Our paper about HOPPY was accepted for publications at IROS 2021!

Our paper about the development and implementation of HOPPY, a low-cost and open-source robot for education with dynamic legged robots, was accepted for publication at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)  2021. HOPPY is the ideal project for introduction to dynamic legged robots for students, hobbyists, and young researchers.

Learn  more about the project here.

And the paper here.

Contribute to ICRA 2021 Workshop on “Teleoperation of Dynamic Legged Robots in Real Scenarios”

We would kindly like to invite you to contribute to ICRA 2021 Workshop on “Teleoperation of Dynamic Legged Robots in Real Scenarios” in Xi’an, China. The workshop will be fully online. It will be held on two days so that we can accommodate attendees and speakers from different time zones. For more details about the workshop please visit the workshop website.

We accept two types of contributions to be presented at the workshop:
– Extended Abstracts: We will welcome prospective participants of the workshop to submit extended abstracts (up to 4 pages) to be presented at the workshop. The manuscripts should use IEEE two-column conference format. The accepted abstracts will be posted on the workshop website and will not appear in the official IEEE proceedings.
– Online Demos: The demos will be performed online during the workshop event. The length of each accepted demo will be flexible between 10-20 minutes including an interactive discussion.

Important dates:
– Submission deadline for extended abstracts and online demos: 1st of May 2021
– Notification of acceptance: 10th of May 2021
– Submission of the final version: 20th of May 2021
– Workshop Date: May 31/ June 4 (TBD)

 

Workshop on Teleoperation of Dynamic Legged Robots in Real Scenarios at ICRA 2021

We are happy to announce that the Workshop our lab is co-organizing about “Teleoperation of Dynamic Legged Robots in Real Scenarios” will be held at ICRA 2021.

We have an exciting list of field experts that will give short talks during the event. There will also be a call for short papers and live demos (submission deadline on April 30th). Stay tuned!
More information here.

The RoboDesign Lab is developing HOPPY for dynamic robotics education

HOPPY is an open-source low-cost, robust, and modular kit for robotics education. The robot dynamically hops around a fixed gantry. The kit targets lowering the barrier for studying dynamic robots and legged locomotion in real systems. Controlling dynamic motions in real robots present unique challenges to the software and hardware which are often overlooked in conventional robotics courses. This project describes the topics which can be studied using the kit, lists its components, discusses best practices for implementation, presents results from experiments with the simulator and the real system, and suggests further improvements. HOPPY was utilized as the topic of a semester-long project for the ME446 Robot Dynamics and Control course at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Students provided a positive feedback from the hands-on activities during the course and the instructors will continue to develop and improve the kit for upcoming semesters.

Find out more about the project in in our paper and at: https://github.com/RoboDesignLab/HOPPY-Project

See the robot in action here: https://youtu.be/_lbKIpiRWKI