Overview

Quad-SDK is an open source, ROS-based full stack software framework for agile quadrupedal locomotion. The design of Quad-SDK is focused on the vertical integration of planning, control, estimation, communication, and development tools which enable agile quadrupedal locomotion in simulation and hardware with minimal user changes for multiple platforms. The modular software architecture allows researchers to experiment with their own implementations of different components while leveraging the existing framework. Quad-SDK also offers Gazebo simulation support and a suite of visualization and data-processing tools for rapid development. Refer to the paper for high-level details of the framework.

Keywords: Legged Robotics, Quadrupeds, Planning, Control, Leaping, ROS

License

The source code is released under a MIT License.

Authors: Joe Norby, Yanhao Yang, Ardalan Tajbakhsh, Jiming Ren, Justin K. Yim, Alexandra Stutt, Qishun Yu, Nikolai Flowers, and Aaron M. Johnson
Affiliation: The Robomechanics Lab at Carnegie Mellon University
Maintainer: Ardalan Tajbakhsh, atajbakh@andrew.cmu.edu

The packages in Quad-SDK have been tested under ROS Melodic on Ubuntu 18.04 and ROS Noetic on Ubuntu 20.04. Refer to the main branch for ROS Melodic and devel branch for ROS Noetic. This is research code, expect that it changes often and any fitness for a particular purpose is disclaimed.

Updates

• 10-01-2023 -- Quad-SDK Update: Estimation, Underbrush, and Other Improvements
  Quad-SDK now incorporates an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) for reliable onboard state estimation. Additionally, a specialized controller designed for walking through entanglements has been added, allowing the robot to disentangle itself from vine-like obstructions. Both serve to enable more reliable outdoor locomotion. Refer to the abstract for more details.

Publications

If you use this work in an academic context, please cite the following publications as relevant:

• Repository: J. Norby, Y. Yang, A. Tajbakhsh, J. Ren, J. K. Yim, A. Stutt, Q. Yu, N. Flowers, and A. M. Johnson. Quad- SDK: Full stack software framework for agile quadrupedal locomotion. In ICRA Workshop on Legged Robots, May 2022. (paper)

  @inproceedings{abs:norby-quad-sdk-2022,
    author        = {Joseph Norby and Yanhao Yang and Ardalan Tajbakhsh and Jiming Ren and Justin K. Yim and Alexandra Stutt and Qishun Yu and Nikolai Flowers and Aaron M. Johnson},
    title         = {Quad-{SDK}: Full Stack Software Framework for Agile Quadrupedal Locomotion},
    booktitle     = {ICRA Workshop on Legged Robots},
    year          = {2022},
    month         = {May},
    type          = {workshop abstract},
    url_Info      = {https://leggedrobots.org/index.html},
    url_PDF       = {http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/amj1/papers/Quad_SDK_ICRA_Abstract.pdf},
    keywords      = {Control,Planning,Leaping}
  }

• Global Planner: J. Norby and A. M. Johnson, “Fast global motion planning for dynamic legged robots,” in 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). IEEE, 2020, pp. 3829–3836. (paper)

  @inproceedings{Norby2020,
  title={Fast global motion planning for dynamic legged robots},
  author={Norby, Joseph and Johnson, Aaron M},
  booktitle={2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
  pages={3829--3836},
  year={2020},
  organization={IEEE}
  }

Installation

Refer to the Quad-SDK Wiki for installation, dependency, and unit testing information. Currently Quad-SDK requires either ROS Melodic on Ubuntu 18.04 or ROS Noetic on Ubuntu 20.04. All other dependencies are installed with the included setup script.

Usage

Launch the simulation with:

roslaunch quad_utils quad_gazebo.launch

Stand the robot with:

rostopic pub /robot_1/control/mode std_msgs/UInt8 "data: 1"

Run the stack with twist input:

roslaunch quad_utils quad_plan.launch reference:=twist logging:=true
rosrun teleop_twist_keyboard teleop_twist_keyboard.py cmd_vel:=/robot_1/cmd_vel

Run the stack with global planner:

roslaunch quad_utils quad_plan.launch reference:=gbpl logging:=true

Refer to the Wiki for more information on alternate usage.

Bugs & Feature Requests

Please report bugs and request features using the Issue Tracker.