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Robotics Seminar: Control Architecture for Dynamic Legged Locomotion

10 Mar
Tuesday, 03/10/2020 2:30pm to 3:30pm
Computer Science Building, Room 150/151
Seminar
Speaker: Donghyun Kim

Abstract: To accomplish dynamic locomotion of legged robots, we need a systematic understanding of hardware, real-time controls, dynamics, and motion planning. Therefore, the proper control architecture with full consideration of hardware is crucial but not available yet even with the current state-of-the-art techniques. I have been developing control methods for legged systems, and in this talk, I will explain challenges in classical control techniques (e.g. bandwidth of feedback control, uncertainty, and robustness) and high-level planning (e.g. step planning, visual perception, and trajectory optimization). I will showcase some of my results on various legged platforms delving in different functionalities and control formulations and why a systematic understanding is critical to accomplish dynamic locomotion control. The tested robots include point-foot bipeds (Hume, Mercury), robots using liquid-cooling viscoelastic actuators (Draco), and a quadruped robot using proprioceptive actuators (Mini-Cheetah). I will also present recent results at MIT using the Mini-Cheetah-Vision robot which embeds vision to significantly improve walking performance over rough terrains.

Bio: Donghyun Kim is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the biomimetic robotics lab, which is known for building cheetah robots. Donghyun's primary research area is in dynamic locomotion of legged systems with a focus on the development of control architectures and their experimental validation. During his Ph.D. at UT Austin, Donghyun developed control methods including joint-level feedback control, whole-body control, footstep planners, and robustness analysis for passive-ankle biped robots. At MIT, he developed controllers for high speed running of quadruped robots and demonstrated the Mini-Cheetah robot running up to 3.7 m/s. He is now extending his research area to a perception-based high-level decision algorithm to push forward robots' athletic intelligence.

A reception for attendees will be held at 2:00 p.m. in CS 150.

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