Perceptive Locomotion in Rough Terrain – Online Foothold Optimization


Date

2020-10

Publication Type

Journal Article

ETH Bibliography

yes

Citations

Altmetric

Data

Abstract

Compared to wheeled vehicles, legged systems have a vast potential to traverse challenging terrain. To exploit the full potential, it is crucial to tightly integrate terrain perception for foothold planning. We present a hierarchical locomotion planner together with a foothold optimizer that finds locally optimal footholds within an elevation map. The map is generated in real-time from on-board depth sensors. We further propose a terrain-aware contact schedule to deal with actuator velocity limits. We validate the combined locomotion pipeline on our quadrupedal robot ANYmal with a variety of simulated and real-world experiments. We show that our method can cope with stairs and obstacles of heights up to 33% of the robot’s leg length.

Publication status

published

Editor

Book title

Volume

5 (4)

Pages / Article No.

5370 - 5376

Publisher

IEEE

Event

Edition / version

Methods

Software

Geographic location

Date collected

Date created

Subject

Legged Robots; Motion control; Optimization and Optimal Control; Foothold Optimization; Perceptive Locomotion

Organisational unit

09570 - Hutter, Marco / Hutter, Marco check_circle

Notes

Funding

188596 - Perceptive Dynamic Locomotion on Rough Terrain (SNF)
780883 - subTerranean Haptic INvestiGator (EC)

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