Related papers: Autonomous Forest Inventory with Legged Robots: Sy…
Agriculture has always remained an integral part of the world. As the human population keeps on rising, the demand for food also increases, and so is the dependency on the agriculture industry. But in today's scenario, because of low yield,…
Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) have shown significant promise in various domains, especially robotics. However, most prior LLM-based work in robotic applications either directly predicts waypoints or applies LLMs within…
Dynamic traversal of uneven terrain is a major objective in the field of legged robotics. The most recent model predictive control approaches for these systems can generate robust dynamic motion of short duration; however, planning over a…
Robots are increasingly operating in indoor environments designed for and shared with people. However, robots working safely and autonomously in uneven and unstructured environments still face great challenges. Many modern indoor…
Legged robots face significant challenges in navigating complex environments, as they require precise real-time decisions for foothold selection and contact planning. While existing research has explored methods to select footholds based on…
We propose an online motion planner for legged robot locomotion with the primary objective of achieving energy efficiency. The conceptual idea is to leverage a placement set of footstep positions based on the robot's body position to…
Access to below-canopy volumetric vegetation data is crucial for understanding ecosystem dynamics. We address the long-standing limitation of remote sensing to penetrate deep into dense canopy layers. LiDAR and radar are currently…
Legged robots have the potential to leverage obstacles to climb steep sand slopes. However, efficiently repositioning these obstacles to desired locations is challenging. Here we present DiffusiveGRAIN, a learning-based method that enables…
This work presents a 3D multi-robot exploration framework for a team of UGVs moving on uneven terrains. The framework was designed by casting the two-level coordination strategy presented in [1] into the context of multi-robot exploration.…
Computing stabilizing and optimal control actions for legged locomotion in real time is difficult due to the nonlinear, hybrid, and high dimensional nature of these robots. The hybrid nature of the system introduces a combination of…
We present an open-source untethered quadrupedal soft robot platform for dynamic locomotion (e.g., high-speed running and backflipping). The robot is mostly soft (80 vol.%) while driven by four geared servo motors. The robot's soft body and…
Legged robots can have a unique role in manipulating objects in dynamic, human-centric, or otherwise inaccessible environments. Although most legged robotics research to date typically focuses on traversing these challenging environments,…
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…
Robotic exploration of underground environments is a particularly challenging problem due to communication, endurance, and traversability constraints which necessitate high degrees of autonomy and agility. These challenges are further…
The threat to safety of aging bridges has been recognized as a critical concern to the general public due to the poor condition of many bridges in the U.S. Currently, the bridge inspection is conducted manually, and it is not efficient to…
Autonomous exploration of subterranean environments constitutes a major frontier for robotic systems as underground settings present key challenges that can render robot autonomy hard to achieve. This has motivated the DARPA Subterranean…
Planetary exploration missions require robots capable of navigating extreme and unknown environments. While wheeled rovers have dominated past missions, their mobility is limited to traversable surfaces. Legged robots, especially…
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…
In the first part of this thesis, we present our efforts on experimental validation of the predictive performance of mechanics-based mathematical models on a physical one-legged hopping robot platform. We extend upon a recently proposed…
For mobile robots to be effectively applied to real world unstructured environments -- such as large scale farming -- they require the ability to generate adaptive plans that account both for limited onboard resources, and the presence of…