Related papers: Pretraining-finetuning Framework for Efficient Co-…
Parallel-elastic joints can improve the efficiency and strength of robots by assisting the actuators with additional torques. For these benefits to be realized, a spring needs to be carefully designed. However, designing robots is an…
Animals have evolved various agile locomotion strategies, such as sprinting, leaping, and jumping. There is a growing interest in developing legged robots that move like their biological counterparts and show various agile skills to…
In this paper, we present an efficient Dynamic Programing framework for optimal planning and control of legged robots. First we formulate this problem as an optimal control problem for switched systems. Then we propose a multi--level…
Parkour tasks for quadrupeds have emerged as a promising benchmark for agile locomotion. While human athletes can effectively perceive environmental characteristics to select appropriate footholds for obstacle traversal, endowing legged…
Taking inspiration from the natural gait transition mechanism of quadrupeds, devising a good gait transition strategy is important for quadruped robots to achieve energy-efficient locomotion on various terrains and velocities. While…
This paper presents a novel approach that combines the advantages of both model-based and learning-based frameworks to achieve robust locomotion. The residual modules are integrated with each corresponding part of the model-based framework,…
The process of robot design is a complex task and the majority of design decisions are still based on human intuition or tedious manual tuning. A more informed way of facing this task is computational design methods where design parameters…
This paper presents a novel methodology to model and optimize trajectories of a quadrupedal robot with spinal compliance to improve standing jump performance compared to quadrupeds with a rigid spine. We introduce an elastic model for a…
Legged robots are becoming increasingly agile in exhibiting dynamic behaviors such as running and jumping. Usually, such behaviors are either optimized and engineered offline (i.e. the behavior is designed for before it is needed), either…
Climbing, crouching, bridging gaps, and walking up stairs are just a few of the advantages that quadruped robots have over wheeled robots, making them more suitable for navigating rough and unstructured terrain. However, executing such…
Serially connected robots are promising candidates for performing tasks in confined spaces such as search-and-rescue in large-scale disasters. Such robots are typically limbless, and we hypothesize that the addition of limbs could improve…
Typical legged locomotion controllers are designed or trained offline. This is in contrast to many animals, which are able to locomote at birth, and rapidly improve their locomotion skills with few real-world interactions. Such motor…
While quadruped robots usually have good stability and load capacity, bipedal robots offer a higher level of flexibility / adaptability to different tasks and environments. A multi-modal legged robot can take the best of both worlds. In…
Parkour poses a significant challenge for legged robots, requiring navigation through complex environments with agility and precision based on limited sensory inputs. In this work, we introduce a novel method for training end-to-end visual…
Quadruped robots are designed to achieve agile and robust locomotion by drawing inspiration from legged animals. However, most existing control methods for quadruped robots lack a key capacity observed in animals: the ability to exhibit…
We present a footstep planning policy for quadrupedal locomotion that is able to directly take into consideration a-priori safety information in its decisions. At its core, a learning process analyzes terrain patches, classifying each…
Quadruped robots are often designed with rigid feet to simplify control and maintain stable contact during locomotion. While this approach is straightforward, it limits the ability of the legs to absorb impact forces and reuse stored…
Numerous locomotion controllers have been designed based on Reinforcement Learning (RL) to facilitate blind quadrupedal locomotion traversing challenging terrains. Nevertheless, locomotion control is still a challenging task for quadruped…
We present a versatile framework for the computational co-design of legged robots and dynamic maneuvers. Current state-of-the-art approaches are typically based on random sampling or concurrent optimization. We propose a novel bilevel…
The design (shape) of a robot is usually decided before the control is implemented. This might limit how well the design is adapted to a task, as the suitability of the design is given by how well the robot performs in the task, which…