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Claudio Semini

41 accepted papers

2026

Adaptive Non-Linear Centroidal MPC with Stability Guarantees for Robust Locomotion of Legged Robots

Mohamed Elobaid, Giulio Turrisi, Lorenzo Rapetti, Giulio Romualdi, Stefano Dafarra, Tomohiro Kawakami +4
ICRA 2026poster

Nonlinear model predictive locomotion controllers based on the reduced centroidal dynamics are nowadays ubiquitous in legged robots. These schemes, even if they assume an inherent simplification of the robot’s dynamics, were shown to endow robots with a step-adjustment capability in reaction to smal…

Cited by 0Source ↗PDF ↗Scholar ↗
2026

Load-Bearing Assessment for Safe Locomotion of Quadruped Robots on Collapsing Terrain

Vivian Suzano Medeiros, Giovanni Battista Dessy, Thiago Boaventura, Marcelo Becker, Claudio Semini, Victor Barasuol
ICRA 2026poster

Collapsing terrains, often present in search and rescue missions or planetary exploration, pose significant challenges for quadruped robots. This paper introduces a robust locomotion framework for safe navigation over unstable surfaces by integrating terrain probing, load-bearing analysis, motion pl…

Cited by 0Source ↗PDF ↗Scholar ↗
2026

Primal-Dual iLQR for GPU-Accelerated Learning and Control in Legged Robots

Lorenzo Amatucci, João Sousa Pinto, Giulio Turrisi, Dominique Orban, Victor Barasuol, Claudio Semini
RA-L 2026

This paper introduces a novel Model Predictive Control (MPC) implementation for legged robot locomotion that leverages GPU parallelization. Our approach enables both temporal and state-space parallelization by incorporating a parallel associative scan to solve the primal-dual Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT

Cited by 7Source ↗code ↗Scholar ↗
2026

Primal-Dual iLQR for GPU-Accelerated Learning and Control in Legged Robots

Lorenzo Amatucci, Joao Moreira de Sousa Pinto, Giulio Turrisi, Dominique Orban, Victor Barasuol, Claudio Semini
ICRA 2026poster

This paper introduces a novel Model Predictive Control (MPC) implementation for legged robot locomotion that leverages GPU parallelization. Our approach enables both temporal and state-space parallelization by incorporating a parallel associative scan to solve the primal-dual Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT…

Cited by 0Source ↗PDF ↗code ↗Scholar ↗
2026

Proprioceptive Image: An Image Representation of Proprioceptive Data from Quadruped Robots for Contact Estimation Learning

Gabriel Fischer Abati, João Carlos Virgolino Soares, Giulio Turrisi, Victor Barasuol, Claudio Semini
ICRA 2026poster

This paper presents a novel approach for representing proprioceptive time-series data from quadruped robots as structured two-dimensional images, enabling the use of convolutional neural networks for learning locomotion-related tasks. The proposed method encodes temporal dynamics from multiple propr…

Cited by 0Source ↗PDF ↗Scholar ↗
2025

Adaptive Non-Linear Centroidal MPC With Stability Guarantees for Robust Locomotion of Legged Robots

Mohamed Elobaid, Giulio Turrisi, Lorenzo Rapetti, Giulio Romualdi, Stefano Dafarra, Tomohiro Kawakami +4
RA-L 2025

Nonlinear model predictive locomotion controllers based on the reduced centroidal dynamics are nowadays ubiquitous in legged robots. These schemes, even if they assume an inherent simplification of the robot's dynamics, were shown to endow robots with a step-adjustment capability in reaction to smal

Cited by 10Source ↗Scholar ↗
2025

Load-Bearing Assessment for Safe Locomotion of Quadruped Robots on Collapsing Terrain

Vivian Suzano Medeiros, Giovanni Dessy, Thiago Boaventura, Marcelo Becker, Claudio Semini, Victor Barasuol
RA-L 2025

Collapsing terrains, often present in search and rescue missions or planetary exploration, pose significant challenges for quadruped robots. This paper introduces a robust locomotion framework for safe navigation over unstable surfaces by integrating terrain probing, load-bearing analysis, motion pl

Cited by 0Source ↗Scholar ↗
2025

MUSE: A Real-Time Multi-Sensor State Estimator for Quadruped Robots

Ylenia Nisticò, João Carlos Virgolino Soares, Lorenzo Amatucci, Geoff Fink, Claudio Semini
RA-L 2025

