Related papers: Terrain Classification for the Spot Quadrupedal Mo…
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…
Little research into tactile feet has been done for walking robots despite the benefits such feedback could give when walking on uneven terrain. This paper describes the development of a simple, robust and inexpensive tactile foot for…
Snake robots have the potential to maneuver through tightly packed and complex environments. One challenge in enabling them to do so is the complexity in determining how to coordinate their many degrees-of-freedom to create purposeful…
Quadruped robots are currently a widespread platform for robotics research, thanks to powerful Reinforcement Learning controllers and the availability of cheap and robust commercial platforms. However, to broaden the adoption of the…
To dynamically traverse challenging terrain, legged robots need to continually perceive and reason about upcoming features, adjust the locations and timings of future footfalls and leverage momentum strategically. We present a pipeline that…
This paper proposes a novel framework for utilizing skin sensors as a new operation interface of complex robots. The skin sensors employed in this study possess the capability to quantify multimodal tactile information at multiple contact…
Quadruped robots are proliferating in industrial environments where they carry sensor payloads and serve as autonomous inspection platforms. Despite the advantages of legged robots over their wheeled counterparts on rough and uneven…
Multi-legged mobile robots possess high mobility performance in rough terrain environments, stemming from their high postural stability, joint flexibility, and the redundancy provided by multiple legs. In prior research on navigating…
For full-size humanoid robots, even with recent advances in reinforcement learning-based control, achieving reliable locomotion on complex terrains, such as long staircases, remains challenging. In such settings, limited perception,…
Road detection or traversability analysis has been a key technique for a mobile robot to traverse complex off-road scenes. The problem has been mainly formulated in early works as a binary classification one, e.g. associating pixels with…
We propose a novel method for autonomous legged robot navigation in densely vegetated environments with a variety of pliable/traversable and non-pliable/untraversable vegetation. We present a novel few-shot learning classifier that can be…
Navigating cluttered environments is a challenging task for any mobile system. Existing approaches for ground-based mobile systems primarily focus on small wheeled robots, which face minimal constraints with overhanging obstacles and cannot…
In contrast to quadruped robots that can navigate diverse terrains using a "blind" policy, humanoid robots require accurate perception for stable locomotion due to their high degrees of freedom and inherently unstable morphology. However,…
In this paper we focus on the challenging problem of place categorization and semantic mapping on a robot without environment-specific training. Motivated by their ongoing success in various visual recognition tasks, we build our system…
We present a unified model-based and data-driven approach for quadrupedal planning and control to achieve dynamic locomotion over uneven terrain. We utilize on-board proprioceptive and exteroceptive feedback to map sensory information and…
In this paper, we propose an efficient contact planner for quadrupedal robots to navigate in extremely constrained environments such as stepping stones. The main difficulty in this setting stems from the mixed nature of the problem, namely…
In this paper, we focus on motion estimation dedicated for non-holonomic ground robots, by probabilistically fusing measurements from the wheel odometer and exteroceptive sensors. For ground robots, the wheel odometer is widely used in pose…
This paper shows analytical and experimental evidence of using the vibration dynamics of a compliant whisker for accurate terrain classification during steady state motion of a mobile robot. A Hall effect sensor was used to measure whisker…
Wheeled robots have recently demonstrated superior mechanical capability to traverse vertically challenging terrain (e.g., extremely rugged boulders comparable in size to the vehicles themselves). Negotiating such terrain introduces…
Traversability estimation is critical for enabling robots to navigate across diverse terrains and environments. While recent self-supervised learning methods achieve promising results, they often fail to capture the characteristics of…