Dynamic Walking with Compliance on a Cassie Bipedal Robot
Open accessAbstract
The control of bipedal robotic walking remains a challenging problem in the domains of computation and experiment, due to the multi-body dynamics and various sources of uncertainty. In recent years, there has been a rising trend towards model reduction and the design of intuitive controllers to overcome the gap between assumed model and reality. Despite its viability in practical implementation, this local representation of true dynamics naturally indicate limited scalibility towards more dynamical behaviors. With the goal of moving towards increasingly dynamic behaviors, we leverage the detailed full body dynamics to generate controllers for the robotic system which utilizes compliant elements in the passive dynamics. In this process, we present a feasible computation method that yields walking trajectories for a highly complex robotic system. Direct implementation of these results on physical hardware is also performed with minimal tuning and heuristics. We validate the suggested method by applying a consistent control scheme across simulation, optimization and experiment, the result is that the bipedal robot Cassie walks over a variety of indoor and outdoor terrains reliably.
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To date, no published work has demonstrated dynamic locomotion in diverse, challenging natural environments as shown in Fig. 1.
“To date, no published work has demonstrated dynamic locomotion in diverse, challenging natural environments as shown in Fig. 1.”
From Learning quadrupedal locomotion over challenging terrain (2020) · cites this paper as [4]
Conventional controllers for legged locomotion are based on elaborate state machines that explicitly trigger the execution of motion primitives and reflexes.
“Many rely on elaborate state machines that coordinate the execution of motion primitives and reflex controllers [1-5].”
From Learning quadrupedal locomotion over challenging terrain (2020) · cites this paper as [4]
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Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 1
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Learning quadrupedal locomotion over challenging terrain
Lee, J., Hwangbo, J., Wellhausen, L., Koltun, V., & Hutter, M. (2020) · Science Robotics · doi:10.1126/scirobotics.abc5986 · Cited by 1,156 · see citing works
- Authors
- Reher, J., Ma, W.-L., & Ames, A. D.
- Affiliations
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- Venue
- 2019 18th European Control Conference (ECC)
- Publisher
- IEEE
- Published
- 2019-06
- Pages
- 2589-2595
- OpenAlex
- W2942168264
- Cited by
- 81
- References
- 30
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 21 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 19 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 9
- FWCI
- 14.51
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- arxiv.org
- Locations
- European Control Conference (ECC) (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- CaltechAUTHORS (California Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (1544332, 1724464, 1724457)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Biomedical Engineering › Robotic Locomotion and Control
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Biomedical Engineering › Prosthetics and Rehabilitation Robotics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Control and Systems Engineering › Control and Dynamics of Mobile Robots
- Keywords
- Cassie robot, dynamic walking, compliance, passive dynamics, model reduction, terrain adaptability, legged locomotion control
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