A Foldable and Agile Soft Electromagnetic Robot for Multimodal Navigation in Confined and Unstructured Environments
State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic Systems（流体动力与机电系统国家重点实验室）；Key Laboratory of Soft Machines and Smart Devices of Zhejiang Province（浙江省软体机器人与智能器件重点实验室）；Center for X-mechanics（交叉力学中心）；Department of Engineering Mechanics, Zhejiang University（浙江大学工程力学系）
Multimodal locomotion is crucial for an animal's adaptability in unstructured wild environments. Similarly, in the human gastrointestinal tract, characterized by viscoelastic mucus, complex rugae, and narrow sphincters like the cardia, multimodal locomotion is also essential for a small-scale soft robot to conduct tasks. Here, we introduce a small-scale compact, foldable, and robust soft electromagnetic robot (M-SEMR) with more than nine locomotion modes designed for such a scenario. Featuring a six-spoke elastomer body embedded with liquid metal channels and driven by Laplace forces under a static magnetic field, the M-SEMR is capable of rapid transitions (< 0.35 s) among different locomotion modes. It achieves exceptional agility, including high-speed rolling (818 mm/s, 26 BL/s), omnidirectional crawling, jumping, and swimming. Notably, the robot can fold to reduce its volume by 79%, enabling it to traverse confined spaces. We further validate its navigation capabilities on complex terrains, including discrete obstacles, viscoelastic gelatin surfaces, viscous fluids, and simulated biological tissues. This system offers a versatile strategy for developing high-mobility soft robots for future biomedical applications.
We present Stanford Pupper, an easily-replicated open source quadruped robot designed specifically as a benchmark platform for legged robotics research. The robot features torque-controllable brushless motors with high specific power that enable testing of impedance and torque-based machine learning and optimization control approaches. Pupper can be built from the ground up in under 8 hours for a total cost under $2000, with all components either easily purchased or 3D printed. To rigorously compare control approaches, we introduce two benchmarks, Sprint and Scramble with a leader board mainta…
A Biomimetic Vertebraic Soft Robotic Tail for High-Speed, High-Force Dynamic Maneuvering
Shenzhen Technology University（深圳技术大学）；Southern University of Science and Technology（南方科技大学）；Great Bay University（大湾区大学）；Tencent Robotics X（腾讯机器人X）；Wisson Robotics（威世机器人）；asRobotics
KYON: Semi-Modular Wheel-Legged Quadruped With Agile Bimanual Capability
Humanoids and Human Centered Mechatronics, Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia（人机一体化机械系统，意大利理工研究院）；Advanced Robotics Facility, Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia（先进机器人设施，意大利理工研究院）
Learning and Adapting Agile Locomotion Skills by Transferring Experience
UC Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校）；Berkeley AI Research（伯克利人工智能研究院）；Google Research（谷歌研究院）；Georgia Institute of Technology（佐治亚理工学院）；Simon Fraser University（西蒙菲莎大学）
TRANS: Terrain-aware Reinforcement Learning for Agile Navigation of Quadruped Robots under Social Interactions
Department of Robotics, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University（东邦大学机器人学系）；Laboratory for Intelligent Decision and Autonomous Robots, Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology（佐治亚理工学院智能决策与自主机器人实验室）
As both legged robots and embedded compute have become more capable, researchers have started to focus on field deployment of these robots. Robust autonomy in unstructured environments requires perception of the world around the robot in order to avoid hazards. However, incorporating perception online while maintaining agile motion is more challenging for legged robots than other mobile robots due to the complex planners and controllers required to handle the dynamics of locomotion. This report will compare three recent approaches for perceptive locomotion and discuss the different ways in whi…
Recently, there have been numerous advances in the development of biologically inspired lightweight Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs). While autonomous navigation is fairly straight-forward for large UAVs as expensive sensors and monitoring devices can be employed, robust methods for obstacle avoidance remains a challenging task for MAVs which operate at low altitude in cluttered unstructured environments. Due to payload and power constraints, it is necessary for such systems to have autonomous navigation and flight capabilities using mostly passive sensors such as cameras. In this paper, we descri…
End-to-End Humanoid Robot Safe and Comfortable Locomotion Policy
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)（香港科技大学（广州））；The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology（香港科技大学）；Human-Robot Interfaces and Interaction Lab., Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy（人机交互实验室，意大利理工学院）
Omni-Perception: Omnidirectional Collision Avoidance for Legged Locomotion in Dynamic Environments
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)（香港科技大学（广州））；Spatialtemporal AI（时空AI）；The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology（香港科技大学）；Department of Eletronic Engineering, Tsinghua University（清华大学电子工程系）；Beijing Innovation Center of Humanoid Robotics Co., Ltd.（北京人形机器人创新中心有限公司）
Robust control for multi-legged elongate robots in noisy environments
School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology（物理系，佐治亚理工学院）；Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, Georgia Institute of Technology（机器人与智能机器研究所，佐治亚理工学院）；School of Mathematics, Georgia Institute of Technology（数学系，佐治亚理工学院）；Department of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology（机械工程系，佐治亚理工学院）