This letter introduces an innovative state estimator, MUSE (MUlti-sensor State Estimator), designed to enhance state estimation's accuracy and real-time performance in quadruped robot navigation. The proposed state estimator builds upon our previous work presented in (Fink et al. 2020). It integrate

Cited by 11Source ↗Scholar ↗
2025

Morphologically Symmetric Reinforcement Learning for Ambidextrous Bimanual Manipulation

Zechu Li, Yufeng Jin, Daniel Ordonez-Apraez, Claudio Semini, Puze Liu, Georgia Chalvatzaki
CoRL 2025poster

Humans naturally exhibit bilateral symmetry in their gross manipulation skills, effortlessly mirroring simple actions between left and right hands. Bimanual robots—which also feature bilateral symmetry—should similarly exploit this property to perform tasks with either hand. Unlike humans, who often…

Cited by 0Source ↗Scholar ↗
2025

Multi-Sensor Fusion for Quadruped Robot State Estimation Using Invariant Filtering and Smoothing

Ylenia Nisticò, Hajun Kim, João Carlos Virgolino Soares, Geoff Fink, Hae-Won Park, Claudio Semini
RA-L 2025

This letter introduces two multi-sensor state estimation frameworks for quadruped robots, built on the Invariant Extended Kalman Filter (InEKF) and Invariant Smoother (IS). The proposed methods, named E-InEKF and E-IS, fuse kinematics, IMU, LiDAR, and GPS data to mitigate position drift, particularl

Cited by 3Source ↗Scholar ↗
2025

Non-Gaited Legged Locomotion With Monte-Carlo Tree Search and Supervised Learning

Ilyass Taouil, Lorenzo Amatucci, Majid Khadiv, Angela Dai, Victor Barasuol, Giulio Turrisi +1
RA-L 2025

Legged robots are able to navigate complex terrains by continuously interacting with the environment through careful selection of contact sequences and timings. However, the combinatorial nature behind contact planning hinders the applicability of such optimization problems on hardware. In this work

Cited by 8Source ↗Scholar ↗
2025

SANDRO: A Robust Solver with a Splitting Strategy for Point Cloud Registration

Michael Adlerstein, João Carlos Virgolino Soares, Angelo Bratta, Claudio Semini
ICRA 2025

Point cloud registration is a critical problem in computer vision and robotics, especially in the field of navigation. Current methods often fail when faced with high outlier rates or take a long time to converge to a suitable solution. In this work, we introduce a novel algorithm for point cloud re

Cited by 2Source ↗code ↗Scholar ↗
2024

Accelerating Model Predictive Control for Legged Robots through Distributed Optimization

Lorenzo Amatucci, Giulio Turrisi, Angelo Bratta, Victor Barasuol, Claudio Semini
IROS 2024poster

This paper presents a novel approach to enhance Model Predictive Control (MPC) for legged robots through Distributed Optimization. Our method focuses on decomposing the robot dynamics into smaller, parallelizable subsystems, and utilizing the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) to ens…

Cited by 7Source ↗code ↗Scholar ↗
2024

Introducing the Carpal-Claw: a Mechanism to Enhance High-Obstacle Negotiation for Quadruped Robots

Victor Barasuol, Sinan Emre, Vivian Suzano Medeiros, Angelo Bratta, Claudio Semini
ICRA 2024poster

The capability of a quadruped robot to negotiate obstacles is tightly connected to its leg workspace and joint torque limits. When facing terrain where the height of obstacles is close to the leg length, the locomotion robustness and safety are reduced since more dynamic motions are required to trav…

Cited by 2Source ↗Scholar ↗
2024

Leveraging Symmetry in RL-based Legged Locomotion Control

Zhi Su, Xiaoyu Huang, Daniel Ordoñez-Apraez, Yunfei Li, Zhongyu Li, Qiayuan Liao +5
IROS 2024poster

Model-free reinforcement learning is a promising approach for autonomously solving challenging robotics control problems, but faces exploration difficulty without information about the robot’s morphology. The under-exploration of multiple modalities with symmetric states leads to behaviors that are…

Cited by 10Source ↗Scholar ↗
2024

On the Benefits of GPU Sample-Based Stochastic Predictive Controllers for Legged Locomotion

Giulio Turrisi, Valerio Modugno, Lorenzo Amatucci, Dimitrios Kanoulas, Claudio Semini
IROS 2024

