, as impact-induced vibration and noise degrade user experience and repeated impacts accelerate…
Grasp force estimation can help prevent robots from damaging delicate objects during manipulation and improve learning-based robotic control. Integrating force sensing into deformable grippers negotiates trade-offs in cost, complexity,…
Mechanically characterizing the human-machine interface is essential to understanding user behavior and optimizing wearable robot performance. This interface has been challenging to sensorize due to manufacturing complexity and non-linear…
Legged robots are able to navigate complex terrains by continuously interacting with the environment through careful selection of contact sequences and timings. However, the combinatorial nature behind contact planning hinders the…
Animals are capable of precise and agile locomotion using vision. Replicating this ability has been a long-standing goal in robotics. The traditional approach has been to decompose this problem into elevation mapping and foothold planning…
Terrain-aware locomotion has become an emerging topic in legged robotics. However, it is hard to generate diverse, challenging, and realistic unstructured terrains in simulation, which limits the way researchers evaluate their locomotion…
Many-legged elongated robots show promise for reliable mobility on rugged landscapes. However, most studies on these systems focus on planar motion planning without addressing rapid vertical motion. Despite their success on mild rugged…
Walking is a key movement of interest in biomechanics, yet gold-standard data collection methods are time- and cost-expensive. This paper presents a real-time, multimodal, high sample rate lower-limb motion capture framework, based on…
Legged robots need to be capable of walking on diverse terrain conditions. In this paper, we present a novel reinforcement learning framework for learning locomotion on non-rigid dynamic terrains. Specifically, our framework can generate…
When we move on snow, sand, or mud, the ground deforms under our feet, immediately affecting our gait. We propose a physically based model for computing such interactions in real time, from only the kinematic motion of a virtual character.…
Legged robots, specifically quadrupeds, are becoming increasingly attractive for industrial applications such as inspection. However, to leave the laboratory and to become useful to an end user requires reliability in harsh conditions. From…
Designing robots capable of traversing uneven terrain and overcoming physical obstacles has been a longstanding challenge in the field of robotics. Walking robots show promise in this regard due to their agility, redundant DOFs and…