Boston Dynamics showed off some footage of robots escaping rooms by opening doors, but it seems that they have some competition now. Robot Systems Lab uploaded a video with footage of their 4 legged “ANYmal” robot opening doors, throwing away some trash, and carrying a box with a human. They’ve even taught it to dance before. What could possibly go wrong? Check out the video below:



We present a motion planning and control framework for ANYmal, a torque-controlled quadrupedal robot equipped with a six degrees of freedom robotic arm capable of performing dynamic locomotion while executing manipulation tasks. The online motion planning framework, together with a whole-body control based on a hierarchical optimization algorithm, enable the system to walk, trot and pace while executing tasks such as fixed-position end-effector control, reactive human-robot collaboration and torso posture optimization to increase the arm’s kinematic reachability. The torque controllability of the whole system enables the implementation of compliant behaviour, allowing a user to safely interact with the robot in a very natural way. We verify our framework on the real robot by performing tasks such as opening a door or carrying a payload together with a human.

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Source: [H]ardOCP – Robots are Getting Better at Opening Doors