Quadrupedal robots excel in mobility, navigating complex terrains with agility. However, their complex control systems present challenges that are still far from being fully addressed. In this paper, we introduce the use of Sample-Based Stochastic control strategies for quadrupedal robots, as an alt

Cited by 16Source ↗code ↗Scholar ↗
2024

PACC: A Passive-Arm Approach for High-Payload Collaborative Carrying with Quadruped Robots Using Model Predictive Control

Giulio Turrisi, Lucas Schulze, Vivian S. Medeiros, Claudio Semini, Victor Barasuol
IROS 2024poster

In this paper, we introduce the concept of using passive arm structures with intrinsic impedance for robot-robot and human-robot collaborative carrying with quadruped robots. The concept is meant for a leader-follower task and takes a minimalist approach that focuses on exploiting the robots’ payloa…

Cited by 4Source ↗Scholar ↗
2023

Kinematically-Decoupled Impedance Control for Fast Object Visual Servoing and Grasping on Quadruped Manipulators

Riccardo Parosi, Mattia Risiglione, Darwin G. Caldwell, Claudio Semini, Victor Barasuol
IROS 2023poster

We propose a control pipeline for SAG (Searching, Approaching, and Grasping) of objects, based on a decoupled arm kinematic chain and impedance control, which integrates image-based visual servoing (IBVS). The kinematic decoupling allows for fast end-effector motions and recovery that leads to robus…

Cited by 11Source ↗Scholar ↗
2023

Quadrupedal Footstep Planning Using Learned Motion Models of a Black-Box Controller

Ilyass Taouil, Giulio Turrisi, Daniel Schleich, Victor Barasuol, Claudio Semini, Sven Behnke
IROS 2023poster

Legged robots are increasingly entering new domains and applications, including search and rescue, inspection, and logistics. However, for such a systems to be valuable in real-world scenarios, they must be able to autonomously and robustly navigate irregular terrains. In many cases, robots that are…

Cited by 1Source ↗Scholar ↗
2023

Reactive Landing Controller for Quadruped Robots

Francesco Roscia, Michele Focchi, Andrea Del Prete, Darwin G. Caldwell, Claudio Semini
RA-L 2023

Quadruped robots are machines intended for challenging and harsh environments. Despite the progress in locomotion strategy, safely recovering from unexpected falls or planned drops is still an open problem. It is further made more difficult when high horizontal velocities are involved. In this lette

Cited by 17Source ↗code ↗Scholar ↗
2022

A Whole-Body Controller Based on a Simplified Template for Rendering Impedances in Quadruped Manipulators

Mattia Risiglione, Victor Barasuol, Darwin G. Caldwell, Claudio Semini
IROS 2022poster

Quadrupedal manipulators require to be compliant when dealing with external forces during autonomous manipulation, tele-operation or physical human-robot interaction. This paper presents a whole-body controller that allows for the implementation of a Cartesian impedance control to coordinate trackin…

Cited by 9Source ↗Scholar ↗
2022

Foothold Evaluation Criterion for Dynamic Transition Feasibility for Quadruped Robots

Luca Clemente, Octavio Villarreal, Angelo Bratta, Michele Focchi, Victor Barasuol, Giovanni Gerardo Muscolo +1
ICRA 2022poster

To traverse complex scenarios reliably a legged robot needs to move its base aided by the ground reaction forces, which can only be generated by the legs that are momentarily in contact with the ground. A proper selection of footholds is crucial for maintaining balance. In this paper, we propose a f…

Cited by 15Source ↗Scholar ↗
2020

Line Walking and Balancing for Legged Robots with Point Feet

Carlos Gonzalez, Victor Barasuol, Marco Frigerio, Roy Featherstone, Darwin G. Caldwell, Claudio Semini
IROS 2020poster

The ability of legged systems to traverse highly- constrained environments depends by and large on the performance of their motion and balance controllers. This paper presents a controller that excels in a scenario that most state- of-the-art balance controllers have not yet addressed: line walking,…

Cited by 41Source ↗Scholar ↗
2020

MPC-based Controller with Terrain Insight for Dynamic Legged Locomotion

Octavio Villarreal, Victor Barasuol, Patrick M. Wensing, Darwin G. Caldwell, Claudio Semini
ICRA 2020poster

