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Animals are capable of precise and agile locomotion using vision. Replicating this ability has been a long-standing goal in robotics. The traditional approach has been to decompose this problem into elevation mapping and foothold planning…
Legged robots that can operate autonomously in remote and hazardous environments will greatly increase opportunities for exploration into under-explored areas. Exteroceptive perception is crucial for fast and energy-efficient locomotion:…
Traversing risky terrains with sparse footholds presents significant challenges for legged robots, requiring precise foot placement in safe areas. To acquire comprehensive exteroceptive information, prior studies have employed motion…
Recent progress in legged locomotion has allowed highly dynamic and parkour-like behaviors for robots, similar to their biological counterparts. Yet, these methods mostly rely on egocentric (first-person) perception, limiting their…
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 exploit the complementary strengths of vision and proprioception to develop a point-goal navigation system for legged robots, called VP-Nav. Legged systems are capable of traversing more complex terrain than wheeled robots, but to fully…
Dynamic locomotion of legged robots is a critical yet challenging topic in expanding the operational range of mobile robots. It requires precise planning when possible footholds are sparse, robustness against uncertainties and disturbances,…
Recent advancements in legged robot perceptive locomotion have shown promising progress. However, terrain-aware humanoid locomotion remains largely constrained to two paradigms: depth image-based end-to-end learning and elevation map-based…
(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…
Quadrupedal robots hold promising potential for applications in navigating cluttered environments with resilience akin to their animal counterparts. However, their floating base configuration makes them vulnerable to real-world…
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,…
Current approaches to humanoid control generally fall into two paradigms: perceptive locomotion, which handles terrain well but is limited to pedal gaits, and general motion tracking, which reproduces complex skills but ignores…
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…
To proactively navigate and traverse various terrains, active use of visual perception becomes indispensable. We aim to investigate the feasibility and performance of using sparse visual observations to achieve perceptual locomotion over a…
Legged robots possess inherent advantages in traversing complex 3D terrains. However, previous work on low-cost quadruped robots with egocentric vision systems has been limited by a narrow front-facing view and exteroceptive noise,…
Vision-based locomotion has shown great promise in enabling legged robots to perceive and adapt to complex environments. However, visual information is inherently fragile, being vulnerable to occlusions, reflections, and lighting changes,…
Legged robots leverage ground contacts and the reaction forces they provide to achieve agile locomotion. However, uncertainty coupled with contact discontinuities can lead to failure, especially in real-world environments with unexpected…
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…
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…
Humans possess delicate dynamic balance mechanisms that enable them to maintain stability across diverse terrains and under extreme conditions. However, despite significant advances recently, existing locomotion algorithms for humanoid…