Related papers: MOVE: Multi-skill Omnidirectional Legged Locomotio…
Recent progress in legged locomotion has allowed highly dynamic and parkour-like behaviors for robots, similar to their biological counterparts. Yet, these methods mostly rely on egocentric (first-person) perception, limiting their…
Animals are capable of precise and agile locomotion using vision. Replicating this ability has been a long-standing goal in robotics. The traditional approach has been to decompose this problem into elevation mapping and foothold planning…
Legged robots that can operate autonomously in remote and hazardous environments will greatly increase opportunities for exploration into under-explored areas. Exteroceptive perception is crucial for fast and energy-efficient locomotion:…
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…
Quadrupedal robots hold promising potential for applications in navigating cluttered environments with resilience akin to their animal counterparts. However, their floating base configuration makes them vulnerable to real-world…
We exploit the complementary strengths of vision and proprioception to develop a point-goal navigation system for legged robots, called VP-Nav. Legged systems are capable of traversing more complex terrain than wheeled robots, but to fully…
Agile locomotion in complex 3D environments requires robust spatial awareness to safely avoid diverse obstacles such as aerial clutter, uneven terrain, and dynamic agents. Depth-based perception approaches often struggle with sensor noise,…
Traversing 3-D complex environments has always been a significant challenge for legged locomotion. Existing methods typically rely on external sensors such as vision and lidar to preemptively react to obstacles by acquiring environmental…
Vision-based locomotion has shown great promise in enabling legged robots to perceive and adapt to complex environments. However, visual information is inherently fragile, being vulnerable to occlusions, reflections, and lighting changes,…
In vegetated environments, such as forests, exploratory robots play a vital role in navigating complex, cluttered environments where human access is limited and traditional equipment struggles. Visual occlusion from obstacles, such as…
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.…
Dynamic locomotion of legged robots is a critical yet challenging topic in expanding the operational range of mobile robots. It requires precise planning when possible footholds are sparse, robustness against uncertainties and disturbances,…
Compact quadrupedal robots are proving increasingly suitable for deployment in real-world scenarios. Their smaller size fosters easy integration into human environments. Nevertheless, real-time locomotion on uneven terrains remains…
To proactively navigate and traverse various terrains, active use of visual perception becomes indispensable. We aim to investigate the feasibility and performance of using sparse visual observations to achieve perceptual locomotion over a…
Recent advances of locomotion controllers utilizing deep reinforcement learning (RL) have yielded impressive results in terms of achieving rapid and robust locomotion across challenging terrain, such as rugged rocks, non-rigid ground, and…
Some of the most challenging environments on our planet are accessible to quadrupedal animals but remain out of reach for autonomous machines. Legged locomotion can dramatically expand the operational domains of robotics. However,…
Despite the progress in legged robotic locomotion, autonomous navigation in unknown environments remains an open problem. Ideally, the navigation system utilizes the full potential of the robots' locomotion capabilities while operating…
Traversing risky terrains with sparse footholds presents significant challenges for legged robots, requiring precise foot placement in safe areas. To acquire comprehensive exteroceptive information, prior studies have employed motion…
Recent advancements in legged robot perceptive locomotion have shown promising progress. However, terrain-aware humanoid locomotion remains largely constrained to two paradigms: depth image-based end-to-end learning and elevation map-based…
Limitations in actuation, sensing, and computation have forced small legged robots to rely on carefully tuned, mechanically mediated leg trajectories for effective locomotion. Recent advances in manufacturing, however, have enabled the…