Christian Hubicki

Area of research

Biomedical Engineering · Aerospace Engineering

Research interest

Research topics from publications: Mitigating memory effects during undulatory locomotion on hysteretic materials; Do Intermediate Gaits Matter When Rapidly Accelerating?; Every Hop is an Opportunity: Quickly Classifying and Adapting to Terrain During Targeted Hopping; Fast, Versatile, and Open-loop Stable Running Behaviors with Proprioceptive-only Sensing using Model-based Optimization; Bipedial Locomotion Up Sandy Slopes: Systematic Experiments Using Zero Moment Point Methods; Trajectory Optimization Formulation with Smooth Analytical Derivatives for Track-leg and Wheel-leg Ground Robots; Online Gait Optimization for Running in Resistive Media; Lessons Learned from two Iterations of LLAMA, an Electrically Powered, Dynamic Quadruped Robot. Representative work: While terrestrial locomotors often contend with permanently deformable substrates like sand, soil, and mud, principles of motion on such materials are lacking. We study the desert-specialist shovel-nosed snake traversing a model sand and find body inertia is negligible despite rapid transit and speed dependent granular reaction forces. New surface resistive force theory (RFT) calculation reveals how wave shape in these snakes minimizes material memory effects and optimizes escape performance given physiological power limitations. RFT explains the morphology and waveform-dependent performance of a diversity of non-sand-specialist snakes but overestimates the capability of those snakes which s Transient locomotion is still poorly understood in terms of planning and implementation on robotic platforms, with most research concentrated on steady-state motion. In this letter, we investigate optimal rapid acceleration (positive and negative) maneuvers of a planar numerical quadruped and biped robot. The question we ask is whether legged robots should transition through discrete, intermediate gaits (walking to trot to bound) or plan a direct transition to the top-speed gait. We present numerical evidence supporting the energetic optimality of transitioning to a desired gait without intermediate gait transitions. Trajectories were generated from rest to steady state and vice versa. Two c

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