Legged robots

Summary

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 an analysis of different control methods for legged locomotion.

Content

Keywords

Legged robots, control of locomotion

Learning Prerequisites

Required courses

Recommended courses

• Mobile robots

• Model predictive control

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, the student must be able to:

• Identify a suitable type of legged robot for a given application
• Argue about the validity of existing controllers from the literature
• Design their own controllers
• Test the controllers in simulation
• Assess / Evaluate the controllers’ performance and limits
• Assess / Evaluate the controllers performance and limits

Transversal skills

• Plan and carry out activities in a way which makes optimal use of available time and other resources.
• Access and evaluate appropriate sources of information.

Teaching methods

Lectures, reading articles, presentations, and numerical exercises

Expected student activities

• Attending weekly lectures
• Read and present scientific articles
• Develop locomotion controllers for simulated legged robots
• Present and analyse results in a report or a presentation

Assessment methods

Presentation of scientific articles (20%), report for the numerical exercises (50%), written exam (30%). Work for the presentations and the numerical exercises will be done by groups of 3 students. The written exam is taken individually.

Supervision

Resources

Bibliography

• Articles selected from the recent literature and presented / analysed in the class

Moodle Link

• https://go.epfl.ch/MICRO-507