We present a novel control strategy for dynamic legged locomotion in complex scenarios that considers information about the morphology of the terrain in contexts when only on-board mapping and computation are available. The strategy is built on top of two main elements: first a contact sequence task…

Cited by 103Source ↗Scholar ↗
2020

On the Hardware Feasibility of Nonlinear Trajectory Optimization for Legged Locomotion based on a Simplified Dynamics

Angelo Bratta, Romeo Orsolino, Michele Focchi, Victor Barasuol, Giovanni Gerardo Muscolo, Claudio Semini
ICRA 2020poster

Simplified models are useful to increase the computational efficiency of a motion planning algorithm, but their lack of accuracy have to be managed. We propose two feasibility constraints to be included in a Single Rigid Body Dynamics-based trajectory optimizer in order to obtain robust motions in c…

Cited by 14Source ↗Scholar ↗
2020

Stance Control Inspired by Cerebellum Stabilizes Reflex-Based Locomotion on HyQ Robot

Gabriel Urbain, Victor Barasuol, Claudio Semini, Joni Dambre, Francis wyffels
ICRA 2020poster

Advances in legged robotics are strongly rooted in animal observations. A clear illustration of this claim is the generalization of Central Pattern Generators (CPG), first identified in the cat spinal cord, to generate cyclic motion in robotic locomotion. Despite a global endorsement of this model,…

Cited by 9Source ↗Scholar ↗
2019

Fast and Continuous Foothold Adaptation for Dynamic Locomotion Through CNNs

Octavio Antonio Villarreal-Magaña, Victor Barasuol, Marco Camurri, Luca Franceschi, Michele Focchi, Massimiliano Pontil +2
RA-L 2019

Legged robots can outperform wheeled machines for most navigation tasks across unknown and rough terrains. For such tasks, visual feedback is a fundamental asset to provide robots with terrain awareness. However, robust dynamic locomotion on difficult terrains with real-time performance guarantees r

Cited by 81Source ↗Scholar ↗
2019

Passive Whole-Body Control for Quadruped Robots: Experimental Validation Over Challenging Terrain

Shamel Fahmi, Carlos Mastalli, Michele Focchi, Claudio Semini
RA-L 2019

We present experimental results using a passive whole-body control approach for quadruped robots that achieves dynamic locomotion while compliantly balancing the robot's trunk. We formulate the motion tracking as a quadratic program that takes into account the full robot rigid body dynamics, the act

Cited by 122Source ↗Scholar ↗
2018

Application of Wrench-Based Feasibility Analysis to the Online Trajectory Optimization of Legged Robots

Romeo Orsolino, Michele Focchi, Carlos Mastalli, Hongkai Dai, Darwin G. Caldwell, Claudio Semini
RA-L 2018

Motion planning in multicontact scenarios has recently gathered interest within the legged robotics community, however actuator force/torque limits are rarely considered. We believe that these limits gain paramount importance when the complexity of the terrains to be traversed increases. We build on

Cited by 53Source ↗Scholar ↗
2018

Simultaneous Contact, Gait, and Motion Planning for Robust Multilegged Locomotion via Mixed-Integer Convex Optimization

Bernardo Aceituno-Cabezas, Carlos Mastalli, Hongkai Dai, Michele Focchi, Andreea Radulescu, Darwin G. Caldwell +4
RA-L 2018

Traditional motion planning approaches for multilegged locomotion divide the problem into several stages, such as contact search and trajectory generation. However, reasoning about contacts and motions simultaneously is crucial for the generation of complex whole-body behaviors. Currently, coupling

Cited by 170Source ↗Scholar ↗
2017

Heterogeneous Sensor Fusion for Accurate State Estimation of Dynamic Legged Robots

Simona Nobili, Marco Camurri, Victor Barasuol, Michele Focchi, Darwin Caldwell, Claudio Semini +1
RSS 2017poster

In this paper we present a system for the state estimation of a dynamically walking and trotting quadruped. The approach fuses four heterogeneous sensor sources (inertial, kinematic, stereo vision and LIDAR) to maintain an accurate and consistent estimate of the robot's base link velocity and positi…

Cited by 84Source ↗PDF ↗Scholar ↗
2017

Online payload identification for quadruped robots

Guido Tournois, Michele Focchi, Andrea Del Prete, Romeo Orsolino, Darwin G. Caldwell, Claudio Semini
IROS 2017poster

