Kinematic Calibration and Sensor Fusion for Legged Robots

While the current progress in actuation schemes, sensor setups, and mechanical design allows the development of increasingly performing legged robots, motion planing and control of such systems still pose challenging problems. Our group contributes to the ongoing research by focusing on the calibration, state estimation, and perception of legged platforms. Especially in rough and unstructured terrain, these tasks can be very demanding and are prerequisites for achieving robust and versatile locomotion for legged robots. The developed methods should, ideally, handle difficult environments, arbitrary footfall patterns, or flight phases (see Fig. 1).