Related papers: Terrain characterization and locomotion adaptation…
Humanoid robots can, in principle, use their legs to go almost anywhere. Developing controllers capable of traversing diverse terrains, however, remains a considerable challenge. Classical controllers are hard to generalize broadly while…
Legged locomotion shows promise for running in complex, unstructured environments. Designing such legged robots requires considering heterogeneous, multi-domain constraints and variables, from mechanical hardware and geometry choices to…
Autonomous mobile robots operating in remote, unstructured environments must adapt to new, unpredictable terrains that can change rapidly during operation. In such scenarios, a critical challenge becomes estimating the robot's dynamics on…
Despite recent advances in learning-based controllers for legged robots, deployments in human-centric environments remain limited by safety concerns. Most of these approaches use position-based control, where policies output target joint…
Subterranean burrowing is inherently difficult for robots because of the high forces experienced as well as the high amount of uncertainty in this domain. Because of the difficulty in modeling forces in granular media, we propose the use of…
Autonomous wheeled-legged robots have the potential to transform logistics systems, improving operational efficiency and adaptability in urban environments. Navigating urban environments, however, poses unique challenges for robots,…
Developing natural and diverse locomotion controllers for quadruped robots that can adapt to complex terrains while preserving motion style remains a significant challenge. Existing imitation-based methods face a fundamental optimization…
Biomimetic intelligence and robotics are transforming field ecology by enabling lifelike robotic surrogates that interact naturally with animals under real world conditions. Studying avian behavior in the wild remains challenging due to the…
Many animals, modern aircraft, and underwater vehicles use streamlined body shapes that reduce fluid dynamic drag to achieve fast and effective locomotion in air and water. Similarly, numerous small terrestrial animals move through…
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…
Legged robots have demonstrated high efficiency and effectiveness in unstructured and dynamic environments. However, it is still challenging for legged robots to achieve rapid and efficient locomotion on deformable, yielding substrates,…
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…
This paper presents a soft earthworm robot that is capable of both efficient locomotion and obstacle avoidance. The robot is designed to replicate the unique locomotion mechanisms of earthworms, which enable them to move through narrow and…
Snakes can traverse almost all types of environments by bending their elongate bodies in 3-D to interact with the terrain. Similarly, a snake robot is a promising platform to perform critical tasks in various environments. Understanding how…
Terrain geometry is, in general, non-smooth, non-linear, non-convex, and, if perceived through a robot-centric visual unit, appears partially occluded and noisy. This work presents the complete control pipeline capable of handling the…
Design of robots at the small scale is a trial-and-error based process, which is costly and time-consuming. There are few dynamic simulation tools available to accurately predict the motion or performance of untethered microrobots as they…
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 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…
A robot's deployment environment often involves perceptual changes that differ from what it has experienced during training. Standard practices such as data augmentation attempt to bridge this gap by augmenting source images in an effort to…
Many different robots have been designed and built to work under water. In many cases, researchers have chosen to use bio-inspired platforms. In most cases, the main goal of the fish inspired robots has been set to autonomously swim and…