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Complex and even chaotic dynamics, though prevalent in many natural and engineered systems, has been largely avoided in the design of electromechanical systems due to concerns about wear and controlability. Here, we demonstrate that complex…

We present an efficient algorithm for motion planning and control of a robot system with a high number of degrees-of-freedom. These include high-DOF soft robots or an articulated robot interacting with a deformable environment. Our approach…

We study vertical jumping in a simple robot comprising an actuated mass-spring arrangement. The actuator frequency and phase are systematically varied to find optimal performance. Optimal jumps occur above and below (but not at) the robot's…

Controlling large-scale particle or robot systems is challenging because of their high dimensionality. We use a centralized stochastic approach that allows for optimal control at the cost of a central element instead of a decentralized…

Wheeled bipedal robots have garnered increasing attention in exploration and inspection. However, most research simplifies calculations by ignoring leg dynamics, thereby restricting the robot's full motion potential. Additionally, robots…

The deformable and continuum nature of soft robots promises versatility and adaptability. However, control of modular, multi-limbed soft robots for terrestrial locomotion is challenging due to the complex robot structure, actuator mechanics…

This work explores the effect of object weight on human motion and grip release during handovers to enhance the naturalness, safety, and efficiency of robot-human interactions. We introduce adaptive robotic strategies based on the analysis…

Our goal is to enable robots to \emph{time} their motion in a way that is purposefully expressive of their internal states, making them more transparent to people. We start by investigating what types of states motion timing is capable of…

This paper presents an approach to externally influencing a team of robots by means of time-varying density functions. These density functions represent rough references for where the robots should be located. To this end, a continuous-time…

This study is aimed at addressing the problem of fault tolerance of quadruped robots to actuator failure, which is critical for robots operating in remote or extreme environments. In particular, an adaptive curriculum reinforcement learning…

This study is part of research aiming at increasing the range of dynamic tasks for teleoperated field robotics in order to allow operators to use the full range of human motions without being limited by the dynamics of the robotic…

This paper presents a -- Learning from Demonstration -- method to perform robot movement trajectories that can be defined as you go. This way unstructured tasks can be performed, without the need to know exactly all the tasks and start and…

Quadruped robots face limitations in long-range navigation efficiency due to their reliance on legs. To ameliorate the limitations, we introduce a Reinforcement Learning-based Active Transporter Riding method (\textit{RL-ATR}), inspired by…

For locomotion, is an arm on a legged robot a liability or an asset for locomotion? Biological systems evolved additional limbs beyond legs that facilitates postural control. This work shows how a manipulator can be an asset for legged…

Soft robotics aims to develop robots able to adapt their behavior across a wide range of unstructured and unknown environments. A critical challenge of soft robotic control is that nonlinear dynamics often result in complex behaviors hard…

This study presents an innovative approach to optimal gait control for a soft quadruped robot enabled by four Compressible Tendon-driven Soft Actuators (CTSAs). Improving our previous studies of using model-free reinforcement learning for…

In this paper, a reinforced soft robot prototype with a custom-designed actuator-space string encoder are created to investigate dynamic soft robotic trajectory tracking. The soft robot prototype embedded with the proposed adaptive…

Terrestrial animals and robots are susceptible to flipping-over during rapid locomotion in complex terrains. However, small robots are less capable of self-righting from an upside-down orientation compared to small animals like insects.…

The field of physical human-robot interaction has dramatically evolved in the last decades. As a result, the robotic system's requirements have become more challenging, including personalized behavior for different tasks and users. Various…

Dynamic balancing under uncertain disturbances is important for a humanoid robot, which requires a good capability of coordinating the entire body redundancy to execute multi tasks. Whole-body control (WBC) based on hierarchical…