Towards a Systematic Control Framework for Dynamic Locomotion

To accomplish dynamic locomotion of legged systems, we need a systematic understanding of hardware, real-time controls, motion planning, and state estimation. Therefore, a robust control framework with full consideration of the hardware is crucial but not available yet even with the current state-of-the-art techniques. Kim will explain challenges between 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). Kim will also showcase some of my recent 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).

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 a control framework and its experimental validation. During his Ph.D. at UT, Donghyun developed frameworks 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.