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The exploration of the lunar poles and the collection of samples from the martian surface are characterized by shorter time windows demanding increased autonomy and speeds. Autonomous mobile robots must intrinsically cope with a wider range…
Sliding tasks performed by aerial robots are valuable for inspection and simple maintenance tasks at height, such as non-destructive testing and painting. Although various end-effector designs have been used for such tasks, non-actuated…
Deployment in hazardous environments requires robots to understand the risks associated with their actions and movements to prevent accidents. Despite its importance, these risks are not explicitly modeled by currently deployed locomotion…
Hybrid systems theory has become a powerful approach for designing feedback controllers that achieve dynamically stable bipedal locomotion, both formally and in practice. This paper presents an analytical framework 1) to address…
To overcome the obstructions imposed by high-dimensional bipedal models, we embed a stable walking motion in an attractive low-dimensional surface of the system's state space. The process begins with trajectory optimization to design an…
Neglecting complex aerodynamic effects hinders high-speed yet high-precision multirotor autonomy. In this paper, we present a computationally efficient learning-based model predictive controller that simultaneously optimizes a trajectory…
Traditional approaches to quadruped control frequently employ simplified, hand-derived models. This significantly reduces the capability of the robot since its effective kinematic range is curtailed. In addition, kinodynamic constraints are…
Legged robots navigating cluttered environments must be jointly agile for efficient task execution and safe to avoid collisions with obstacles or humans. Existing studies either develop conservative controllers (< 1.0 m/s) to ensure safety,…
Quadrupedal robots are skillful at locomotion tasks while lacking manipulation skills, not to mention dexterous manipulation abilities. Inspired by the animal behavior and the duality between multi-legged locomotion and multi-fingered…
By combining the agility of legged locomotion with the capabilities of manipulation, loco-manipulation platforms have the potential to perform complex tasks in real-world applications. To this end, state-of-the-art quadrupeds with…
Selecting robot design parameters can be challenging since these parameters are often coupled with the performance of the controller and, therefore, the resulting capabilities of the robot. This leads to a time-consuming and often expensive…
Generalizable manipulation requires that robots be able to interact with novel objects and environment. This requirement makes manipulation extremely challenging as a robot has to reason about complex frictional interactions with…
Underactuation is ubiquitous in human locomotion and should be ubiquitous in bipedal robotic locomotion as well. This chapter presents a coherent theory for the design of feedback controllers that achieve stable walking gaits in…
To achieve highly dynamic jumps of legged robots, it is essential to control the rotational dynamics of the robot. In this paper, we aim to improve the jumping performance by proposing a unified model for planning highly dynamic jumps that…
Taking inspiration from how the brain coordinates multiple learning systems is an appealing strategy to endow robots with more flexibility. One of the expected advantages would be for robots to autonomously switch to the least costly system…
This paper describes the control, and evaluation of a new human-scaled biped robot with liquid cooled viscoelastic actuators (VLCA). Based on the lessons learned from previous work from our team on VLCA [1], we present a new system design…
In trying to build humanoid robots that perform useful tasks in a world built for humans, we address the problem of autonomous locomotion. Humanoid robot planning and control algorithms for walking over rough terrain are becoming…
This study addresses the challenge of fleet design optimization in the context of heterogeneous multi-robot fleets, aiming to obtain feasible designs that balance performance and costs. In the domain of autonomous multi-robot exploration,…
Dynamic quadrupedal locomotion over rough terrains reveals remarkable progress over the last few decades. Small-scale quadruped robots are adequately flexible and adaptable to traverse uneven terrains along sagittal direction, such as…
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…