Related papers: Proprioceptive Safe Active Navigation and Explorat…

Legged robots can sense terrain through force interactions during locomotion, offering more reliable traversability estimates than remote sensing and serving as scouts for guiding wheeled rovers in challenging environments. However, even…

We propose a novel method, ProNav, which uses proprioceptive signals for traversability estimation in challenging outdoor terrains for autonomous legged robot navigation. Our approach uses sensor data from a legged robot's joint encoders,…

Inspired by human behavior when traveling over unknown terrain, this study proposes the use of probing strategies and integrates them into a traversability analysis framework to address safe navigation on unknown rough terrain. Our…

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…

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 present a novel autonomous robot navigation algorithm for outdoor environments that is capable of handling diverse terrain traversability conditions. Our approach, VLM-GroNav, uses vision-language models (VLMs) and integrates them with…

For the safe and successful navigation of autonomous vehicles in unstructured environments, the traversability of terrain should vary based on the driving capabilities of the vehicles. Actual driving experience can be utilized in a…

We propose a new method for autonomous navigation in uneven terrains by utilizing a sparse Gaussian Process (SGP) based local perception model. The SGP local perception model is trained on local ranging observation (pointcloud) to learn the…

Nature has evolved humans to walk on different terrains by developing a detailed understanding of their physical characteristics. Similarly, legged robots need to develop their capability to walk on complex terrains with a variety of…

The challenge of traversability estimation is a crucial aspect of autonomous navigation in unstructured outdoor environments such as forests. It involves determining whether certain areas are passable or risky for robots, taking into…

Legged navigation is typically examined within open-world, off-road, and challenging environments. In these scenarios, estimating external disturbances requires a complex synthesis of multi-modal information. This underlines a major…

In this article, we propose a novel navigation framework that leverages a two layered graph representation of the environment for efficient large-scale exploration, while it integrates a novel uncertainty awareness scheme to handle dynamic…

Understanding the traversability of terrain is essential for autonomous robot navigation, particularly in unstructured environments such as natural landscapes. Although traditional methods, such as occupancy mapping, provide a basic…

Collaborative navigation of heterogeneous robots in unknown environments poses significant challenges due to sensing, communication, and computational limitations. In this work, a lead robot navigates toward a target while a mobile sensor…

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…

The ability to efficiently and effectively explore planetary surfaces is currently limited by the capability of wheeled rovers to traverse challenging terrains, and by pre-programmed data acquisition plans with limited in-situ flexibility.…

Passive deformation due to compliance is a commonly used benefit of soft robots, providing opportunities to achieve robust actuation with few active degrees of freedom. Soft growing robots in particular have shown promise in navigation of…

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…

In critical applications, including search-and-rescue in degraded environments, blockages can be prevalent and prevent the effective deployment of certain sensing modalities, particularly vision, due to occlusion and the constrained range…

Accurate traversability estimation using an online dense terrain map is crucial for safe navigation in challenging environments like construction and disaster areas. However, traversability estimation for legged robots on rough terrains…