Related papers: WiXus: A Wheeled-Legged Robot with Wire-Driven Env…
This work tries to contribute to the design of legged robots with capabilities boosted through thruster-assisted locomotion. Our long-term goal is the development of robots capable of negotiating unstructured environments, including land…
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.…
Hybrid wheeled-legged locomotion is a navigation paradigm only recently opened up by novel robotic designs,e.g. the centaur-type humanoid CENTAURO [1] or the quadruped ANYmal [2] in its configuration featuring non-steerable wheels. The term…
Imitation learning has been actively studied in recent years. In particular, skill acquisition by a robot with a fixed body, whose root link position and posture and camera angle of view do not change, has been realized in many cases. On…
There is a large population of wheelchair users. Most of the wheelchair users need help with daily tasks. However, according to recent reports, their needs are not properly satisfied due to the lack of caregivers. Therefore, in this…
Hybrid track/wheel-legged robots combine the advantages of wheel-based and leg-based locomotion, granting adaptability across varied terrains through efficient transitions between rolling and walking modes. However, automating these…
Soft pneumatic legged robots show promise in their ability to traverse a range of different types of terrain, including natural unstructured terrain met in applications like precision agriculture. They can adapt their body morphology to the…
This paper studies jumping for wheeled-bipedal robots, a motion that takes full advantage of the benefits from the hybrid wheeled and legged design features. A comprehensive hierarchical scheme for motion planning and control of jumping…
To reproduce natural standing-up motion, recent studies have emphasized the importance of coordination between the assisting robot and the human. However, many non-wearable assistive devices have struggled to replicate natural motion…
The heavy-load legged robot has strong load carrying capacity and can adapt to various unstructured terrains. But the large weight results in higher requirements for motion stability and environmental perception ability. In order to utilize…
The field of bio-inspired robotics seeks to create mechanical systems that mimic the designs and concepts used by biological systems. One of the more challenging biological concepts to imitate in mechanical systems is the ability to create…
The interest in exploring planetary bodies for scientific investigation and in-situ resource utilization is ever-rising. Yet, many sites of interest are inaccessible to state-of-the-art planetary exploration robots because of the robots'…
Crawling is a common locomotion mechanism in soft robots and nonskeletal animals. In this work we propose modeling soft-robotic legged locomotion by approximating it with an equivalent articulated robot with elastic joints. For concreteness…
Robots "in-the-wild" encounter and must traverse widely varying terrain, ranging from solid ground to granular materials like sand to full liquids. Numerous approaches exist, including wheeled and legged robots, each excelling in specific…
An autonomous robot that is able to physically guide humans through narrow and cluttered spaces could be a big boon to the visually-impaired. Most prior robotic guiding systems are based on wheeled platforms with large bases with actuated…
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…
Dynamic modeling and control are critical for unleashing soft robots' potential, yet remain challenging due to their complex constitutive behaviors and real-world operating conditions. Bio-inspired musculoskeletal robots, which integrate…
In this paper, we propose a novel approach on controlling wheel-legged quadrupedal robots using pose optimization and force control via quadratic programming (QP). Our method allows the robot to leverage the whole-body motion and the wheel…
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,…
Loco-manipulation of quadrupedal robots has broadened robotic applications, but using legs as manipulators often compromises locomotion, while mounting arms complicates the system. To mitigate this issue, we introduce bipedalism for…