Program

June 22, 5pm UTC [Chair: Krzysztof Walas; Moderator: Dimitrios Kanoulas]

Speaker 1: Jonathan W. Hurst - Co-founder and CTO, Agility Robotics

Zoom Link (up to 100 people): https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85889400953

Title: Agility Robotics: Building Robots to Work in Humans Spaces

Abstract: Deploying robots in the real world requires a valuable use case, turned into a business case. There are no shortage of use cases; and robots are just about ready to break out of the bolt-down special-purpose realm, and into our world of hallways, stairs, sidewalks, and crowds. This talk will present an update on Agility's progress towards the goal of operating in human spaces, while making a business around the continually improving capabilities.

Bio: Jonathan W. Hurst is Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Agility Robotics, as well as an Associate Professor of Robotics and College of Engineering Dean’s Professor at Oregon State University. He holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering and an M.S. and Ph.D. in robotics, all from Carnegie Mellon University. His university research focuses on understanding the fundamental science and engineering best practices for legged locomotion. Agility Robotics is taking this research to commercial applications for robotic legged mobility, working towards a day when robots can go where people go, generate greater productivity across the economy, and improve quality of life for all.

June 23, 9am UTC [Chair: Dimitrios Kanoulas; Moderator: Krzysztof Walas]

Speaker 2: Francesco Ferro - CEO, PAL Robotics

Zoom Link (up to 100 people): https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82597444730

Title: A Generation of Humanoid Service Robots

Abstract: Starting from the first humanoid robot (Herbert Televox, 1927) legged robots and control algorithms have advanced considerably to the present. But most of the advances have been done in the last two decades after the presentation of ASIMO from Honda. During those years PAL Robotics has been one of the major actors in developing humanoid robots from the first prototype, 2004 - REEM-A The first fully autonomous humanoid biped robot in Europe, to one of the advanced research platforms, 2017 Talos First fully torque control actuated robot from PAL robotics. In this presentation, we will present a generation of humanoid service robots and the major progress achieved at each generation. From the first steps to jumping robots.

Bio: Francesco Ferro is the CEO and co-founder of PAL Robotics, one of the top service robotics companies in the world, and a euRobotics asibl Board Director. He received a BSc + MSc degree in Telecommunications Engineering at Politecnico di Torino in 2002 (Italy), a Master at ISEN (Lille, France) and an Executive MBA at the University of Barcelona (Spain) in 2011. Since 2004, he develops cutting-edge humanoid service robots at PAL Robotics.

June 23, 5pm UTC [Chair: Aaron Ames; Moderator: Krzysztof Walas]

Speaker 3: Matthieu Masselin - CEO, Wandercraft

Zoom Link (up to 100 people): https://caltech.zoom.us/j/99484354512

Title: "On making millions of different people walk again"

Abstract: Wandercraft's goal is to provide a robotic platform that allows walk impaired people to walk again with our exoskeleton and to learn how to walk again by themselves. One of the most challenging aspects of building such a robot is the variety of people that can ride it. Patients differ in size, weight, strength, power they can provide during walk, behavior and can present a variety of pathologies. Thus, our main focus was to accommodate the uncertainty that represents the pilot of the exoskeleton, who can be considered as an uncontrolled disturbance with a mass equivalent to that of the robot. In this talk we will present the approach that led us to building such a robot, selling it to hospitals as a medical device. We will also discuss our most recent progresses as well as some of our future plans to build a personal walk exoskeleton.

Bio: Following a first experience in management consulting at BCG, Matthieu joined Wandercraft at its beginnings. He led the command team from 2013, in charge of algorithms & features, before taking on the role of CEO in 2018. In this capacity, he led two successful funding rounds for 25M€, established strong relationships with rehabilitation key opinion leaders, and brought Atalante, Wandercraft product, to market through CE Mark. Since then, he has closed Atalante first sales and is now focusing on the strong traction happening in Europe, bringing Atalante to the US market by getting FDA clearance, and leveraging the invaluable medical and technological assets built at Wandercraft to develop a personal version of its product.

