Welcome

The Dynamic Legged Systems focuses on research that concerns the design and control aspects of agile legged robots.

We are interested in the development of legged robotic systems, chiefly quadrupeds, and we are investigating ways that can increase flexibility and performance of legged designs. Apart from developing agile quadruped robots we emphasize the need for accurate and robust control, ranging from the level of individual joints up to the overall behavior of the legged robot.

Apart from accurate hydraulic force/torque control at the joint level we are investigating ways of creating and using a variety of different locomotion gaits, that are robust to external disturbances and changing environmental conditions. A significant part of our groups' effort is devoted to perception tailored to dynamic quadrupedal robots. This becomes important as robots take their first steps outside controlled lab environments and into real-life applications.

Our flagship platform is the Hydraulic Quadruped robot HyQ. Since its construction in 2010, HyQ demonstrated a wide repertoire of motions ranging from stair climbing, chimney climbing, omnidirectional trotting over rough terrain, trotting with step reflexes, to flying trotting and jumping.

Our latest generation quadruped HyQReal has been released May 2019 and will in time be replacing HyQ as our main platform for research.

Laboratories

The DLS lab has state-of-the-art facilities to develop, build and test hydraulic robots and their components. We currently have several quadruped robots (two HyQs, a HyQ2Max, a MiniHyQ and a HyQReal), two hydraulic arms and several leg prototypes. Our indoor lab space comprises hydraulic pump units, test benches, a motion capture system, a large-scale treadmill, a force plate, a high-speed camera, etc.

Our outdoor lab space consists of a 25m race track with overhead rail and various types of obstacles.

The Moog@iit joint lab is part of the DLS lab.

Projects

Dynamic Legged Systems lab has multiple ongoing project as well as succesfully finished projects. Below all of these are listed. For more information visit the projects page or click on the links that you're most interested in from the list below:

• ESA DLS as part of ESA_Lab@DFKI (2021 – 2022)
• INAIL development of a novel collaborative teleoperated robot system (2017 – 2023)
• VINUM-ROBOT Agricultural project involving HyQReal as legged platform (2017 – 2022)
• Vodafone 5G 5G network tests on HyQReal (2017 – 2020)
• EU FP7 ECHORD++ experiment HyQ-REAL (2016 – 2018)
• Moog@iit joint lab (2016-2020)
• The HyQ quadruped robot project (2007 – ongoing) IIT-internal funding
  

Active Collaborations

• Institute for Human and Machine Cognition - Robotics Collaborative Technology Alliance. Jerry Pratt
• University of São Paulo - Department of Mechanical Engineering. Prof. Thiago Boaventura
• Santa Catarina State University - Automation and Robotics Group. Prof. Douglas Bertol
• University of Oxford - Oxford Robotics Institute. P.I. Maurice Fallon, Ioannis Havoutis
• IMT Scuola Alti Studi Lucca, Italy – Dynamical systems, control and optimization group. P.I. Alberto Bemporad
• University of Notredame, Indiana, USA – Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering . P.I. Patrick M. Wensing
• Università di Trento, Italy – Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale . Andrea Del Prete
• Moog UK/USA main contacts Mike Baker, Dhinesh Sangiah, George Small.
• MPI for Intelligent Systems – Movement generation and control group. P.I. Ludovic Righetti
• Tampere Univ. of Technology - Automation and Hydraulic Engineering. P.I. Jouni Mattila
• IIT – Humanoids and Human Centered Mechatronics. P.I. Nikos Tsagarakis, Ioannis Sarakoglou, Enrico Mingo
• IIT – Advanced Robotics. P.I. Darwin Caldwell, Roy Featherstone, Nikhil Deshpande, Fei Chen

Former Collaborations

• ETH Zurich – Agile & Dexterous Robotics Lab (ADRL). P.I. Jonas Buchli.
• Northeastern University, Boston, USA – Mechanical & Industrial Engineering.
• CNRS, Montpellier, France – Montpellier Laboratory of Computer Science, Robotics and Microelectonics. Stéphane Caron