Legged Robot Navigation

Source: https://dynamic.robots.ox.ac.uk/projects/legged-robots/ Parent: https://dynamic.robots.ox.ac.uk/

We are interested in deploying autonomous legged robots in diverse environments, such as industrial facilities and forests. Our research has focused on state estimation, mapping, and local planning systems for legged robots. The systems developed have been primarily deployed on the ANYbotics ANYmal quadruped.

Autonomous Forest Inventory

As part of the DigiForest project, we are working on new systems to autonomously build forest inventories with legged platforms, which we have deployed in the UK, Finland, and Switzerland

Publications

• “Building Forest Inventories with Autonomous Legged Robots — System, Lessons, and Challenges Ahead”, Matias Mattamala, Nived Chebrolu, Jonas Frey, Leonard Freißmuth, Haedam Oh, Benoit Casseau, Marco Hutter, Maurice Fallon, Under Review, 2024.
• “Autonomous Forest Inventory with Legged Robots: System Design and Field Deployment”, Matias Mattamala, Nived Chebrolu, Benoit Casseau, Leonard Freißmuth, Jonas Frey, Turcan Tuna, Marco Hutter, Maurice Fallon, ICRA Workshop on Field Robotics, 2024.

Traversability Estimation

In collaboration with the Robotic Systems Lab (RSL) at ETH Zurich, we have researched vision-based traversability estimation using online self-supervised learning.

Project page: Wild Visual Navigation

Publications

• “Wild Visual Navigation: Fast Traversability Learning via Pre-Trained Models and Online Self-Supervision”, Matias Mattamala*, Jonas Frey*, Piotr Libera, Nived Chebrolu, Georg Martius, Cesar Cadena, Marco Hutter, Maurice Fallon, Under Review, 2024.
• “Fast Traversability Estimation for Wild Visual Navigation”, Jonas Frey*, Matias Mattamala*, Nived Chebrolu, Cesar Cadena, Maurice Fallon, Marco Hutter, Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), 2023.

(* Denotes equal contribution)

Underground Exploration

During 2018-2021 we were part of Team CERBERUS in the DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge. This motivated research on state estimation, exploration, and safe navigation with quadruped robots in underground environments.

Publications

• “VILENS: Visual, Inertial, Lidar, and Leg Odometry for All-Terrain Legged Robots”, David Wisth, Marco Camurri, Maurice Fallon, IEEE Trans. Robotics, 2022.
• “Team Cerberus wins the DARPA Subterranean Challenge: Technical overview and lessons learned”, Marco Tranzatto, Mihir Dharmadhikari, Lukas Bernreiter, Marco Camurri, Shehryar Khattak, Frank Mascarich, Patrick Pfreundschuh, David Wisth, Samuel Zimmermann, Mihir Kulkarni, Victor Reijgwart, Benoit Casseau, Timon Homberger, Paolo Petris, Lionel Ott, Wayne Tubby, Gabriel Waibel, Huan Nguyen, Cesar Cadena, Russell Buchanan, Lorenz Wellhausen, Nikhil Khedekar, Olov Andersson, Lintong Zhang, Takahiro Miki, Tung Dang, Matias Mattamala, Markus Montenegro, Konrad Meyer, Xiangyu Wu, Adrien Briod, Mark Mueller, Maurice Fallon, Roland Siegwart, Marco Hutter, Kostas Alexis, 2022.
• “An Efficient Locally Reactive Controller for Safe Navigation in Visual Teach and Repeat Missions”, Matías Mattamala, Nived Chebrolu, Maurice Fallon, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2022.
• “Learning Inertial Odometry for Dynamic Legged Robot State Estimation”, Russell Buchanan, Marco Camurri, Frank Dellaert, Maurice Fallon, Conf. on Robot Learning, 2021.
• “CERBERUS: Autonomous Legged and Aerial Robotic Exploration in the Tunnel and Urban Circuits of the DARPA Subterranean Challenge”, Marco Tranzatto, Frank Mascarich, Lukas Bernreiter, Carolina Godinho, Marco Camurri, Shehryar Khattak, Tung Dang, Victor Reijgwart, Johannes Loeje, David Wisth, Samuel Zimmermann, Huan Nguyen, Marius Fehr, Lukas Solanka, Russell Buchanan, Marko Bjelonic, Nikhil Khedekar, Mathieu Valceschini, Fabian Jenelten, Mihir Dharmadhikari, Timon Homberger, Paolo Petris, Lorenz Wellhausen, Mihir Kulkarni, Takahiro Miki, Satchel Hirsch, Markus Montenegro, Christos Papachristos, Fabian Tresoldi, Jan Carius, Giorgio Valsecchi, Joonho Lee, Konrad Meyer, Xiangyu Wu, Juan Nieto, Andy Smith, Marco Hutter, Roland Siegwart, Mark Mueller, Maurice Fallon, Kostas Alexis, Journal of Field Robotics, 2021.
• “Haptic Sequential Monte Carlo Localization for Quadrupedal Locomotion in Vision-Denied Scenarios”, Russell Buchanan, Marco Camurri, Maurice Fallon, IEEE/RSJ Intl. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2020.

Industrial Inspection

As part of our contributions within the ORCA Project (2017-2022), we developed vision- and LiDAR-based navigation systems for legged platforms in industrial facilities.

Publications

• “Learning Camera Performance Models for Active Multi-Camera Visual Teach and Repeat”, Matias Mattamala, Milad Ramezani, Marco Camurri, Maurice Fallon, IEEE Intl. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2021.
• “Online LiDAR-SLAM for Legged Robots with Robust Registration and Deep-Learned Loop Closure”, Milad Ramezani, Georgi Tinchev, Egor Iuganov, Maurice Fallon, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2020.
• “Actively Mapping Industrial Structures with Information Gain-Based Planning on a Quadruped Robot”, Yiduo Wang, Milad Ramezani, Maurice Fallon, IEEE Intl. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2020.