Related papers: Dynamic Posture Manipulation During Tumbling for C…
Locomotion is typically studied either in continuous media where bodies and legs experience forces generated by the flowing medium, or on solid substrates dominated by friction. In the former, centralized coordination is believed to…
We present a framework for dynamic quadrupedal locomotion over challenging terrain, where the choice of appropriate footholds is crucial for the success of the behaviour. We build a model of the environment on-line and on-board using an…
Terrestrial locomotion requires generating appropriate ground reaction forces which depend on substrate geometry and physical properties. The richness of positions and orientations of terrain features in the 3-D world gives limbless animals…
Despite advances in a diversity of environments, snake robots are still far behind snakes in traversing complex 3-D terrain with large obstacles. This is due to a lack of understanding of how to control 3-D body bending to push against…
Despite their remarkable advancement in locomotion and manipulation, humanoid robots remain challenged by a lack of synchronized loco-manipulation control, hindering their full dynamic potential. In this work, we introduce a versatile and…
Limbless organisms such as snakes can navigate nearly all terrain. In particular, desert-dwelling sidewinder rattlesnakes (Crotalus cerastes) operate effectively on inclined granular media (such as sand dunes) that induce failure in…
A cable-driven soft-bodied robot with redundancy can conduct the trajectory tracking task and in the meanwhile fulfill some extra constraints, such as tracking through an end-effector in designated orientation, or get rid of the evitable…
This paper presents a method for guiding a robot manipulator to capture and bring a tumbling satellite to a state of rest. The proposed approach includes developing a coordination control for the combined system of the space robot and the…
In nature, a variety of limbless locomotion patterns flourish from the small or basic life form (Escherichia coli, the amoeba, etc.) to the large or intelligent creatures (e.g., slugs, starfishes, earthworms, octopuses, jellyfishes, and…
The pursuit-evasion game is studied for two adversarial active agents, modelled as a deterministic self-steering pursuer and a stochastic, cognitive evader. The pursuer chases the evader by reorienting its propulsion direction with limited…
Reinforcement learning (RL) has enabled robust quadruped locomotion over complex terrain, but most learned controllers are trained offline with backpropagation in massively parallel simulation and deployed as fixed policies, limiting…
This paper proposes a novel learning-based control policy with strong generalizability to new environments that enables a mobile robot to navigate autonomously through spaces filled with both static obstacles and dense crowds of…
Subterranean burrowing is inherently difficult for robots because of the high forces experienced as well as the high amount of uncertainty in this domain. Because of the difficulty in modeling forces in granular media, we propose the use of…
Mobility on asteroids by multi-limbed climbing robots is expected to achieve our exploration goals in such challenging environments. We propose a mobility strategy to improve the locomotion safety of climbing robots in such harsh…
Animals achieve robust locomotion by offloading regulation from the brain to physical couplings within the body. In contrast, locomotion in artificial systems often depends on centralized processors. We introduce a rapid and autonomous…
Loco-manipulation of quadrupedal robots has broadened robotic applications, but using legs as manipulators often compromises locomotion, while mounting arms complicates the system. To mitigate this issue, we introduce bipedalism for…
The 3D flight control of a flapping wing robot is a very challenging problem. The robot stabilizes and controls its pose through the aerodynamic forces acting on the wing membrane which has complex dynamics and it is difficult to develop a…
Bristle bots are vibration-driven robots actuated by the motion of an internal oscillating mass. Vibrations are translated into directed locomotion due to the alternating friction resistance between robots' bristles and the substrate during…
We propose a control framework that integrates model-based bipedal locomotion with residual reinforcement learning (RL) to achieve robust and adaptive walking in the presence of real-world uncertainties. Our approach leverages a model-based…
Active processes in living systems generate nonequilibrium forces that deform embedded passive macromolecules. To understand how such dynamics influence polymer conformation, we study a flexible passive chain in an active nematic fluid.…