Related papers: Learning-based Hierarchical Control: Emulating the…
The cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) constitutes an interface through which chemical cues can reach and modulate the activity of neurons located at the epithelial boundary within the entire nervous system. Here, we investigate the role and…
We aim to build complex humanoid agents that integrate perception, motor control, and memory. In this work, we partly factor this problem into low-level motor control from proprioception and high-level coordination of the low-level skills…
A robotic system can be viewed as a collection of lower-dimensional systems that are coupled via reaction forces (Lagrange multipliers) enforcing holonomic constraints. Inspired by this viewpoint, this paper presents a novel formulation for…
Multi-legged robots offer enhanced stability to navigate complex terrains with their multiple legs interacting with the environment. However, how to effectively coordinate the multiple legs in a larger action exploration space to generate…
Robots operating in human environments need various skills, like slow and fast walking, turning, side-stepping, and many more. However, building robot controllers that can exhibit such a large range of behaviors is a challenging problem…
Robots are becoming increasingly essential for traversing complex environments such as disaster areas, extraterrestrial terrains, and marine environments. Yet, their potential is often limited by mobility and adaptability constraints. In…
Precise trajectory tracking for legged robots can be challenging due to their high degrees of freedom, unmodeled nonlinear dynamics, or random disturbances from the environment. A commonly adopted solution to overcome these challenges is to…
Animals locomote robustly and agile, albeit significant sensorimotor delays of their nervous system. The sensorimotor control of legged robots is implemented with much higher frequencies-often in the kilohertz range-and sensor and actuator…
As legged robots take on roles in industrial and autonomous construction, collaborative loco-manipulation is crucial for handling large and heavy objects that exceed the capabilities of a single robot. However, ensuring the safety of these…
Contact-based decision and planning methods are becoming increasingly important to endow higher levels of autonomy for legged robots. Formal synthesis methods derived from symbolic systems have great potential for reasoning about high-level…
Humans and animals exhibit a range of interesting behaviors in dynamic environments, and it is unclear how our brains actively reformat this dense sensory information to enable these behaviors. Experimental neuroscience is undergoing a…
Artificial neural networks for motor control usually adopt generic architectures like fully connected MLPs. While general, these tabula rasa architectures rely on large amounts of experience to learn, are not easily transferable to new…
Natural and lifelike locomotion remains a fundamental challenge for humanoid robots to interact with human society. However, previous methods either neglect motion naturalness or rely on unstable and ambiguous style rewards. In this paper,…
Humans are able to negotiate downstep behaviors -- both planned and unplanned -- with remarkable agility and ease. The goal of this paper is to systematically study the translation of this human behavior to bipedal walking robots, even if…
Legged robots possess a unique ability to traverse rough terrains and navigate cluttered environments, making them well-suited for complex, real-world unstructured scenarios. However, such robots have not yet achieved the same level as seen…
Inspired by animals that co-adapt their brain and body to interact with the environment, we present a tendon-driven and over-actuated (i.e., n joint, n+1 actuators) bipedal robot that (i) exploits its backdrivable mechanical properties to…
Animals run robustly in diverse terrain. This locomotion robustness is puzzling because axon conduction velocity is limited to a few ten meters per second. If reflex loops deliver sensory information with significant delays, one would…
Activity in coupled systems is often oscillatory, for example, the firing pattern of neuronal populations. Whereas these oscillations have been studied predominantly in local circuits, here we show how the topology of large-scale networks,…
Optimizing gait stability for legged robots is a difficult problem. Even on level surfaces, effectively traversing across different textures (e.g., carpet) rests on dynamically tuning parameters in multidimensional space. Inspired by…
Dung beetles impressively coordinate their six legs simultaneously to effectively roll large dung balls. They are also capable of rolling dung balls varying in the weight on different terrains. The mechanisms underlying how their motor…