Open Dynamic Robot Initiative (2020)
Open Dynamic Robot Initiative


            Introduction
            
                This website is the entry point to the ressources of the Open Dynamic Robot Initiative.
                This project originated in an effort to build a low cost and low complexity actuator module using
                brushless motors
                that can be used to build different types of torque controlled robots with mostly 3D printed
                and off-the-shelves components. This module, and extensions, can be used to build legged robots or
                manipulators.
                A paper describing the actuator module and the quadruped design can be found here.
                A paper describing the TriFinger Manipulator Platform and real-time reinforcement learning experiments can be found here.
            

            Videos
            

            Build your own robot!
            All the hardware (drawings) and software has been open sourced under the BSD 3-clause license so the robots
            can easily be reproduced by other research laboratories. Everyone is welcomes to contribute to the project!
            All the sources are hosted on the Open Dynamic
                    Robot Initiative Github site
            
                
                    The sources for the mechanics and electronics are available in the
                    Open
                        Robot Actuator Hardware Repository
                    and contains the actuator module, the one legged-robot, the quadruped Solo, the foot contact sensor
                    and the electronics described in
                    the paper An Open Torque-Controlled Modular Robot
                        Architecture for Legged Locomotion Research
                
                
                    A general software overview and documentation for the projects is available in the
                    Open
                        Dynamic Robot Initiative Software Documentation
                    The main software is available in several libraries:
                    
                        The Brushless Motor
                                Control Real-Time CAN API
                            that contain the API for real-time communication with the motor control board
                        
                        MotorWare
                                Extensions
                            that contains some modules that extend the Texas Instruments MotorWare library as well as a
                            patch file to apply some required modifications on the original MotorWare library itself.
                        
                        MotorWare
                                Configuration Files
                            that contains the global configuration files that are used by all our MotorWare projects.
                        
                    
                
            
            

            Partners
            This work is done in collaboration between the Motion
                    Generation and Control Group,
                the Dynamic Locomotion Group and the Robotics Central Scientific Facility
                at the Max-Planck Institute for Intelligent System ,
                    the Machines in Motion Laboratory at New York University's Tandon School of Engineering
                    and the  Gepetto Team at the LAAS/CNRS.
            

            Referencing the project
            You can reference the project with the following citation:
            @article{grimminger2020open,
                    title={An Open Torque-Controlled Modular Robot Architecture for Legged Locomotion Research},
                    author={F. {Grimminger} and A. {Meduri} and M. {Khadiv} and J. {Viereck} and M. {Wüthrich} and M.
                    {Naveau} and V. {Berenz} and S. {Heim} and F. {Widmaier} and T. {Flayols} and J. {Fiene} and A.
                    {Badri-Spröwitz} and L. {Righetti}},
                    journal={IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters}, 
                    year={2020},
                    volume={5},
                    number={2},
                    pages={3650-3657},
                    doi={10.1109/LRA.2020.2976639},
                    arXiv = {arXiv:1910.00093}}
            
            The pdf of the paper is available here