Related papers: Robust Ladder Climbing with a Quadrupedal Robot
For legged robots to match the athletic capabilities of humans and animals, they must not only produce robust periodic walking and running, but also seamlessly switch between nominal locomotion gaits and more specialized transient…
Like mammals, robots must rapidly learn to control their bodies and interact with their environment despite incomplete knowledge of their body structure and surroundings. They must also adapt to continuous changes in both. This work…
We present a new open-source torque-controlled legged robot system, with a low-cost and low-complexity actuator module at its core. It consists of a high-torque brushless DC motor and a low-gear-ratio transmission suitable for impedance and…
Quadrupedal wheeled-legged robots combine the advantages of legged and wheeled locomotion to achieve superior mobility, but executing dynamic jumps remains a significant challenge due to the additional degrees of freedom introduced by…
Robotic systems need advanced mobility capabilities to operate in complex, three-dimensional environments designed for human use, e.g., multi-level buildings. Incorporating some level of autonomy enables robots to operate robustly,…
Quadrupedal robots are skillful at locomotion tasks while lacking manipulation skills, not to mention dexterous manipulation abilities. Inspired by the animal behavior and the duality between multi-legged locomotion and multi-fingered…
Legged robots leverage ground contacts and the reaction forces they provide to achieve agile locomotion. However, uncertainty coupled with contact discontinuities can lead to failure, especially in real-world environments with unexpected…
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…
Reinforcement learning (RL) has become a promising approach to developing controllers for quadrupedal robots. Conventionally, an RL design for locomotion follows a position-based paradigm, wherein an RL policy outputs target joint positions…
Legged robots are increasingly entering new domains and applications, including search and rescue, inspection, and logistics. However, for such systems to be valuable in real-world scenarios, they must be able to autonomously and robustly…
As both legged robots and embedded compute have become more capable, researchers have started to focus on field deployment of these robots. Robust autonomy in unstructured environments requires perception of the world around the robot in…
Multi-legged elongate robots hold promise for maneuvering through complex environments. Prior work has demonstrated that reliable locomotion can be achieved using open-loop body undulation and foot placement on rugose terrain. However,…
Adaptive control can address model uncertainty in control systems. However, it is preliminarily designed for tracking control. Recent advancements in the control of quadruped robots show that force control can effectively realize agile and…
Quadruped robots are becoming increasingly essential for various applications, including industrial inspection and catastrophe search and rescue. These scenarios require robots to possess enhanced agility and obstacle-navigation skills.…
With the research into development of quadruped robots picking up pace, learning based techniques are being explored for developing locomotion controllers for such robots. A key problem is to generate leg trajectories for continuously…
Robots have been critical instruments to space exploration by providing access to environments beyond human limitations. Jumping robot concepts are attractive solutions to negotiate complex terrain. However, among the engineering challenges…
Infrastructure inspection is becoming increasingly relevant in the field of robotics due to its significant impact on ensuring workers' safety. The harbor environment presents various challenges in designing a robotic solution for…
This paper introduces a chain-driven, sandwich-legged mid-size quadruped robot designed as an accessible research platform. The design prioritizes enhanced locomotion, improved actuation reliability and safety, and simplified,…
Quadrupedal robots show great potential for valuable real-world applications such as fire rescue and industrial inspection. Such applications often require urgency and the ability to navigate agilely, which in turn demands the capability to…
Representation learning and unsupervised skill discovery can allow robots to acquire diverse and reusable behaviors without the need for task-specific rewards. In this work, we use unsupervised reinforcement learning to learn a latent…