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Agile-legged robots have proven to be highly effective in navigating and performing tasks in complex and challenging environments, including disaster zones and industrial settings. However, these applications commonly require the capability of carrying heavy loads while maintaining dynamic motion. Therefore, this article presents a novel methodology for incorporating adaptive control into a force-based control system. Recent advancements in the control of quadruped robots show that force control can effectively realize dynamic locomotion over rough terrain. By integrating adaptive control into the force-based controller, our proposed approach can maintain the advantages of the baseline framework while adapting to significant model uncertainties and unknown terrain impact models. Experimental validation was successfully conducted on the Unitree A1 robot. With our approach, the robot can carry heavy loads (up to 50% of its weight) while performing dynamic gaits such as fast trotting and bounding across uneven terrains.
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This content will become publicly available on February 25, 2026
Toward autonomous event-based sensorimotor control with supervised gait learning and obstacle avoidance for robot navigation
Miniature robots are useful during disaster response and accessing remote or unsafe areas. They need to navigate uneven terrains without supervision and under severe resource constraints such as limited compute, storage and power budget. Event-based sensorimotor control in edge robotics has potential to enable fully autonomous and adaptive robot navigation systems capable of responding to environmental fluctuations by learning new types of motion and real-time decision making to avoid obstacles. This work presents a novel bio-inspired framework with a hierarchical control system to address these limitations, utilizing a tunable multi-layer neural network with a hardware-friendly Central Pattern Generator (CPG) as the core coordinator to govern the precise timing of periodic motion. Autonomous operation is managed by a Dynamic State Machine (DSM) at the top of the hierarchy, providing the necessary adaptability to handle environmental challenges such as obstacles or uneven terrain. The multi-layer neural network uses a nonlinear neuron model which employs mixed feedback at multiple timescales to produce rhythmic patterns of bursting events to control the motors. A comprehensive study of the architecture's building blocks is presented along with a detailed analysis of network equations. Finally, we demonstrate the proposed framework on the Petoi robot, which can autonomously learn walk and crawl gaits using supervised Spike-Time Dependent Plasticity (STDP) learning algorithm, transition between the learned gaits stored as new states, through the DSM for real-time obstacle avoidance. Measured results of the system performance are summarized and compared with other works to highlight our unique contributions.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2328815
- PAR ID:
- 10636714
- Publisher / Repository:
- Frontiers in Neuroscience
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Frontiers in Neuroscience
- Volume:
- 19
- ISSN:
- 1662-453X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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