Legs as Manipulator: Pushing Quadrupedal Agility Beyond Locomotion

Understand

Locomotion has seen dramatic progress for walking or running across challenging terrains.

• However, robotic quadrupeds are still far behind their biological counterparts, such as dogs, which display a variety of agile skills and can use the legs beyond locomotion to perform several basic manipulation tasks like interacting with objects and climbing.
• In this paper, we take a step towards bridging this gap by training quadruped robots not only to walk but also to use the front legs to climb walls, press buttons, and perform object interaction in the real world.
• To handle this challenging optimization, we decouple the skill learning broadly into locomotion, which involves anything that involves movement whether via walking or climbing a wall, and manipulation, which involves using one leg to interact while balancing on the other three legs.