June 25, 10pm UTC [Chair: Navinda Kottege; Moderator: Aaron Ames]

Speaker 5: Nicolas Hudson - Senior Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO

Zoom Link (up to 100 people): https://uqz.zoom.us/j/99431318127

Title: CSIRO Dynamic Hexapod - Development and Deployment in the DARPA Subterranean Challenge

Abstract: This talk will describe the development and deployment of a dynamic hexapod robot in the DARPA Subtereanean Challenge while highlighting the design challenges and lessons learnt. We will also touch upon some of the unique advantages presented by a hexapod robot in comparison to the more common quadruped robots.

Bio: Nicolas is a Senior Principal Research Scientist and the Technical Leader for the Robotics and Autonomous System Group at CSIRO Data61. Before joining CSIRO, Nicolas lead the [Google] X Robotics perception team, with a focus on applying machine learning to mobile manipulators. During his time at Google, he also worked for Boston Dynamics on whole body humanoid manipulation. Prior to Google, Nicolas was at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he lead/contributed to several US Department of Defense projects in mobile manipulation, including JPL’s winning DARPA ARM team, the DARPA Robotics Challenge, and technology development tasks for Mars Sample Return. This work culminated in Nicolas being awarded NASA’s Early Career Achievement Medal for contributions to robotic manipulation autonomy. More info: https://research.csiro.au/robotics/

June 26 11am UTC [Chair: Krzysztof Walas; Moderator: Marko Bjelonic]

Speaker 6: Marco Hutter - Head of the Robotic Systems Lab, ETH Zürich

Zoom Link (up to 100 people): https://zoom.us/j/97705904684?pwd=dC96YkNIWXVxMUt2T1gzTmNtdEkrZz09

Title: Autonomy for ANYmal

Abstract: Recent advances in legged robots and their locomotion skills has led to systems that are skilled and mature enough for real-world deployment. In particular, quadrupedal robots have reached a level of mobility to navigate complex environments, which enables them to take over inspection or surveillance jobs in place like offshore industrial plants, in underground areas, or on construction sites. In this talk, I will present our research work with the quadruped ANYmal and explain some of the underlying technologies for locomotion control, environment perception, and mission autonomy. I will show how these robots can learn and plan complex manoeuvres, how they can navigate through unknown environments and how they are able to conduct surveillance, inspection or exploration scenarios.

Bio: Marco is an assistant professor for robotic systems at ETH Zurich and co-founder of ANYbotics AG, a Zurich-based company developing legged robots for industrial applications. Marco’s research interests are in the development of novel machines and actuation concepts together with the underlying control, planning, and learning algorithms for locomotion and manipulation. Marco is part of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Robotics and NCCR Digital Fabrication and PI in various international projects (e.g. EU Thing) and challenges (e.g. DARPA SubT).

June 29, 10pm UTC [Chair: Navinda Kottege; Moderator: Aaron Ames]

Speaker 7: Xingxing Wang - Founder & CEO, Unitree Robotics

Youtube Live Streaming: TBC

Zoom Link (up to 100 people): https://uqz.zoom.us/j/96353297748

Title: Unitree Robotics: let more people enjoy quadruped robots

Abstract: Xingxing will be talking about some new developments of Unitree Robotics.

Bio: Wang Xingxing is the founder and CEO/CTO of Unitree Robotics. During his master's degree (2013~2016), he independently developed a low-cost high performance quadruped robot XDog (probably is the world's first 12 DOF low-cost high performance quadruped robot driven by out rotor BLDC motor). After graduated (May 2016), he joined DJI. In August 2016, he founded Unitree Robotics. Up to now, he have been applied 60+ patents.

June 30, 5pm UTC [Chair: Marko Bjelonic; Moderator: Aaron Ames]

Speaker 8: Gerardo Bledt/Donghyun Kim (Sangbae Kim) - Postdoctoral Associates, MIT

Zoom Link (up to 100 people): https://ethz.zoom.us/j/96280923968

Title: Regularized Predictive Control: Meaningful, Simple Optimization for Robust, Dynamic Robots

Abstract: Designing controllers for complex dynamic robots in unstructured terrains is a challenging, open-ended task. Optimization-based predictive controllers have proven to be powerful in producing highly robust, dynamic behaviors in legged systems. However, since "optimal solutions" are only as good as the underlying dynamics model, constraints, and cost function, we must design meaningful optimizations that produce the desired behaviors, while remaining computationally tractable. Regularized Predictive Control (RPC) is a novel nonlinear optimization-based predictive controller that optimizes robot states, footstep locations, and ground reaction forces over a future prediction horizon in real-time. The control model is presented as a highly simplified, rough feasibility constraint, while simple heuristics are embedded directly into the cost function through regularization to improve performance. The challenge of designing meaningful heuristics is tackled by a combination of expert design and data-driven analytics for extracting and fitting simple models to simulation results. These simple models are able to simultaneously capture the major effects on the system dynamics, while reducing the complexity of the controller. The task of control design is ultimately to find a controller that robustly achieves the desired performance, rather than to describe the system accurately. Often times, a "good enough" solution is better than an analytically complex or optimal one.

