ANYmal, quadrupedal robot, Robotic Systems Lab, Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, Zurich, Switzerland

Following on from the successes of StarlETH, ETH Zurich's very own bioinspired walking robot, here Marco Hutter (RSL, ETH Zurich and NCCR Robotics) explains how ANYmal has been upgraded and why it's important.

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First impression of the ANYmal robot

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ANYmal is a quadrupedal robot designed for autonomous operation in challenging environments. Driven by special compliant and precisely torque controllable actuators, the system is capable of dynamic running and high-mobile climbing. Thanks to incorporated laser sensors and cameras, the robot can perceive its environment to continuously create maps and accurately localize. Based on this information, it can autonomously plan its navigation path and carefully select footholds while walking. Driven by our first real-world application, namely industrial inspection of oil and gas sites, ANYmal carries batteries for more than 2h autonomy and different sensory equipment such as optical and thermal cameras, microphones, gas-detection sensors and active lighting. With this payload, the machine weighs less than 30kg and can hence be easily transported and deployed by a single operator.

This work was supported in part by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) through the National Centre of Competence in Research Robotics, by the EC's 7th Famework ECHORD++ Project Module, by TOTAL SA through the ARGOS Challenge, and by the Branco Weiss Fellowship.

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Collection of maneuvers with Free Gait, a framework for the versatile control of legged robots.

Peter Fankhauser, Dario Bellicoso, Christian Gehring, Georg Wiedebach, Marco Hutter, "Free Gait: Versatile Control of Legged Robots", Workshop on Dynamic Locomotion and Manipulation (DLMC), 2016.

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A portable and protective autonomous docking station for ANYmal. Enabling ANYmal to stay active for long periods, without human interaction and provides two ways to safely transport ANYmal with its docking station, both locally at the current site and globally between different operating sites.

Max Ahlberg, "Design of an Autonomous Docking Station for ANYmal", Semester thesis, ETH Zurich, 2016.

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The legged robot ANYmal is ideally suited for the demanding environment of oil and gas sites. Onboard inspection sensors and computer vision is used to automatically monitor the state of operation. ANYmal can move in narrow hallways, climb over obstacles, and scale steep stairs.

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Navigation in rough terrain requires an understanding of the environment. This work demonstrates the mapping capabilities of the quadrupedal robot ANYmal outdoors in a forest. For accurate scanning, the robot carries two rotating laser range sensors in the front and the back. The mapping is based on the fusion of the pose estimation of the robot (through inertial and kinematic measurements) and the distance measurements of the laser scanners.

The results of this video have been published in:

P. Fankhauser, M. Bloesch, C. Gehring, M. Hutter, and R. Siegwart, "Robot-Centric Elevation Mapping with Uncertainty Estimates," in International Conference on Climbing and Walking Robots (CLAWAR), 2014.

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We present a control approach based on a whole body control framework combined with hierarchical optimization. Locomotion is formulated as multiple tasks (e.g. maintaining balance or tracking a desired motion of one of the limbs) which are solved in a prioritized way using QP solvers. It is shown how complex locomotion behaviors can purely emerge from robot-specific inequality tasks (i.e. torque or reaching limits) together with the optimization of balance and system manipulability. Without any specific motion planning, this prioritized task optimization leads to a natural adaption of the robot to the terrain while walking and hence enables blind locomotion over rough grounds. The presented framework is implemented and successfully tested on ANYmal, a torque controllable quadrupedal robot. It enables the machine to walk while accounting for slippage and torque limitation constraints, and even step down from an unperceived 14cm obstacle. Thereby, ANYmal exploits the maximum reach of the limbs and automatically adapts the body posture and height.

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The legged robot ANYmal can support disaster relief teams with safer search and rescue operations. With its advanced locomotion capabilities, ANYmal can operate in rough outdoor environments, crawl through pipes, and access buildings over steps and stairs. With help of laser sensors and thermal cameras, the robot can be used to check the safety of buildings and search for potential victims.

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The finals of the ARGOS Challenge have started! We have moved our lab to the Total industrial facilities Lacq in France and took ANYmal for a run on the first training day.

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Watch some of the highlights of ANYmal at the ARGOS Challenge. ANYmal is a fully autonomous quadrupedal robot, capable of traversing on various terrain including steps, obstacles, stairs etc. Ruggedized and water-proof, ANYmal is well suited for applications in harsh environments such as offshore oil & gas platforms.

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This paper presents a framework which allows a quadrupedal robot to execute dynamic gaits including trot, pace and dynamic lateral walk, as well as a smooth transition between them.
Our method relies on an online ZMP based motion planner which continuously updates the reference motion trajectory as a function of the contact schedule and the state of the robot. The planner is coupled with a hierarchical whole-body controller which optimizes the whole-body motion and contact forces by solving a cascade of prioritized tasks.
We tested our framework on ANYmal, a fully torque controllable quadrupedal robot which is actuated by series-elastic actuators.

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ANYmal demonstrated its abilities at the 2017 World Petroleum Congress in collaboration with Total. Fully autonomously, ANYmal inspected visual checkpoints and navigated through a parkour of steps, gaps, obstacles, and stairs.

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We present an architecture for rough-terrain locomotion with quadrupedal robots. All sensing, state estimation, mapping, control, and planning runs in real-time onboard the robot. The method is implemented on the quadrupedal robot ANYmal and we present experiments of climbing stairs, steps, and slopes and show how the robot can adapt to changing and moving environments.

Péter Fankhauser, Marko Bjelonic, Miki Takahiro, Tanja Baumann, C. Dario Bellicoso, Christian Gehring, Marco Hutter

This work has been conducted as part of ANYmal Research, a community to advance legged robotics.

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The Robotic Systems Lab and the Autonomous Systems Lab are competing as a team at the ERL Emergency Robotics 2017 in Piombino, Italy.

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This videos summarizes the skills ANYmal showcased during the ERL Emergency Robotics 2017 in Piombino, Italy.

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This video shows ongoing research towards using the feet of a legged robot for simple manipulation tasks. In this example, ANYmal makes use of its large range of motion to reach up to press an elevator button. The button is localized with help of a QR tag.

Péter Fankhauser, Marko Bjelonic, Marco Hutter

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Look what happens if Kids meet our quadruped robot ANYmal as during this exhibition in the Zoo Zurich on Sept 3rd 2017.

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