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Co-designing a robot's morphology and control can ensure synergistic interactions between them, prevalent in biological organisms. However, co-design is a high-dimensional search problem. To make this search tractable, we need a systematic…
The ability to recover from a fall is an essential feature for a legged robot to navigate in challenging environments robustly. Until today, there has been very little progress on this topic. Current solutions mostly build upon…
Despite the potential benefits of collaborative robots, effective manipulation tasks with quadruped robots remain difficult to realize. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical control system that can handle real-world collaborative…
Motor thermal management is often overlooked in the context of electrically-actuated robots, particularly legged robots, but motor overheating is a key factor that limits long-duration locomotion especially under payload conditions. This…
Learning policies for bipedal locomotion can be difficult, as experiments are expensive and simulation does not usually transfer well to hardware. To counter this, we need al- gorithms that are sample efficient and inherently safe. Bayesian…
Quadrupedal locomotion plays a critical role in enabling agile, versatile movement across complex terrains. Understanding and estimating the underlying physical dynamics are essential for achieving efficient and stable quadrupedal…
A monoped's jump height and energy consumption depend on both, its mechanical design and control strategy. Existing co-design frameworks typically optimize for either maximum height or minimum energy, neglecting their trade-off. They also…
In this paper, we aim to improve the robustness of dynamic quadrupedal locomotion through two aspects: 1) fast model predictive foothold planning, and 2) applying LQR to projected inverse dynamic control for robust motion tracking. In our…
Wearable and legged robot designers face multiple challenges when choosing actuation. Traditional fully actuated designs using electric motors are multifunctional but oversized and inefficient for bearing conservative loads and for being…
Due to brain-body co-evolution, animals' intrinsic body dynamics play a crucial role in energy-efficient locomotion, which shares control effort between active muscles and passive body dynamics -- a principle known as Embodied Physical…
Controlling a non-statically bipedal robot is challenging due to the complex dynamics and multi-criterion optimization involved. Recent works have demonstrated the effectiveness of deep reinforcement learning (DRL) for simulation and…
Previous design methodologies for spring-driven jumping robots focused on jump height optimization for specific tasks. In doing so, numerous designs have been proposed including using nonlinear spring-linkages to increase the elastic energy…
Control system optimization has long been a fundamental challenge in robotics. While recent advancements have led to the development of control algorithms that leverage learning-based approaches, such as SafeOpt, to optimize single feedback…
Athletic robots demand a whole-body actuation system design that utilizes motors up to the boundaries of their performance. However, creating such robots poses challenges of integrating design principles and reasoning of practical design…
Quadrupedal robots have emerged as a cutting-edge platform for assisting humans, finding applications in tasks related to inspection and exploration in remote areas. Nevertheless, their floating base structure renders them susceptible to…
Musculoskeletal robots offer intrinsic compliance and flexibility, providing a promising paradigm for versatile locomotion. However, existing research typically relies on models with fixed muscle physiological parameters. This static…
Real-world robots are becoming increasingly complex and commonly act in poorly understood environments where it is extremely challenging to model or learn their true dynamics. Therefore, it might be desirable to take a task-specific…
Despite the fact that robotic platforms can provide both consistent practice and objective assessments of users over the course of their training, there are relatively few instances where physical human robot interaction has been…
Collaborative robots must simultaneously be safe enough to operate in close proximity to human operators and powerful enough to assist users in industrial tasks such as lifting heavy equipment. The requirement for safety necessitates that…
Multi-legged robots offer enhanced stability in complex terrains, yet autonomously learning natural and robust motions in such environments remains challenging. Drawing inspiration from animals' progressive learning patterns, from simple to…