Related papers: RAMBO: RL-Augmented Model-Based Whole-Body Control…
Humans' ability to smoothly switch between locomotion and manipulation is a remarkable feature of sensorimotor coordination. Leaning and replication of such human-like strategies can lead to the development of more sophisticated robots…
Recent progress in legged locomotion has rendered quadruped manipulators a promising solution for performing tasks that require both mobility and manipulation (loco-manipulation). In the real world, task specifications and/or environment…
Off-road navigation on vertically challenging terrain, involving steep slopes and rugged boulders, presents significant challenges for wheeled robots both at the planning level to achieve smooth collision-free trajectories and at the…
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…
Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a method for learning decision-making tasks that could enable robots to learn and adapt to their situation on-line. For an RL algorithm to be practical for robotic control tasks, it must learn in very few…
Designing control policies for legged locomotion is complex due to the under-actuated and non-continuous robot dynamics. Model-free reinforcement learning provides promising tools to tackle this challenge. However, a major bottleneck of…
Whole-body manipulation (WBM) for humanoid robots presents a promising approach for executing embracing tasks involving bulky objects, where traditional grasping relying on end-effectors only remains limited in such scenarios due to…
Reinforcement Learning (RL) has achieved impressive results in robotics, yet high-performing pipelines remain highly task-specific, with little reuse of prior data. Offline Model-based RL (MBRL) offers greater data efficiency by training…
Legged locomotion is a complex control problem that requires both accuracy and robustness to cope with real-world challenges. Legged systems have traditionally been controlled using trajectory optimization with inverse dynamics. Such…
Robotic collaborative carrying could greatly benefit human activities like warehouse and construction site management. However, coordinating the simultaneous motion of multiple robots represents a significant challenge. Existing works…
Advancing the dynamic loco-manipulation capabilities of quadruped robots in complex terrains is crucial for performing diverse tasks. Specifically, dynamic ball manipulation in rugged environments presents two key challenges. The first is…
Unknown dynamic load carrying is one important practical application for quadruped robots. Such a problem is non-trivial, posing three major challenges in quadruped locomotion control. First, how to model or represent the dynamics of the…
The ball-balancing robot (ballbot) is a good platform to test the effectiveness of a balancing controller. Considering balancing control, conventional model-based feedback control methods have been widely used. However, contacts and…
We propose a learning-based system for enabling quadrupedal robots to manipulate large, heavy objects using their whole body. Our system is based on a hierarchical control strategy that uses the deep latent variable embedding which captures…
Deep Reinforcement Learning techniques are achieving state-of-the-art results in robust legged locomotion. While there exists a wide variety of legged platforms such as quadruped, humanoids, and hexapods, the field is still missing a single…
We propose a robust dynamic walking controller consisting of a dynamic locomotion planner, a reinforcement learning process for robustness, and a novel whole-body locomotion controller (WBLC). Previous approaches specify either the position…
Developing robust locomotion controllers for bipedal robots with closed kinematic chains presents unique challenges, particularly since most reinforcement learning (RL) approaches simplify these parallel mechanisms into serial models during…
We present a scalable framework for cross-embodiment humanoid robot control by learning a shared latent representation that unifies motion across humans and diverse humanoid platforms, including single-arm, dual-arm, and legged humanoid…
Soft robots are distinguished by their flexibility and adaptability, allowing them to perform nearly impossible tasks for rigid robots. However, controlling their behavior is challenging due to their nonlinear material response and infinite…
This paper presents a novel model-free reinforcement learning (RL) framework to design feedback control policies for 3D bipedal walking. Existing RL algorithms are often trained in an end-to-end manner or rely on prior knowledge of some…