Related papers: LocoTouch: Learning Dynamic Quadrupedal Transport …
Quadrupedal robots show great potential for valuable real-world applications such as fire rescue and industrial inspection. Such applications often require urgency and the ability to navigate agilely, which in turn demands the capability to…
The popularity of mobile robots has been steadily growing, with these robots being increasingly utilized to execute tasks previously completed by human workers. For bipedal robots to see this same success, robust autonomous navigation…
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…
Quadruped robots have made significant advances in locomotion, extending their capabilities from controlled environments to real-world applications. Beyond movement, recent work has explored loco-manipulation using the legs to perform tasks…
In robots, nonprehensile manipulation operations such as pushing are a useful way of moving large, heavy or unwieldy objects, moving multiple objects at once, or reducing uncertainty in the location or pose of objects. In this study, we…
Reinforcement learning (RL) for bipedal locomotion has recently demonstrated robust gaits over moderate terrains using only proprioceptive sensing. However, such blind controllers will fail in environments where robots must anticipate and…
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…
Tactile perception is an essential ability of intelligent robots in interaction with their surrounding environments. This perception as an intermediate level acts between sensation and action and has to be defined properly to generate…
In nature, legged animals have developed the ability to adapt to challenging terrains through perception, allowing them to plan safe body and foot trajectories in advance, which leads to safe and energy-efficient locomotion. Inspired by…
While quadruped robots usually have good stability and load capacity, bipedal robots offer a higher level of flexibility / adaptability to different tasks and environments. A multi-modal legged robot can take the best of both worlds. In…
(Simplified Abstract) To accomplish breakthroughs in dynamic whole-body locomotion, legged robots have to be terrain aware. Terrain-Aware Locomotion (TAL) implies that the robot can perceive the terrain with its sensors, and can take…
Performing agile navigation with four-legged robots is a challenging task due to the highly dynamic motions, contacts with various parts of the robot, and the limited field of view of the perception sensors. In this paper, we propose a…
Advanced dexterous manipulation involving multiple simultaneous contacts across different surfaces, like pinching coins from ground or manipulating intertwined objects, remains challenging for robotic systems. Such tasks exceed the…
The ability of bipedal robots to adapt to diverse and unstructured terrain conditions is crucial for their deployment in real-world environments. To this end, we present a novel, bio-inspired robot foot design with stabilizing tarsal…
Loco-manipulation planning skills are pivotal for expanding the utility of robots in everyday environments. These skills can be assessed based on a system's ability to coordinate complex holistic movements and multiple contact interactions…
Robot skill acquisition processes driven by reinforcement learning often rely on simulations to efficiently generate large-scale interaction data. However, the absence of simulation models for tactile sensors has hindered the use of tactile…
We present an open-source untethered quadrupedal soft robot platform for dynamic locomotion (e.g., high-speed running and backflipping). The robot is mostly soft (80 vol.%) while driven by four geared servo motors. The robot's soft body and…
In this paper, we propose a robust controller that achieves natural and stably fast locomotion on a real blind quadruped robot. With only proprioceptive information, the quadruped robot can move at a maximum speed of 10 times its body…
In this paper, we present a framework rooted in control and planning that enables quadrupedal robots to traverse challenging terrains with discrete footholds using visual feedback. Navigating discrete terrain is challenging for quadrupeds…
Real-world contact-rich manipulation demands robots to perceive temporal tactile feedback, capture subtle surface deformations, and reason about object properties as well as force dynamics. Although optical tactile sensors are uniquely…