Related papers: Agile legged locomotion in reconfigurable modular …
Biological lifeforms can heal, grow, adapt, and reproduce -- abilities essential for sustained survival and development. In contrast, robots today are primarily monolithic machines with limited ability to self-repair, physically develop, or…
Humanoid robots are made to resemble humans but their locomotion abilities are far from ours in terms of agility and versatility. When humans walk on complex terrains, or face external disturbances, they combine a set of strategies,…
As robots leave the controlled environments of factories to autonomously function in more complex, natural environments, they will have to respond to the inevitable fact that they will become damaged. However, while animals can quickly…
In this paper, we describe an approach to achieve dynamic legged locomotion on physical robots which combines existing methods for control with reinforcement learning. Specifically, our goal is a control hierarchy in which highest-level…
Complex multibody legged robots can have complex rotational control challenges. In this paper, we propose a concise way to understand and formulate a \emph{whole-body orientation} that (i) depends on system configuration only and not a…
Adaptive morphogenetic robots adapt their morphology and control policies to meet changing tasks and environmental conditions. Many such systems leverage soft components, which enable shape morphing but also introduce simulation and control…
In this paper, we propose a novel design of an electrically actuated robotic leg, called the DecARt (Decoupled Actuation Robot) Leg, aimed at performing agile locomotion. This design incorporates several new features, such as the use of a…
Modular Self-Reconfigurable Robot (MSRR) systems are a class of robots capable of forming higher-level robotic systems by altering the topological relationships between modules, offering enhanced adaptability and robustness in various…
Robotic systems operating in unstructured environments require the ability to switch between compliant and rigid states to perform diverse tasks such as adaptive grasping, high-force manipulation, shape holding, and navigation in…
Robots are notoriously difficult to design because of complex interdependencies between their physical structure, sensory and motor layouts, and behavior. Despite this, almost every detail of every robot built to date has been manually…
We present a versatile framework for the computational co-design of legged robots and dynamic maneuvers. Current state-of-the-art approaches are typically based on random sampling or concurrent optimization. We propose a novel bilevel…
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…
Symmetry manifests itself in legged locomotion in a variety of ways. No matter where a legged system begins to move periodically, the torso and limbs coordinate with each other's movements in a similar manner. Also, in many gaits observed…
We provide an algorithm for adaptive legged locomotion via online learning and model predictive control. The algorithm is composed of two interacting modules: model predictive control (MPC) and online learning of residual dynamics. The…
We show dynamic locomotion strategies for wheeled quadrupedal robots, which combine the advantages of both walking and driving. The developed optimization framework tightly integrates the additional degrees of freedom introduced by the…
We propose a mechanically simple and cheap design for a series elastic actuator with controllable stiffness. Such characteristics are necessary for animals for running, jumping, throwing, and manipulation, yet in robots, variable stiffness…
Model-free reinforcement learning is a promising approach for autonomously solving challenging robotics control problems, but faces exploration difficulty without information of the robot's kinematics and dynamics morphology. The…
Modular robotics research has long been preoccupied with perfecting the modules themselves -- their actuation methods, connectors, controls, communication, and fabrication. This inward focus results, in part, from the complexity of the task…
Wheel-legged robots combine the efficiency of wheeled locomotion with the versatility of legged systems, enabling rapid traversal over both continuous and discrete terrains. However, conventional designs typically employ fixed wheels as…
We are considering the geometric amoebot model where a set of $n$ amoebots is placed on the triangular grid. An amoebot is able to send information to its neighbors, and to move via expansions and contractions. Since amoebots and…