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Robomechanics Lab - Information on my research group.
Prospective Students - Interested in working with me? Find opportunities here.
Locomotion Seminar - Subscribe to the CMU Locomotion Seminar group or look at the calendar.
Recent News
New Projects on Fielding Legged Robots March, 2019
I am excited to announce that the lab has received two new grants to take robots out into challenging terrain! The first is a Young Investigator Award from the Army Research Office on climbing steep rocky hills. The second is a grant from company to explore and sample for environmental contaminants in soil around industrial sites. To help get these projects moving we are looking for a Postdoctoral Researcher interested in taking robots out into the field -- if you are interested please contact Prof. Johnson.MiniRHex Released December, 2018
At long last we have officially released our small open-source version of RHex called MiniRHex. We originally designed MiniRHex for the Engineering@CMU program for high school students so that we could bring a fleet of robots into the classroom and let students have more hands-on time than is possible with one or two larger robots. However, MiniRHex has also turned out to be a great research platform since it is much smaller and easier to work with than other robots while still having interesting dynamics and an impressive payload capacity. Check out our video and this article about the robot.Workshop at RSS on Appendage Use July, 2018
At RSS I am hosting a workshop called Unusual Appendages: Novel, multi-modal, or multi-functional uses for limbs, tails, and other body parts . We have a great list of speakers and it should be an interesting discussion about different ways animals and robots use limbs.New Class: Robot Dynamics & Analysis April, 2018
My second new class will start in Fall 2018, called 24-760 Special Topics: Robot Dynamics and Analysis. In this class students will learn modeling techniques for robots and other hybrid dynamical systems with a focus on contact conditions, friction, timestepping simulation, and contact invariant optimization. Students will write their own simulation and optimization code in Matlab in order to better understand the challenges and tradeoffs involved in modeling and analysis.Popular Videos
More videos
Robots That Can Go Anywhere
Interview and overview of my current research in the Robomechanics Lab, featuring many of my current students.
Robot Design and Experimentation
Summary of my spring class, 24-775 Robot Design & Experimentation, with student projects from 2018 available here.
RHex the Parkour Robot
X-RHex Lite running, leaping, and doing backflips around Penn's campus, using behaviors first presented at ICRA 2013, and featured in several videos.