16 research outputs found
Planning Hybrid Driving-Stepping Locomotion on Multiple Levels of Abstraction
Navigating in search and rescue environments is challenging, since a variety
of terrains has to be considered. Hybrid driving-stepping locomotion, as
provided by our robot Momaro, is a promising approach. Similar to other
locomotion methods, it incorporates many degrees of freedom---offering high
flexibility but making planning computationally expensive for larger
environments.
We propose a navigation planning method, which unifies different levels of
representation in a single planner. In the vicinity of the robot, it provides
plans with a fine resolution and a high robot state dimensionality. With
increasing distance from the robot, plans become coarser and the robot state
dimensionality decreases. We compensate this loss of information by enriching
coarser representations with additional semantics. Experiments show that the
proposed planner provides plans for large, challenging scenarios in feasible
time.Comment: In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and
Automation (ICRA), Brisbane, Australia, May 201
Learning Ground Traversability from Simulations
Mobile ground robots operating on unstructured terrain must predict which
areas of the environment they are able to pass in order to plan feasible paths.
We address traversability estimation as a heightmap classification problem: we
build a convolutional neural network that, given an image representing the
heightmap of a terrain patch, predicts whether the robot will be able to
traverse such patch from left to right. The classifier is trained for a
specific robot model (wheeled, tracked, legged, snake-like) using simulation
data on procedurally generated training terrains; the trained classifier can be
applied to unseen large heightmaps to yield oriented traversability maps, and
then plan traversable paths. We extensively evaluate the approach in simulation
on six real-world elevation datasets, and run a real-robot validation in one
indoor and one outdoor environment.Comment: Webpage: http://romarcg.xyz/traversability_estimation
Fast and Continuous Foothold Adaptation for Dynamic Locomotion through CNNs
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
remains a challenge. We present here a real-time, dynamic foothold adaptation
strategy based on visual feedback. Our method adjusts the landing position of
the feet in a fully reactive manner, using only on-board computers and sensors.
The correction is computed and executed continuously along the swing phase
trajectory of each leg. To efficiently adapt the landing position, we implement
a self-supervised foothold classifier based on a Convolutional Neural Network
(CNN). Our method results in an up to 200 times faster computation with respect
to the full-blown heuristics. Our goal is to react to visual stimuli from the
environment, bridging the gap between blind reactive locomotion and purely
vision-based planning strategies. We assess the performance of our method on
the dynamic quadruped robot HyQ, executing static and dynamic gaits (at speeds
up to 0.5 m/s) in both simulated and real scenarios; the benefit of safe
foothold adaptation is clearly demonstrated by the overall robot behavior.Comment: 9 pages, 11 figures. Accepted to RA-L + ICRA 2019, January 201
Extreme Parkour with Legged Robots
Humans can perform parkour by traversing obstacles in a highly dynamic
fashion requiring precise eye-muscle coordination and movement. Getting robots
to do the same task requires overcoming similar challenges. Classically, this
is done by independently engineering perception, actuation, and control systems
to very low tolerances. This restricts them to tightly controlled settings such
as a predetermined obstacle course in labs. In contrast, humans are able to
learn parkour through practice without significantly changing their underlying
biology. In this paper, we take a similar approach to developing robot parkour
on a small low-cost robot with imprecise actuation and a single front-facing
depth camera for perception which is low-frequency, jittery, and prone to
artifacts. We show how a single neural net policy operating directly from a
camera image, trained in simulation with large-scale RL, can overcome imprecise
sensing and actuation to output highly precise control behavior end-to-end. We
show our robot can perform a high jump on obstacles 2x its height, long jump
across gaps 2x its length, do a handstand and run across tilted ramps, and
generalize to novel obstacle courses with different physical properties.
Parkour videos at https://extreme-parkour.github.io/Comment: Website and videos at https://extreme-parkour.github.io
Combined Sampling and Optimization Based Planning for Legged-Wheeled Robots
Planning for legged-wheeled machines is typically done using trajectory
optimization because of many degrees of freedom, thus rendering legged-wheeled
planners prone to falling prey to bad local minima. We present a combined
sampling and optimization-based planning approach that can cope with
challenging terrain. The sampling-based stage computes whole-body
configurations and contact schedule, which speeds up the optimization
convergence. The optimization-based stage ensures that all the system
constraints, such as non-holonomic rolling constraints, are satisfied. The
evaluations show the importance of good initial guesses for optimization.
Furthermore, they suggest that terrain/collision (avoidance) constraints are
more challenging than the robot model's constraints. Lastly, we extend the
optimization to handle general terrain representations in the form of elevation
maps
Fast Approximate Clearance Evaluation for Rovers with Articulated Suspension Systems
We present a light-weight body-terrain clearance evaluation algorithm for the
automated path planning of NASA's Mars 2020 rover. Extraterrestrial path
planning is challenging due to the combination of terrain roughness and severe
limitation in computational resources. Path planning on cluttered and/or uneven
terrains requires repeated safety checks on all the candidate paths at a small
interval. Predicting the future rover state requires simulating the vehicle
settling on the terrain, which involves an inverse-kinematics problem with
iterative nonlinear optimization under geometric constraints. However, such
expensive computation is intractable for slow spacecraft computers, such as
RAD750, which is used by the Curiosity Mars rover and upcoming Mars 2020 rover.
We propose the Approximate Clearance Evaluation (ACE) algorithm, which obtains
conservative bounds on vehicle clearance, attitude, and suspension angles
without iterative computation. It obtains those bounds by estimating the lowest
and highest heights that each wheel may reach given the underlying terrain, and
calculating the worst-case vehicle configuration associated with those extreme
wheel heights. The bounds are guaranteed to be conservative, hence ensuring
vehicle safety during autonomous navigation. ACE is planned to be used as part
of the new onboard path planner of the Mars 2020 rover. This paper describes
the algorithm in detail and validates our claim of conservatism and fast
computation through experiments
Legged locomotion over irregular terrains: State of the art of human and robot performance
Legged robotic technologies have moved out of the lab to operate in real environments, characterized by a wide variety of unpredictable irregularities and disturbances, all this in close proximity with humans. Demonstrating the ability of current robots to move robustly and reliably in these conditions is becoming essential to prove their safe operation. Here, we report an in-depth literature review aimed at verifying the existence of common or agreed protocols and metrics to test the performance of legged system in realistic environments. We primarily focused on three types of robotic technologies, i.e., hexapods, quadrupeds and bipeds. We also included a comprehensive overview on human locomotion studies, being it often considered the gold standard for performance, and one of the most important sources of bioinspiration for legged machines. We discovered that very few papers have rigorously studied robotic locomotion under irregular terrain conditions. On the contrary, numerous studies have addressed this problem on human gait, being nonetheless of highly heterogeneous nature in terms of experimental design. This lack of agreed methodology makes it challenging for the community to properly assess, compare and predict the performance of existing legged systems in real environments. On the one hand, this work provides a library of methods, metrics and experimental protocols, with a critical analysis on the limitations of the current approaches and future promising directions. On the other hand, it demonstrates the existence of an important lack of benchmarks in the literature, and the possibility of bridging different disciplines, e.g., the human and robotic, towards the definition of standardized procedure that will boost not only the scientific development of better bioinspired solutions, but also their market uptake