9 accepted papers
The high agility of legged systems allows them to operate in rugged outdoor environments. In these situations, knowledge about the terrain geometry is key for foothold planning to enable safe locomotion. However, on penetrable or highly compliant terrain (e.g. grass) the visibility of the supporting…
The development of robots that can dance has received considerable attention. However, they are often either limited to a pre-defined set of movements and music or demonstrate little variance when reacting to external stimuli, such as microphone or camera input. In this paper, we contribute with a n…
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…
Flying and walking robots can use their complementary features in terms of viewpoint and payload capability to the best in a heterogeneous team. To this end, we present our online collaborative navigation framework for unknown and challenging terrain. The method leverages the flying robot's onboard…
This paper presents a framework for planning safe and efficient paths for a legged robot in rough and unstructured terrain. The proposed approach allows to exploit the distinctive obstacle negotiation capabilities of legged robots, while keeping the complexity low enough to enable planning over cons…
Legged robots require a robust and fast responding feet contact detection strategy. Common force sensors are often too heavy and can be easily damaged during impacts with the terrain. Therefore, it is desirable to detect a contact without a force sensor. This paper introduces a probabilistic contact…
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…