Bio: Gerardo is currently a Postdoc at the Biomimetic Robotics Lab at MIT with Professor Sangbae Kim working on dynamic legged robots where he received his PhD in Robotics this year for his research titled, "Regularized Predictive Control Framework for Robust Dynamic Legged Locomotion." The work dealt with designing a real-time nonlinear optimization-based controller for legged robots. RPC allows direct embedding of known physics and extracted data-driven models into the optimization as simple regularization heuristics. The result was a quadruped robot capable of highly dynamic maneuvers that is robust to unpredictable terrain and large disturbances. Research interests include intelligent control algorithms for dynamic systems, data-driven methods for extracting simple models describing complex systems, planning motions under uncertainty, and many more aspects of robotics in general. Gerardo also holds Masters degrees in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from MIT and a Bachelors Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Tech.

Title: Whole-Body Impulse Control and Vision Aided Dynamic Walking

Bio: Donghyun Kim is currently a Postdoctoral Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and will join in College of Information and Computer Science department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst as an Assistant Professor. Donghyun's primary research area is in the 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 controllers 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.

Abstract: Dynamic legged locomotion is a challenging topic because of the lack of established control architecture which can handle aerial phases, short stance times, and high-speed leg swings. We formulated a controller combining whole-body control (WBC) and model predictive control (MPC) to tackle those issues. Unlike existing WBCs, which attempt to track commanded body trajectories, our controller is focused more on the reaction force command, which allows it to accomplish high-speed dynamic locomotion with aerial phases, which is up to 3.7 m/s with a Mini-Cheetah robot. On top of the advanced locomotion controller, we added vision sensors to extend a Mini-Cheetah’s terrain coverage. Rough terrain locomotion of a small robot has unique difficulties such as limited space for sensors, limited obstacle clearance, and scaled-down walking speed, but we overcame the problems with efficient sensor integration and exploitation of dynamic walking and jumping.

July 01, 12pm UTC [Chair: Marko Bjelonic; Moderator: Dimitrios Kanoulas]

Speaker 9: Claudio Semini - Head of the Dynamic Legged Systems Lab, IIT

Title: Quadruped robots for Heavy-Duty Operations

Zoom Link (up to 100 people): https://ethz.zoom.us/j/95019071317

Bio: Claudio Semini is the head of IIT's Dynamic Legged Systems (DLS) lab. He holds an MSc degree from ETH Zurich in electrical engineering and information technology. He spent 2 years in Tokyo for his research: MSc thesis at the Hirose Lab at Tokyo Tech and staff engineer at the Toshiba R&D center in Kawasaki working on mobile service robotics. During his PhD and subsequent PostDoc at IIT, he developed the quadruped robot HyQ and worked on its control. Since 2012 he leads the DLS lab. His research focus lies on the construction and control of highly dynamic and versatile legged robots in real-world environments. He has published over 90 articles in journals and peer-reviewed conferences. He is a co-founder and chair of the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Robot Mechanisms and Design. He was the coordinator of the ECHORD++ experiment HyQ-REAL (www.hyq-real.eu) and currently heads the IIT side of the Moog/IIT joint lab.

July 02, 11am UTC[Chair: Marko Bjelonic; Moderator: Dimitrios Kanoulas]

Speaker 10: Avik De - CTO of Ghost Robotics

Title: Designing power-efficient quadrupedal robots for commercial applications at Ghost Robotics

Zoom Link (up to 100 people): https://ethz.zoom.us/j/91533187072

Abstract: We provide an overview of Ghost Robotics’s recent progress in building legged robots for applications in commercial and research settings. In particular, on the commercial side we highlight industrial applications in unstructured urban environments and the challenges they pose to legged locomotion, and on the research side we provide a brief survey of the effectiveness of our developer-friendly open integration platform. These application domains also motivate scientific and technological breakthroughs in a number of areas: Long power-autonomous deployments that have motivated a large investment in a mechanically and computationally power-efficient platform. On the controls side, we discuss the benefits of hierarchical blind and perception-aware components that combine the benefits of very fast proprioceptive low-level reflexes for stability with the ability to avoid obstacles with the body and toes for gap-crossing and stair-climbing.