The identification of inertial parameters is crucial to achieve high-performance model-based control of legged robots. The inertial parameters of the legs are typically not altered during expeditions and therefore are best identified offline. On the other hand, the trunk parameters depend on the mod…

Cited by 41Source ↗Scholar ↗
2017

Probabilistic Contact Estimation and Impact Detection for State Estimation of Quadruped Robots

Marco Camurri, Maurice F. Fallon, Stéphane Bazeille, Andreea Radulescu, Victor Barasuol, Darwin G. Caldwell +1
RA-L 2017

Reliable state estimation is crucial for stable planning and control of legged locomotion. A fundamental component of a state estimator in legged platforms is Leg Odometry, which only requires information about kinematics and contacts. Many legged robots use dedicated sensors on each foot to detect

Cited by 114Source ↗Scholar ↗
2017

Trajectory and foothold optimization using low-dimensional models for rough terrain locomotion

Carlos Mastalli, Michele Focchi, Ioannis Havoutis, Andreea Radulescu, Sylvain Calinon, Jonas Buchli +2
ICRA 2017poster

We present a trajectory optimization framework for legged locomotion on rough terrain. We jointly optimize the center of mass motion and the foothold locations, while considering terrain conditions. We use a terrain costmap to quantify the desirability of a foothold location. We increase the gait's…

Cited by 108Source ↗Scholar ↗
2017

Viscosity-based height reflex for workspace augmentation for quadrupedal locomotion on rough terrain

Michele Focchi, Roy Featherstone, Romeo Orsolino, Darwin G. Caldwell, Claudio Semini
IROS 2017poster

We propose a reactive locomotion strategy, called height reflex, that is useful to address big elevation changes in the terrain (e.g. when a quadruped robot has to step down from a high platform). In these cases the swing leg can lose mobility creating issues in the subsequent steps. The height refl…

Cited by 14Source ↗Scholar ↗
2017

Whole-body trajectory optimization for non-periodic dynamic motions on quadrupedal systems

Andreea Radulescu, Ioannis Havoutis, Darwin G. Caldwell, Claudio Semini
ICRA 2017poster

Autonomous legged robots will be required to handle a wide range of tasks in complex environments. While a lot of research has focused on developing their abilities for periodic locomotion tasks, less effort has been invested in devising generalized strategies for dynamic, non-periodic movements. Mo…

Cited by 9Source ↗Scholar ↗
2016

Hierarchical planning of dynamic movements without scheduled contact sequences

Carlos Mastalli, Ioannis Havoutis, Michele Focchi, Darwin G. Caldwell, Claudio Semini
ICRA 2016

Most animal and human locomotion behaviors for solving complex tasks involve dynamic motions and rich contact interaction. In fact, complex maneuvers need to consider dynamic movement and contact events at the same time. We present a hierarchical trajectory optimization approach for planning dynamic

Cited by 36Source ↗Scholar ↗
2016

Towards a multi-legged mobile manipulator

Bilal Ur Rehman, Michele Focchi, Jinoh Lee, Houman Dallali, Darwin G. Caldwell, Claudio Semini
ICRA 2016

A common disadvantage of multi-legged robots is that they often lack the manipulation capability. To overcome this limitation, an arm can be added to the body of the multi-legged robot, to perform manipulation tasks and provide assistance for locomotion. First, we proposed an attachment configuratio

Cited by 73Source ↗Scholar ↗
2015

Planning and execution of dynamic whole-body locomotion for a hydraulic quadruped on challenging terrain

Alexander W. Winkler, Carlos Mastalli, Ioannis Havoutis, Michele Focchi, Darwin G. Caldwell, Claudio Semini
ICRA 2015poster

We present a framework for dynamic quadrupedal locomotion over challenging terrain, where the choice of appropriate footholds is crucial for the success of the behaviour. We build a model of the environment on-line and on-board using an efficient occupancy grid representation. We use Any-time-Repair…

Cited by 166Source ↗Scholar ↗
2015

Reactive trotting with foot placement corrections through visual pattern classification

Victor Barasuol, Marco Camurri, Stephane Bazeille, Darwin G. Caldwell, Claudio Semini
IROS 2015poster

Agile robot locomotion on rough terrain is highly dependent on the ability to perceive the environment. In this paper, we show how the interaction between a reactive control framework and an online mapping system can significantly improve the trotting performance on irregular terrain. In particular,…

Cited by 20Source ↗Scholar ↗