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The next generation of autonomous-legged robots will herald a new era in the fields of manufacturing, healthcare, terrain exploration, and surveillance. We can expect significant progress in a number of industries, including inspection, search and rescue, elderly care, workplace safety, and nuclear decommissioning. Advanced legged robots are built with a state-of-the-art architecture that makes use of stereo vision and inertial measurement data to navigate unfamiliar and challenging terrains. However, designing controllers for these robots is a difficult task due to a number of factors, including dynamic terrains, tracking delays, inaccurate 3D maps, unforeseen events, and sensor calibration issues. To address these challenges, this paper discusses the current methods for controlling autonomous-legged robots. Our primary contribution is comparative research on robot control strategies such as virtual model control (VMC), model predictive control (MPC), and model-free reinforcement learning (RL). This paper provides information on different strategies for controlling autonomous legged robots and discusses the potential advancements and applications of this technology in the future. The aim of this study is to assist future researchers in making informed decisions on the selection of optimal control strategies and innovative concepts when developing and working with legged robots.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e37237 | DOI Listing |
Micromachines (Basel)
July 2025
School of Mechanical Engineering, North University of China, Taiyuan 030051, China.
A method for configuration synthesis of a reconfigurable decoupled parallel mechanical leg is proposed. In addition, a configuration evaluation index is proposed to evaluate the synthesized configurations and select the optimal one. Kinematic analysis and performance optimization of the selected mechanism's configuration are carried out, and the motion mode of the robot's reconfigurable mechanical leg is selected according to the task requirements.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiomimetics (Basel)
August 2025
School of Mechatronical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100811, China.
This paper proposes a cascaded state estimation framework based on proprioception for robots. A generalized-momentum-based Kalman filter (GMKF) estimates the ground reaction forces at the feet through joint torques, which are then input into an error-state Kalman filter (ESKF) to obtain the robot's prior state estimate. The system's dynamic equations on the Lie group are parameterized using canonical coordinates of the first kind, and variations in the tangent space are mapped to the Lie algebra via the inverse of the right trivialization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Robot
August 2025
Robotic Systems Lab, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
Dynamic locomotion of legged robots is a critical yet challenging topic in expanding the operational range of mobile robots. It requires precise planning when possible footholds are sparse, robustness against uncertainties and disturbances, and generalizability across diverse terrains. Although traditional model-based controllers excel at planning on complex terrains, they struggle with real-world uncertainties.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCyborg Bionic Syst
August 2025
State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic Systems, School of Mechanical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
Motivated by the agility of animal and human locomotion, highly dynamic bionic legged robots have been extensively applied across various domains. Legged robotics represents a multidisciplinary field that integrates manufacturing, materials science, electronics, and biology, and other disciplines. Among its core subsystems, the lower limbs are particularly critical, necessitating the integration of structural optimization, advanced modeling techniques, and sophisticated control strategies to fully exploit robots' dynamic performance potential.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Rep
August 2025
Department of Electronics and Information Systems Engineering, Osaka Institute of Technology, Osaka, 535-8585, Japan.
It is important for legged robots to be tolerant of joint malfunctions, especially when working in extreme environments such as the surface of an extraterrestrial planet. However, it is not easy to guarantee tolerance, which requires either the robot structure and controller to be carefully designed for specific failure situations or prompt detection and diagnosis of the faults followed by quick controller reconfiguration. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a method using the automatic robot design method recently proposed by some of the authors.
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