Related papers: Agile legged locomotion in reconfigurable modular …

Some animals exhibit multi-modal locomotion capability to traverse a wide range of terrains and environments, such as amphibians that can swim and walk or birds that can fly and walk. This capability is extremely beneficial for expanding…

Robots will become ubiquitously useful only when they can use few attempts to teach themselves to perform different tasks, even with complex bodies and in dynamical environments. Vertebrates, in fact, successfully use trial-and-error to…

Re-configurable robots have more utility and flexibility for many real-world tasks. Designing a learning agent to operate such robots requires adapting to different configurations. Here, we focus on robotic arms with multiple rigid links…

Modular robots can be reconfigured to create a variety of designs from a small set of components. But constructing a robot's hardware on its own is not enough -- each robot needs a controller. One could create controllers for some designs…

The functional demands of robotic systems often require completing various tasks or behaviors under the effect of disturbances or uncertain environments. Of increasing interest is the autonomy for dynamic robots, such as multirotors, motor…

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 designed to achieve agile and robust locomotion by drawing inspiration from legged animals. However, most existing control methods for quadruped robots lack a key capacity observed in animals: the ability to exhibit…

Animals, such as birds, widely use multi-modal locomotion by combining legged and aerial mobility with dominant inertial effects. The robotic biomimicry of this multi-modal locomotion feat can yield ultra-flexible systems in terms of their…

Legged robots traversing in confined environments could find their only path is blocked by obstacles. In circumstances where the obstacles are movable, a multilegged robot can manipulate the obstacles using its legs to allow it to continue…

This chapter is about the fundamentals of fabrication, control, and human-robot interaction of a new type of collaborative robotic manipulators, called malleable robots, which are based on adjustable architectures of varying stiffness for…

Generating dynamic motions for legged robots remains a challenging problem. While reinforcement learning has achieved notable success in various legged locomotion tasks, producing highly dynamic behaviors often requires extensive reward…

Successful real-world deployment of legged robots would require them to adapt in real-time to unseen scenarios like changing terrains, changing payloads, wear and tear. This paper presents Rapid Motor Adaptation (RMA) algorithm to solve…

Recent work has shown results on learning navigation policies for idealized cylinder agents in simulation and transferring them to real wheeled robots. Deploying such navigation policies on legged robots can be challenging due to their…

Contemporary sensorimotor learning approaches typically start with an existing complex agent (e.g., a robotic arm), which they learn to control. In contrast, this paper investigates a modular co-evolution strategy: a collection of primitive…

For locomotion, is an arm on a legged robot a liability or an asset for locomotion? Biological systems evolved additional limbs beyond legs that facilitates postural control. This work shows how a manipulator can be an asset for legged…

Passive elastic elements can contribute to stability, energetic efficiency, and impact absorption in both biological and robotic systems. They also add dynamical complexity which makes them more challenging to model and control. The impact…

Legged robots have the ability to adapt their walking posture to navigate confined spaces due to their high degrees of freedom. However, this has not been exploited in most common multilegged platforms. This paper presents a deformable…

Robotics plays a pivotal role in planetary science and exploration, where autonomous and reliable systems are crucial due to the risks and challenges inherent to space environments. The establishment of permanent lunar bases demands robotic…

Miniature robots provide unprecedented access to confined environments and show promising potential for novel applications such as search-and-rescue and high-value asset inspection. The capability of body deformation further enhances the…

While the animals' Fin-to-Limb evolution has been well-researched in biology, such morphological transformation remains under-adopted in the modern design of advanced robotic limbs. This paper investigates a novel class of overconstrained…