Legged robots

The course presents the design, control, and applications of legged robots. It gives a review of different types of legged robots (including two-, four- and multi-legged robots) and different control approaches for legged locomotion. A few selected control approaches will be analyzed more in-depth. The course also trains students in making critical analysis of key articles in the field, and in designing their own legged robot models and locomotion controllers in simulation.

Grading: Student presentations of articles 20% of grade, projects 50%, and written exam 30%. Work for the presentations and the projects will be done by groups of 3 students.

Presentations of articles: Students will chose one article among a list of key articles in legged robots. The purpose is to carefully read the article, critically analyze its pros and cons, and present it to the class. The presentation will be graded by the professor and teaching assistants (TAs). The list of articles will soon be provided, and a schedule will be organized after 2-3 weeks. Each student in the 3-person team should participate to the presentation.

Projects: The two projects will be done in Python. The first project will involve developing a planner/controller based on the Divergent Component of Motion for a simulated biped (Atlas) in PyBullet. The second project will involve developing controllers for a quadruped robot (go1), first with Central Pattern Generators and then with Deep Reinforcement Learning. For both projects, student teams will need to hand in a single scientific report, their programming code, and movies of their results.

Written exam: The exam will cover the theoretical aspects of the course. It will cover material from the lectures (by Auke Ijspeert and guest lecturers), and the student presentations of articles. It will take place on December 10, 10:15-12:00 in INF2 and INF3.

Assistants: Guillaume.Bellegarda@epfl.ch (Postdoc, main assistant), Astha.Gupta@epfl.ch, Chuanfang.Ning@epfl.ch,   Milad.Shafiee@epfl.ch, Lixuan.Tang@epfl.ch (PhD student teaching assistants) and Serge.Elasmar@epfl.ch, Tim.Lucking@epfl.ch, and Jad.Bhamdouni@epfl.ch (MSc student teaching assistants).

The lectures and practicals will be given in INF2.  Lectures are on Tuesdays from 10:15 to 12:00, and practicals from 13:15 to 15:00.

This first lecture gives a short introduction about the content and organization of the course (including the miniprojects). It also covers the history of legged robots, mechanical design choices, and pros of cons of legged versus wheeled robots. The lecture is given from 10:15 to 12:00. And is followed by the practical session from 13:15 to 15:00.

Overview of gait definitions, pendulum models, stability criteria and different locomotion metrics.

Overview of different control approaches. Note: Auke Ijspeert is away at a conference. The lecture is therefore the recorded version of last year, no need to come to the lecture room in the morning. Note: the recording mentions a guest lecture by Sangbae Kim, but that will not happen this year (we will only have Prof. Marco Hutter and Dr Guillaume Bellegarda).

Guest lecture by Dr Guillaume Bellegarda.

Auke Ijspeert is at a conference this week. Instead of the lecture in the morning (no need to come from 10:15-12:00), we provide here the recorded lecture of Prof. Sangbae Kim of last year. Sangbae Kim is famous for his work on the MIT Cheetah robots. That lecture provides interesting insights into the concept of physical intelligence, a type of intelligence that relies strongly on the embodiment and the physical interactions with the environment.

Prof. Marco Hutter will give this lecture in person in INF2 at the usual lecture time (10:15). Do not miss this opportunity to hear one of the leading researchers in legged robots!!

Note that the possible exam questions are on the p 93 of the pdf of the slides (not the last page).

The exam will take place from 10:15 to 12:00 in INF2 and INF 3.   Normal lab session in the afternoon.