Pedipulate: Enabling Manipulation Skills using a Quadruped Robot’s Leg
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Author / Producer
Date
2024
Publication Type
Conference Paper
ETH Bibliography
yes
Citations
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Abstract
Legged robots have the potential to become vital in maintenance, home support, and exploration scenarios. In order to interact with and manipulate their environments, most legged robots are equipped with a dedicated robot arm, which means additional mass and mechanical complexity compared to standard legged robots. In this work, we explore pedipulation - using the legs of a legged robot for manipulation. By training a reinforcement learning policy that tracks position targets for one foot, we enable a dedicated pedipulation controller that is robust to disturbances, has a large workspace through whole-body behaviors, and can reach far-away targets with gait emergence, enabling loco-pedipulation. By deploying our controller on a quadrupedal robot using teleoperation, we demonstrate various real-world tasks such as door opening, sample collection, and pushing obstacles. We demonstrate load carrying of more than 2.0 kg at the foot. Additionally, the controller is robust to interaction forces at the foot, disturbances at the base, and slippery contact surfaces. Videos of the experiments are available at https://sites.google.com/leggedrobotics.com/pedipulate.
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Publication status
published
Editor
Book title
2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
Journal / series
Volume
Pages / Article No.
5717 - 5723
Publisher
IEEE
Event
41st IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2024)
Edition / version
Methods
Software
Geographic location
Date collected
Date created
Subject
Legged Robotics; Mobile Manipulation; Manipulation; Pedipulation; Robotics
Organisational unit
09570 - Hutter, Marco / Hutter, Marco
02284 - NFS Digitale Fabrikation / NCCR Digital Fabrication
Notes
Funding
-- - NCCR Digital Fabrication (SNF)