Related papers: Watch Your STEPP: Semantic Traversability Estimati…
Terrain traversability analysis plays a major role in ensuring safe robotic navigation in unstructured environments. However, real-time constraints frequently limit the accuracy of online tests especially in scenarios where realistic…
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…
Although haptic sensing has recently been used for legged robot localization in extreme environments where a camera or LiDAR might fail, the problem of efficiently representing the haptic signatures in a learned prior map is still open.…
Obstacle avoidance from monocular images is a challenging problem for robots. Though multi-view structure-from-motion could build 3D maps, it is not robust in textureless environments. Some learning based methods exploit human demonstration…
Being able to estimate the traversability of the area surrounding a mobile robot is a fundamental task in the design of a navigation algorithm. However, the task is often complex, since it requires evaluating distances from obstacles, type…
Autonomous navigation in unstructured vegetated environments remains an open challenge. To successfully operate in these settings, ground vehicles must assess the traversability of the environment and determine which vegetation is pliable…
Autonomous navigation in extreme mountainous terrains poses challenges due to the presence of mobility-stressing elements and undulating surfaces, making it particularly difficult compared to conventional off-road driving scenarios. In such…
Autonomous navigation in unstructured environments requires robots to assess terrain difficulty in real-time and plan paths that balance efficiency with safety. This thesis presents a traversability-aware navigation framework for the M4…
For autonomous driving, traversability analysis is one of the most basic and essential tasks. In this paper, we propose a novel LiDAR-based terrain modeling approach, which could output stable, complete and accurate terrain models and…
This paper introduces the Terrain Recognition And Contact Force Estimation Paw, a compact and sensorized shoe designed for legged robots. The paw end-effector is made of silicon that deforms upon the application of contact forces, while an…
We present a method that uses high-resolution topography data of rough terrain, and ground vehicle simulation, to predict traversability. Traversability is expressed as three independent measures: the ability to traverse the terrain at a…
Scene graphs enhance 3D mapping capabilities in robotics by understanding the relationships between different spatial elements, such as rooms and objects. Recent research extends scene graphs to hierarchical layers, adding and leveraging…
The emerging ``Floor plan from human trails (PfH)" technique has great potential for improving indoor robot navigation by predicting the traversability of occluded floors. This study presents an innovative approach that replaces…
Terrain awareness, i.e., the ability to identify and distinguish different types of terrain, is a critical ability that robots must have to succeed at autonomous off-road navigation. Current approaches that provide robots with this…
Dynamic bipedal walking on discrete terrain, like stepping stones, is a challenging problem requiring feedback controllers to enforce safety-critical constraints. To enforce such constraints in real-world experiments, fast and accurate…
Navigating densely vegetated environments poses significant challenges for autonomous ground vehicles. Learning-based systems typically use prior and in-situ data to predict terrain traversability but often degrade in performance when…
Identifying the physical properties of the surrounding environment is essential for robotic locomotion and navigation to deal with non-geometric hazards, such as slippery and deformable terrains. It would be of great benefit for robots to…
Autonomous off-road navigation requires robots to estimate terrain traversability from onboard sensors and plan motion accordingly. Conventional approaches typically rely on sampling-based planners such as MPPI to generate short-term…
One of the fundamental challenges in realizing the potential of legged robots is generating plans to traverse challenging terrains. Control actions must be carefully selected so the robot will not crash or slip. The high dimensionality of…
Bipedal robots have advantages in maneuvering human-centered environments, but face greater failure risk compared to other stable mobile platforms such as wheeled or quadrupedal robots. While learning-based traversability has been widely…