Related papers: Soft Adaptive Feet for Legged Robots: An Open-Sour…
In this paper, with a view toward deployment of light-weight control frameworks for bipedal walking robots, we realize end-foot trajectories that are shaped by a single linear feedback policy. We learn this policy via a model-free and a…
Passive deformation due to compliance is a commonly used benefit of soft robots, providing opportunities to achieve robust actuation with few active degrees of freedom. Soft growing robots in particular have shown promise in navigation of…
As a single-track mobile platform, bikebot (i.e., bicycle-based robot) has attractive navigation capability to pass through narrow, off-road terrain with high-speed and high-energy efficiency. However, running crossing step-like obstacles…
Soft robots have found extensive applications in the medical field, particularly in rehabilitation exercises, assisted grasping, and artificial organs. Despite significant advancements in simulating various components of the digestive…
Humanoid robots are envisioned as general-purpose platforms in human-centered environments, yet their deployment is limited by vulnerability to falls and the risks posed by rigid metal-plastic structures to people and surroundings. We…
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…
Humanoid robots deployed in industrial environments are required to perform load-carrying transportation tasks that tightly couple locomotion and manipulation. However, achieving stable and robust locomotion under varying payloads and…
To construct a robot that can walk as efficiently and steadily as humans or other legged animals, we develop an enhanced elitist-mutated ant colony optimization~(EACO) algorithm with genetic and crossover operators in real-time applications…
The co-adaptation of robots has been a long-standing research endeavour with the goal of adapting both body and behaviour of a system for a given task, inspired by the natural evolution of animals. Co-adaptation has the potential to…
Achieving effective locomotion on diverse terrestrial substrates can require subtle changes of limb kinematics. Biologically inspired legged robots (physical models of organisms) have shown impressive mobility on hard ground but suffer…
Humanoids are versatile robotic platforms owing to their limbs with multiple degrees of freedom. Although humanoids can walk like humans, they are relatively slow, and cannot run over large barriers. To address these limitations, we aim to…
In lunar and planetary exploration, legged robots have attracted significant attention as an alternative to conventional wheeled robots, which struggle to traverse rough and uneven terrain. To enable locomotion over highly irregular and…
Legged robots carry an IMU, but the inertial solution drifts because consumer-grade IMUs are noisy. However, the feet create intermittent contacts with the environment that can be used to mitigate that drift. This report develops a sequence…
Although wheeled robots have been predominant for planetary exploration, their geometry limits their capabilities when traveling over steep slopes, through rocky terrains, and in microgravity. Legged robots equipped with grippers are a…
Teaching an anthropomorphic robot from human example offers the opportunity to impart humanlike qualities on its movement. In this work we present a reinforcement learning based method for teaching a real world bipedal robot to perform…
The humanoid robot iCub is a research platform of the Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), spread among different institutes around the world. In the most recent version of iCub, the robot is equipped with stronger legs and…
Legged robots have the potential to traverse complex terrain and access confined spaces beyond the reach of traditional platforms thanks to their ability to carefully select footholds and flexibly adapt their body posture while walking.…
Animals use limbs for both locomotion and manipulation. We aim to equip quadruped robots with similar versatility. This work introduces a system that enables quadruped robots to interact with objects using their legs, inspired by…
Quadrupedal locomotion over complex terrain has been a long-standing research topic in robotics. While recent reinforcement learning-based locomotion methods improve generalizability and foot-placement precision, they rely on implicit…
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…