Claudio Semini
Researcher Tenure Track - Principal Investigator
Head of the Dynamic Legged Systems lab
About
Claudio Semini is currently the head of the Dynamic Legged Systems Lab that developed a number of high-performance hydraulic robots, including HyQ, HyQ2Max, MiniHyQ and HyQ centaur. Claudio Semini was born in Zurich, Switzerland. He graduated in Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich in 2005. For his Master’s Thesis on Obstacle Avoidance for a Redundant Robot Manipulator he did research at the Shigeo Hirose Robotics Laboratory of the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan, and subsequently worked at Toshiba’s Corporate Research and Development Center in Kawasaki, Japan until the end of 2006.
Since the beginning of 2007 Claudio Semini has been a member of the Advanced Robotics Department at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), where he started the HyQ project as his PhD research under the supervision of Nikos Tsagarakis and Darwin Caldwell. In 2010 he finished the design and construction of the first version of the HyQ robot and successfully defended his PhD with the title "HyQ - Design and Development of a Hydraulically Actuated Quadruped Robot". In the subsequent years, in tight collaboration with Prof. Jonas Buchli, the HyQ team implemented a wide repertoire of motions ranging from highly dynamic tasks such as running and jumping, to carefully planned walking through challenging terrain.
More details on the project can be found here:
Hydraulically Actuated Quadruped Robot - HyQ
or on his personal website: www.semini.ch
Selected Publications
C. Semini, "HyQ – Design and Development of a Hydraulically Actuated Quadruped Robot,” Dissertation, Italian Institute of Technology and University of Genoa, Italy, 2010.
[full thesis] (high resolution version)
Selection of Conference, Journal, Workshops (for a complete and always up-to-date list visit http://www.iit.it/hyq)
C. Semini, V. Barasuol, T. Boaventura, M. Frigerio, M. Focchi, D. G. Caldwell, J. Buchli, Towards versatile legged robots through active impedance control, The International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 2015. (published in June 2015)
[full article]
C. Semini, V. Barasuol, T. Boaventura, M. Frigerio, J. Buchli, "Is Active Impedance the Key to a Breakthrough for Legged Robots?" International Symposium of Robotics Research (ISRR), 2013.
[full article]
V. Barasuol, J. Buchli, C. Semini, M. Frigerio, E. R. De Pieri, D. G. Caldwell, "A Reactive Controller Framework for Quadrupedal Locomotion on Challenging Terrain", IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2013.
[full article]
T. Boaventura, M. Focchi, M. Frigerio, J. Buchli, C. Semini, G. A. Medrano-Cerda, D. G. Caldwell, "On the role of load motion compensation in high-performance force control", IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2012.
[full article]
C. Semini, H. Khan, M. Frigerio, T. Boaventura, M. Focchi, J. Buchli and D. G. Caldwell, "Design and Scaling of Versatile Quadruped Robots", Int. Conf. on Climbing and Walking Robots (CLAWAR), 2012.
[full article]
T. Boaventura, C. Semini, J. Buchli, M. Frigerio, M. Focchi, D. G. Caldwell, "Dynamic Torque Control of a Hydraulic Quadruped Robot", Proceedings IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2012, St. Paul, USA.
[full article]
C. Semini, N. G. Tsagarakis, E. Guglielmino, M. Focchi, F. Cannella and D. G. Caldwell, "Design of HyQ - a Hydraulically and Electrically Actuated Quadruped Robot," Proc. IMechE Part I: J. Systems and Control Engineering, vol. 225, no. 6, pp. 831-849, 2011.
[pdf (preprint), link]
C. Semini, N. G. Tsagarakis, E. Guglielmino and D. G. Caldwell, "Design and experimental evaluation of the hydraulically actuated prototype leg of the HyQ robot", International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2010 IEEE/RSJ.
[full article]
M. Focchi, E. Guglielmino, C. Semini, T. Boaventura, Y. S. Yang, D. G. Caldwell, "Control of a Hydraulically-Actuated Quadruped Robot Leg," IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2010.
[full article]
B. Vanderborght, N. G. Tsagarakis, C. Semini, R. Van Ham, D. G. Caldwell, "MACCEPA 2.0: Adjustable Compliant Actuator with Stiffening Characteristic for Energy Efficient Hopping," IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 544-549, 2009
C. Semini, N. G. Tsagarakis, B. Vanderborght, Y. S. Yang and D. G. Caldwell, "HyQ - Hydraulically Actuated Quadruped Robot: Hopping Leg Prototype," IEEE/RAS-EMBS Int. Conf. on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob), pp.593-599, 2008.
[full article]
C. Semini, N. G. Tsagarakis, D. G. Caldwell, "Dynamic Tasks of a Hydraulically Actuated Quadruped Robot," Poster at Dynamic Walking Conference, Delft (The Netherlands), May 2008.
[poster]
Awards
Best paper award at CLAWAR 2017 conference for the paper: "A Combined Limit Cycle - Zero Moment Point based Approach for Omni-Directional Quadrupedal Bounding".
Best paper award at IEEE SIMPAR 2016 conference for the paper: "Fast Derivatives of Rigid Body Dynamics for Control, Optimization and Estimation" (in collaboration with ADRL of ETH Zurich)
Commended paper award at CLAWAR 2015 for the paper: "Lidar-based navigation-level path planning for field-capable legged robots"