8 accepted papers
Learning whole-body control for locomotion and arm motions in a single policy has challenges, as the two tasks have conflicting goals. For instance, efficient locomotion typically favors a horizontal base orientation, while end-effector tracking may benefit from base tilting to extend reachability.…
This letter presents a realtime motion planning and control method that enables a quadrupedal robot to execute dynamic gaits including trot, pace, and dynamic lateral walk, as well as gaits with full flight phases such as jumping, pronking, and running trot. The proposed method also enables smooth t
In this letter, we present a whole-body nonlinear model predictive control approach for rigid body systems subject to contacts. We use a full-dynamic system model which also includes explicit contact dynamics. Therefore, contact locations, sequences, and timings are not prespecified but optimized by
This paper presents a framework which allows a quadrupedal robot to execute dynamic gaits including trot, pace and dynamic lateral walk, as well as a smooth transition between them. Our method relies on an online ZMP based motion planner which continuously updates the reference motion trajectory as…
Quadrupedal locomotion can be described as a constrained optimization problem that is very hard to solve due to the high dimensional, nonlinear and non-smooth system dynamics. In this paper, we propose a formulation that can be solved within few seconds using sequential quadratic programming. This m…
This paper introduces ANYmal, a quadrupedal robot that features outstanding mobility and dynamic motion capability. Thanks to novel, compliant joint modules with integrated electronics, the 30 kg, 0.5 m tall robotic dog is torque controllable and very robust against impulsive loads during running or…
Methods of optimizing a single trajectory are mature enough for planning in many applications. Yet such optimization methods applied to high Degree-Of-Freedom robots either consume too much time to be real-time or approximate the dynamics such that they lack physical consistency. In this paper, we p…
Quadrupedal locomotion on sloped terrains poses different challenges than walking in a mostly flat environment. The robot's configuration needs to be explicitly controlled in order to avoid slipping and kinematic limits. To this end, information about the terrain's inclination is required for carefu…