Related papers: START: Traversing Sparse Footholds with Terrain Re…
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…
Quadrupedal locomotion over complex terrain has been a long-standing research topic in robotics. While recent reinforcement learning-based locomotion methods improve generalizability and foot-placement precision, they rely on implicit…
Legged robots can traverse a wide variety of terrains, some of which may be challenging for wheeled robots, such as stairs or highly uneven surfaces. However, quadruped robots face stability challenges on slippery surfaces. This can be…
Compact quadrupedal robots are proving increasingly suitable for deployment in real-world scenarios. Their smaller size fosters easy integration into human environments. Nevertheless, real-time locomotion on uneven terrains remains…
We focus on agile, continuous, and terrain-adaptive jumping of quadrupedal robots in discontinuous terrains such as stairs and stepping stones. Unlike single-step jumping, continuous jumping requires accurately executing highly dynamic…
Quadrupedal robots resemble the physical ability of legged animals to walk through unstructured terrains. However, designing a controller for quadrupedal robots poses a significant challenge due to their functional complexity and requires…
Running up stairs is effortless for humans but remains extremely challenging for humanoid robots due to the simultaneous requirements of high agility and strict stability. Model-free reinforcement learning (RL) can generate dynamic…
Quadrupedal mobile robots can traverse a wider range of terrain types than their wheeled counterparts but do not perform the same on all terrain types. These robots are prone to undesirable behaviours like sinking and slipping on…
Bipedal locomotion is a key challenge in robotics, particularly for robots like Bolt, which have a point-foot design. This study explores the control of such underactuated robots using constrained reinforcement learning, addressing their…
Sparse anchors provide a compact interface for human motion authoring: users specify a few root positions, planar trajectory samples, or body-point targets, while the system synthesizes the full-body motion that completes the…
(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…
Achieving safe quadrupedal locomotion in real-world environments has attracted much attention in recent years. When walking over uneven terrain, achieving reliable estimation and realising safety-critical control based on the obtained…
We consider the case in which a robot has to navigate in an unknown environment but does not have enough on-board power or payload to carry a traditional depth sensor (e.g., a 3D lidar) and thus can only acquire a few (point-wise) depth…
Legged robots must exhibit robust and agile locomotion across diverse, unstructured terrains, a challenge exacerbated under blind locomotion settings where terrain information is unavailable. This work introduces a hierarchical…
Reinforcement learning (RL) has shown great potential in enabling quadruped robots to perform agile locomotion. However, directly training policies to simultaneously handle dual extreme challenges, i.e., extreme underactuation and extreme…
In this paper, with a view toward fast deployment of locomotion gaits in low-cost hardware, we use a linear policy for realizing end-foot trajectories in the quadruped robot, Stoch $2$. In particular, the parameters of the end-foot…
To traverse complex scenarios reliably a legged robot needs to move its base aided by the ground reaction forces, which can only be generated by the legs that are momentarily in contact with the ground. A proper selection of footholds is…
Enabling robots to walk and run on yielding terrain is increasingly vital to endeavors ranging from disaster response to extraterrestrial exploration. While dynamic legged locomotion on rigid ground is challenging enough, yielding terrain…
Most locomotion methods for humanoid robots focus on leg-based gaits, yet natural bipeds frequently rely on hands, knees, and elbows to establish additional contacts for stability and support in complex environments. This paper introduces…
Standing-up control is crucial for humanoid robots, with the potential for integration into current locomotion and loco-manipulation systems, such as fall recovery. Existing approaches are either limited to simulations that overlook…