Publication:Advances in Real-World Applications for Legged Robots

This paper provides insight into the application of the quadrupedal robot ANYmal in out-door missions of industrial inspection (ARGOS Challenge) and search and rescue (EuropeanRobotics League (ERL) Emergency Robots). In both competitions, the legged robot hadto autonomously and semi-autonomously navigate in real-world scenarios to complete high-level tasks such as inspection and payload delivery. In the ARGOS competition, ANYmalused a rotating LiDAR sensor to localize on the industrial site and map the terrain and ob-stacles around the robot. In the ERL competition, additional Real-Time Kinematic (RTK)-Global Positioning System (GPS) was used to co-localize the legged robot with respect toa Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) that creates maps from the aerial view. The high mobilityof legged robots allows overcoming large obstacles, e.g. steps and stairs, with statically anddynamically stable gaits. Moreover, the versatile machine can adapt its posture for inspec-tion and payload delivery. The paper concludes with insight into the general learnings fromthe ARGOS and ERL challenges