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Video Highlights

Legged Locomotion Research

• Quadruped Locomotion on Rough Terrain (LittleDog). The following videos show highlights from our work on LittleDog - a small quadrupedal robot built by Boston Dynamics for the DARPA Learning Locomotion program.
  • Dynamic double-support gait highlights
  • Slow-motion shot of dynamic climb

• Rimless Wheel. One of the simplest models of `walking', the following videos show the dynamics of a rimless wheel rolling downhill.
  • [simulation] rolling downhill

• Compass Gait.
  • [simulation] passive walking downhill
  • [simulation] actuated walking on known rough terrain
  • [simulation] passive walking downhill, with knees
  • "Minimal" control on rough terrain
  • Orbital stabilization on rough terrain

• Learning to Walk (Toddler). The following video shows research highlights from Toddler, a simple 3D dynamic biped that was able to quickly and reliably learn to walk. The beginning of the video demonstrates the robot's ability to walk passively downhill on a treadmill with the computer turned off. The robot was then placed on flat terrain with the computer switched on, and tasked with acquiring the same gait without assistance from gravity, but rather by learning a feedback controller. This learning occurred in less than 20 minutes, using only trials implemented on the real robot (no simulations). The learning algorithm continues to quickly adapt as the robot walks over different terrain.
  • Toddler learning to walk

Flight Research

• The Perching Glider. This video describes our glider (no propellors) landing on a perch. The glider initially flies toward the perch at high speed, and must then decelerate quickly to land on a wire. The entire trajectory is just under 1 second; the video includes high-speed video footage of the maneuver. For more info see the perching glider project page.
  • perching glider project video , or download mp4

• Robotic Birds. The first video shows the first flight of one of our robotic birds (piloted by a human). This bird was built in our lab, but is a replica of a hobbyist ornithopter designed by Sean Kinkade. The second video shows a slow-motion shot of the flapping, which reveals the complicated interaction between the flexible wing and the surrounding flow. The third video shows the first autonomous flight of our Phoenix ornithopter - a substantially redesigned machine with onboard sensing and computation.
  • kestrel's first flight
  • kestrel's slow-motion flapping
  • phoenix first autonomous flight
  • phoenix slow-motion flapping

• The Flapping Plate. The following video shows our experiments on an apparatus built by collaborator Jun Zhang at NYU. The experiment uses a symmetric flat plate as the simplest model of a flapping wing, and this video shows a variant with a flexible trailing edge. Using policy gradient learning run directly in the real experiment (no models), we have designed a control system which can achieve both higher speeds and a higher energy effectiveness than the initial sinusoidal gait.
  • flapping plate

Courses

• 6.095 - Humanoid Robotics Competition. This class allows MIT students to assemble and program a small humanoid robot (KHR-2HV, sold by Kondo) during IAP (less than a month). The challenges are to walk on the flat, walk up stairs and to fight other robots (last robot standing wins). Below are videos of some of the best walking gaits obtained so far.
  • flat walking
  • walking up stairs