Legged Robots from Origins to Frontier Research
The Doctoral Programme in Information Engineering and Computer Science (IECS) organizes the sixth edition of the PI Stories, a series of seminars aimed at providing the opportunity for PhD students to learn the success stories of some of the most talented researchers in the world.
Each speaker will present a research project he/she led as a principal investigator. The presentation will cover the scientific scope of the project and the most important results that the project has achieved. The speakers will also share their own experiences of turning a research idea into a successful project winning a competitive grant.
The events will take place in presence or online on Zoom and will be held in English.
Abstract
Legged robots are mainly designed to traverse unstructured environments where wheeled robots have limited moblity. Their applications range from nuclear decommissioning to mining, search and rescue, inspection and surveillance. In addition, they can be applied to flank human workers (or collaborate with them) in order to reduce labor accidents.
The next generation of legged robots are envisioned to operate either autonomously or semi-autonomously (through tele-operation) over uneven terrains. This requires the capability to comply with disturbances, to wisely exploit information from the visual feedback, and the ability to manipulate objects or interact with the environment.
Therefore, the main ingredients for legged locomotion are planning, control, perception and state estimation.
In this talk I will present research results in these fields obtained in more than ten years of experience in legged locomotion. Moreover, I will illustrate my future research vision, that encompasses two research axes: 1) explore novel applications for legged robots. 2) enhance the motion capability of legged robots through the use of numerical optimization in planning trajectories.
Indeed, optimization-based planning strategies enable to generalize motions to address different terrains and complex motions.
With respect to more myopic heuristic approaches (that lack awareness of the future) they give the possibility to reach the robot performance limits and to guarantee physical feasibility of the planned trajectories,because they take into account the hardware constraints that are typical of legged robots (kinematic and actuation limits) and the interaction with the environment.
About the speaker
Michele Focchi, associated professor at the Department of Information Enginering and Computer Science at the University of Trento, is a world recognized expert in motion planning and control of quadruped robots, with 16 years of experience in the field of robotics. He is particularly known for his pioneering work on heuristic locomotion in unstructured terrains. Currently, he holds the position of scientific advisor for ALL3. He received both his Bsc/Msc in Control System Engineering from Politecnico di Milano. In 2013 he got a PhD in robotics where at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia where he was co-founder of the Dynamic Legged System (DLS) lab, an international research team dedicated to the development of quadruped robots and the study of their locomotion.
His research interests lie at the intersection between control, optimization and machine learning with a focus on enhancing the performance of quadruped robots in challenging environments, by using optimization-based techniques. He explored innovative robotic platforms, such as a rappelling robot, to address specific challenges like hydro-geological risk reduction. More recently, he has also begun investigating control strategies for tracked robots in agricultural applications. He organized several workshops on scientific topics and has given more than 20 invited presentations at international workshops, and dissemination events. In terms of technology transfer, in 2015 he co-founded the MOOG-IIT joint lab to develop advanced software and control solutions for autonomous robots. He played important roles in several high-profile industrial and academic projects, such as ECHORD++, INAIL and, more recently, ANT with the European Space Agency. He is author or co-author of more than 53 scientific papers on international journals and conferences, with high citation records and supervised numerous master’s and PhD theses. From 2022 to 2024, he was at the University of Trento, where he taught introductory courses on robotics. Additionally, he serves as an Associate Editor for the RA-L journal and the ICRA conference.