Related papers: Characterising the take-off dynamics and energy ef…

The design and control of winged aircraft and drones is an iterative process aimed at identifying a compromise of mission-specific costs and constraints. When agility is required, shape-shifting (morphing) drones represent an efficient…

We show dynamic locomotion strategies for wheeled quadrupedal robots, which combine the advantages of both walking and driving. The developed optimization framework tightly integrates the additional degrees of freedom introduced by the…

Flying insects are thought to achieve energy-efficient flapping flight by storing and releasing elastic energy in their muscles, tendons, and thorax. However, flight systems consisting elastic elements coupled to nonlinear, unsteady…

We focus on the problem of developing energy efficient controllers for quadrupedal robots. Animals can actively switch gaits at different speeds to lower their energy consumption. In this paper, we devise a hierarchical learning framework,…

Non-linear dynamical systems represent a compact, flexible, and robust tool for reactive motion generation. The effectiveness of dynamical systems relies on their ability to accurately represent stable motions. Several approaches have been…

This study focuses on the energy optimization of industrial robotic cells, which is essential for sustainable production in the long term. A holistic approach that considers a robotic cell as a whole toward minimizing energy consumption is…

Efficient robot control often requires balancing task performance with energy expenditure. A common approach in reinforcement learning (RL) is to penalize energy use directly as part of the reward function. This requires carefully tuning…

Many small animals, particularly insects, use power-amplification to generate rapid motions, such as jumping, that would otherwise be impossible given the standard power density of muscle. A common framework for understanding this power…

Although recent years have seen significant progress of humanoid robots in walking and running, the frequent foot strikes with ground during these locomotion gaits inevitably generate high instantaneous impact forces, which leads to…

The aim of this study is to give insights into the trajectory optimization w.r.t. energy consumption and recuperation for stacker cranes in a high-bay warehouse. Based on an analytical necessary optimality condition, a targeted numerical…

Data-driven Model Predictive Control (MPC) has lately been the core research subject in the field of control theory. The combination of an optimal control framework with deep learning paradigms opens up the possibility to accurately track…

This paper presents a modeling and control framework for multibody flying robots subject to non-negligible aerodynamic forces acting on the centroidal dynamics. First, aerodynamic forces are calculated during robot flight in different…

Unknown dynamic load carrying is one important practical application for quadruped robots. Such a problem is non-trivial, posing three major challenges in quadruped locomotion control. First, how to model or represent the dynamics of the…

Hybrid locomotion, which combines multiple modalities of locomotion within a single robot, enables robots to carry out complex tasks in diverse environments. This paper presents a novel method for planning multi-modal locomotion…

Wireless energy transfer (WET) is a ground-breaking technology for cutting the last wire between mobile sensors and power grids in smart cities. Yet, WET only offers effective transmission of energy over a short distance. Robotic WET is an…

Recent advancements in soft actuators have enabled soft continuum swimming robots to achieve higher efficiency and more closely mimic the behaviors of real marine animals. However, optimizing the design and control of these soft continuum…

Motor thermal management is often overlooked in the context of electrically-actuated robots, particularly legged robots, but motor overheating is a key factor that limits long-duration locomotion especially under payload conditions. This…

We investigate energy-optimal control of robots with ultracapacitor based regenerative drive systems. Based on a previously introduced framework, a fairly generic model is considered for the robot and the drive system. An optimal control…

The performance of industrial robotic work cells depends on optimizing various hyperparameters referring to the cell layout, such as robot base placement, tool placement, and kinematic design. Achieving this requires a bilevel optimization…

Continuum robots, characterized by their high flexibility and infinite degrees of freedom (DoFs), have gained prominence in applications such as minimally invasive surgery and hazardous environment exploration. However, the intrinsic…