Many groups at MIT work on robotics including the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the MIT Media Lab, just to name a few.
We present a method for controlling humanoid robots to recover from disturbances when available footholds are limited. This method involves determining the robot's Capture Region taking into consideration the available footholds, deciding where in the Capture Region ...
Mobile robot designers are increasingly searching for inspirations and design cues from biological models. Biomechanics research of animals provides an invaluable source of ideas for legged robot design but the process of implementation involves great complexity. The ...
Cybernetic human HRP-4C is a humanoid robot whose body dimensions were designed to match the average Japanese young female. I will explain the current status of HRP-4C and lessons we learned from the project.
Humans are mediocre sprinters at best. The top speed of Usain Bolt can be matched by a domestic cat. But when it comes to endurance running over many kilometers and long durations of time, very few animals measure up to humans. We present here evolutionary evidence ...
Leg function can be adapted to different gaits and environmental conditions. Here we investigate, to what extent the structure of the segmented leg and the upright posture of the trunk affects the dynamics and stability of legged locomotion. With the help of simple ...
The extreme variation in hindlimb morphology that has occurred in the evolution of birds adapted to varying types of locomotion provides the opportunity to examine those features of muscle and limb architecture that appear to be associated with a particular locomotor ...
Our research aims at the creation of fast and efficient running motions of four legged robotic systems. We design our robots to explicitly enable and exploit natural dynamic effects (such as the oscillation on springy legs) in their mechanical structure and their ...
It is thought that many aspects of steady human locomotion under normal conditions can be predicted by appealing to the hypothesis that healthy humans roughly move in a manner that minimizes the metabolic cost of locomotion. While energy optimization with sufficiently ...
Floquet theory describes the linearization of an oscillator around its orbit. We convert this familiar classical result to an empirical form, allowing Floquet models to be constructed directly from experimentally obtained trajectories of periodic gaits. The Floquet ...
This talk will present a method for computing estimates of regions of attraction to limit cycles of quite a general class of nonlinear hybrid systems. Such limit cycles typically represent the "nominal" motion of a walking robot, with alternating phases of continuous ...
This talk discusses the first steps toward closing the loop on walking: generating mathematical models for human walking, developing control laws that yield walking for 3D bipeds using these formal models, and comparing the resulting robotic walking to the human ...
Integrative approaches to studying the coupled dynamics of skeletal muscles with their loads while under neural control have focused largely on questions pertaining to the postural and dynamical stability of animals and humans. Prior studies have focused on how the ...
Birds are a diverse group of bipedal animals that span a range of body size, morphology and habitat use. This diversity can be exploited to reveal relationships between morphology, economy and stability of locomotion, providing a complementary perspective to studies ...
It is now well established that the elastic function of tendons has a profound influence on the mechanics, energetics, and control of locomotion. A model of a simple Hookean spring in series with a muscle actuator reveals mechanisms that reduce the energy cost of ...
Compliant mechanical behavior of the lower-limb can capture the basic dynamics of stable walking and running across a range of speeds, but the neuromechanical mechanisms responsible for robust, spring-like limb dynamics are not entirely clear. In order for a compliant ...
Optimal control has a lot of potential, however its applications to robotics have been limited, partly because the problem is very hard to solve even numerically. In this talk I will summarize a recently-developed formulation of stochastic optimal control which ...
Designing controllers for legged locomotion requires dealing with complex nonlinear dynamics and non-trivial notions of stability including limit cycles and dynamically stable maneuvers. In this talk I will describe the LQR-Trees algorithm for designing feedback ...
Lower limb prostheses have traditionally been passive devices that lack the ability to generate net power at the joints. This absence of net power generation impairs the ability of passive prosthesis to restore biomechanically healthy function to lower limb amputees. ...
Until recently, athletes using Passive Elastic Running Prostheses (PERPS) were clearly at a disadvantage compared to those with fully functional biological legs. The remarkable accomplishments of a few prominent athletes (e.g. Oscar Pistorius, Amy Palmierio-Winters) ...