Bio: I received a BS/MS in Mechanical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 2010 (LIMBS lab under Noah Cowan), during which I performed an empirical study on how/when human beings inject feedback to stabilize a 1-dimensional paddle juggling task. Bio-inspiration remains a key research interest, and during my PhD at the GRASP laboratory (Kodlab) in the University of Pennsylvania advised by Dan Koditschek, I switched my efforts into modular/compositional control of dynamic locomotion in a way that generalizes across platforms (quadruped, tailed biped, ...) and behaviors (hopping, running, ...), as well as the design of dynamic locomotor systems. I am currently pursuing a postdoc at Harvard advised by Rob Wood studying design and control of flapping microrobots. I co-founded Ghost Robotics in 2015 and function as CTO, commercializing research that led to the creation of a family of power-dense direct-drive legged robots with high actuation bandwidth and proprioceptive sensing capabilities. The company currently produces two quadrupedal robots for customers in the industrial, government, and research sectors. I lead the company's technological strategy and development priorities, to include power-efficiency, computational efficiency, modular size- and computation-scalable control methodologies, and a developer-friendly open architecture.

July 02, 12pm UTC [Chair: Dimitrios Kanoulas; Moderator: Marko Bjelonic]

Speaker 11: Maurice Fallon - Principal Investigator, Oxford Robotics Institute

Title: Navigation Systems for Industrial Inspection with Quadruped robots

Zoom Link (up to 100 people): https://ethz.zoom.us/j/91533187072

Abstract: Dynamic legged robots are moving out into the real world. We have reached a tipping point in which reliability and ruggedness of quadruped robots, in particular, is such that they are realistic alternative to wheeled robots. Case in point, in 2017, I co-founded (with Ioannis Havoutis) a legged robotics group with a specific focus on field demonstrations. In this talk I will discuss the science and technology we have been developing, with a particular focus on the ANYbotics ANYmal, as well as discussing several field demos on industrial sites.

Bio: Dr. Maurice Fallon is a Royal Society Research Fellow at the Oxford Robotics Institute, University of Oxford. He holds a PhD in Information Engineering from University of Cambridge. From 2008-2012 he was a post-doc in the Marine Robotics Group working on robotics navigation. From 2012-2015 he was the perception lead of MIT’s team in the DARPA Robotics Challenge developing autonomy, state estimation and planning for the Boston Dynamics Atlas robot. His research is focused on probabilistic methods for localization and mapping and state estimation for legged robots and is also interested in dynamic motion planning and control.

July 03, 10pm UTC [Chair: Dimitrios Kanoulas; Moderator: Marko Bjelonic]

Speaker 12: Qiuguo Zhu - Founder & CEO, DeepRobotics / Assistant Professor, Zhejiang University (http://www.deeprobotics.cn)

Title: Real-world application on “Jueying”

Zoom Link (up to 100 people): https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83821347500

Abstract: Quadruped robots are becoming more and more eye-catching recently and their performance is getting better indeed. In this talk a brief introduction about our recent progress on robot “Jueying” will be presented. With the “new-gained” abilities ,“Jueying” starts to step out the lab and to do some real practical things for people.

Bio: Qiuguo Zhu is an Associate Professor at Department of Control Science in Zhejiang University. He received his Bachelor degree in Mechanical College and Master degree in Control Science College in 2008 and 2011, respectively. He is currently an in-service doctoral candidate in Control Science College of Zhejiang University. His research interests include the control of humanoid robots, bipedal and quadrupedal walking and running, manipulators, and machine intelligence. As a PI, he obtained research funds from many organizations such as National & Zhejiang Natural Science Foundation, and he is the Associate Editor of IET Cyber Systems and Robotics.
Jingyu Liu is a robotics engineer of DeepRobotics. He achieved his bachelor degree in Beijing Institute of Technology and graduated from TU Dortmund with his master degree. His major is control engineering. His work and research is focused on dynamic locomotion controlling of quadruped robots right now.