Publications de Milad Shafiee Ashtiani

A Bio-Inspired Learning and Control Framework for Cross-Embodiment and Cross-Task Locomotion

Animals exhibit remarkable locomotion skills despite significant sensorimotor delays and operating in uncertain environments. Moreover, mammals acquire these skills within minutes of birth. From the Cambrian explosion to the present day, vertebrate motor c ...

EPFL2025

Online Optimization of Central Pattern Generators for Quadruped Locomotion

Auke Ijspeert, Milad Shafiee Ashtiani, Guillaume Denis Antoine Bellegarda

Typical legged locomotion controllers are designed or trained offline. This is in contrast to many animals, which are able to locomote at birth, and rapidly improve their locomotion skills with few real-world interactions. Such motor control is possible th ...

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.2024

ExoRecovery: Push Recovery with a Lower-Limb Exoskeleton Based on Stepping Strategy

Mohamed Bouri, Auke Ijspeert, Milad Shafiee Ashtiani

Balance loss is a significant challenge in lower-limb exoskeleton applications, as it can lead to potential falls, thereby impacting user safety and confidence. We introduce a control framework for omnidirectional recovery step planning by online optimizat ...

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.2024

Learning-based Hierarchical Control: Emulating the Central Nervous System for Bio-Inspired Legged Robot Locomotion

Auke Ijspeert, Milad Shafiee Ashtiani, Guillaume Denis Antoine Bellegarda

Animals possess a remarkable ability to navigate challenging terrains, achieved through the interplay of various pathways between the brain, central pattern generators (CPGs) in the spinal cord, and musculoskeletal system. Traditional bioinspired control f ...

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.2024

ManyQuadrupeds: Learning a Single Locomotion Policy for Diverse Quadruped Robots

Auke Ijspeert, Milad Shafiee Ashtiani, Guillaume Denis Antoine Bellegarda

Learning a locomotion policy for quadruped robots has traditionally been constrained to a specific robot morphology, mass, and size. The learning process must usually be repeated for every new robot, where hyperparameters and reward function weights must b ...

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.2024

Quadruped-Frog: Rapid Online Optimization of Continuous Quadruped Jumping

Auke Ijspeert, Milad Shafiee Ashtiani, Guillaume Denis Antoine Bellegarda

Legged robots are becoming increasingly agile in exhibiting dynamic behaviors such as running and jumping. Usually, such behaviors are either optimized and engineered offline (i.e. the behavior is designed for before it is needed), either through model-bas ...

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.2024

Viability leads to the emergence of gait transitions in learning agile quadrupedal locomotion on challenging terrains

Auke Ijspeert, Milad Shafiee Ashtiani, Guillaume Denis Antoine Bellegarda

Quadruped animals are capable of seamless transitions between different gaits. While energy efficiency appears to be one of the reasons for changing gaits, other determinant factors likely play a role too, including terrain properties. In this article, we ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Visual CPG-RL: Learning Central Pattern Generators for Visually-Guided Quadruped Locomotion

Auke Ijspeert, Milad Shafiee Ashtiani, Guillaume Denis Antoine Bellegarda

We present a framework for learning visually-guided quadruped locomotion by integrating exteroceptive sensing and central pattern generators (CPGs), i.e. systems of coupled oscillators, into the deep reinforcement learning (DRL) framework. Through both ext ...

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.2024

Surena-V: A Humanoid Robot for Human-Robot Collaboration with Optimization-based Control Architecture

Milad Shafiee Ashtiani

This paper presents Surena-V, a humanoid robot designed to enhance human-robot collaboration capabilities. The robot features a range of sensors, including barometric tactile sensors in its hands, to facilitate precise environmental interaction. This is de ...

IEEE Computer Society2024

Puppeteer and Marionette: Learning Anticipatory Quadrupedal Locomotion Based on Interactions of a Central Pattern Generator and Supraspinal Drive

Auke Ijspeert, Milad Shafiee Ashtiani, Guillaume Denis Antoine Bellegarda

Quadruped animal locomotion emerges from the interactions between the spinal central pattern generator (CPG), sensory feedback, and supraspinal drive signals from the brain. Computational models of CPGs have been widely used for investigating the spinal co ...

IEEE2023

Identifying important sensory feedback for learning locomotion skills

Auke Ijspeert, Milad Shafiee Ashtiani, Guillaume Denis Antoine Bellegarda

Robot motor skills can be acquired by deep reinforcement learning as neural networks to reflect state-action mapping. The selection of states has been demonstrated to be crucial for successful robot motor learning. However, because of the complexity of neu ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2023

Online Bipedal Locomotion Adaptation for Stepping on Obstacles Using a Novel Foot Sensor

Milad Shafiee Ashtiani

In this paper, we present a novel control architecture for the online adaptation of bipedal locomotion on inclined obstacles. In particular, we introduce a novel, cost-effective, and versatile foot sensor to detect the proximity of the robot's feet to the ...

IEEE2022