Abstract
Quadrupedal robots are highly regarded for their superior locomotion
capabilities and terrain adaptability, making them competent in a wide
range of applications. In autonomous navigation tasks, they are required
to track upper-level trajectories to reach designated locations with
flexible obstacle avoidance. This is typically achieved by a planner
which generates a reference velocity and a controller which accurately
tracks the velocity commands. In this article, we propose a
learning-based controller for quadrupedal robots that achieves accurate
and robust velocity tracking. To bridge the gap between simulation and
reality, an analytical actuator model is proposed to simulate physical
actuator dynamics. We then train a control policy in simulation using
Constrained Reinforcement Learning, where symmetry and smoothness
constraints are incorporated into reinforcement learning. The symmetry
constraint promotes coordinated locomotion and consistent velocity
tracking performance, while the smoothness constraint reduces jerky
actions and generates stable velocity performance. The control policy is
zero-shot deployed on the Unitree AlienGo. It demonstrates a tracking
error of less than 0.084 m/s over the entire velocity range and robust
locomotion on natural terrain. We also test our controller by
integrating it to a pedestrian tracking framework and prove its
capability of trajectory following and long-term reliablitiy.