May 21-24, 2018 · Pensacola, Florida

About Dynamic Walking

An interdisciplinary conference bringing together biomechanists and roboticists with interest in legged locomotion, manipulation, and behavior. Dynamic Walking has been organized since 2006, and has been held in international locations:

2017 Mariehamn, Finland
2016 Camp Ohiyesa, Holly, Michigan, USA
2015 Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA
2014 Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zürich, Switzerland
2013 Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
2012 Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, Pensacola, Florida, USA
2011 Friedrich-Schiller University, Jena, Germany
2010 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
2009 Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
2008 Delft University, Delft, Netherlands
2007 Mariehamn, Aland, Finland
2006 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
2005 Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Dynamic Walking is a single-track conference of 150-200 participants, with a tradition of communal meals, convenient lodging, and emphasis on discussion.

Conference Dates: May 21-24, 2018

Optional Workshop: May 25, 2018

May 25: Optional Workshop Day

OpenSim

Join the members of the OpenSim Team on Friday, May 25th for an interactive tutorial through the features of OpenSim that allow you to model and simulate human-robot interaction. The OpenSim software package has become a central tool in studying human movement and pathology. As interest in wearable robotics increases, so does the need for simulation tools to understand and predict the interaction between humans and robots. This 3-hour hands-on Matlab tutorial will include simulating a jumper model, increasing jump height with an assistive device, and a competition for maximizing the jump height of the assisted jumper model.

To prepare the software for this tutorial, please visit the OpenSim Workshop Page.

Tutorial on IHMC’s Whole-Body Controller Core

This tutorial will introduce the IHMC’s Whole-Body Controller Core (WBCC). The WBCC is used at the core of the IHMC walking controller that has been used on several humanoid robots such as Atlas and Valkyrie. It provides a generic and concise toolbox in which feedback controllers for task-space and joint-space objectives are available and easy to setup, and includes three ready-to-use QP solvers for achieving any of the three following control frameworks: i- whole-body inverse dynamics, ii- whole-body inverse kinematics, and iii- whole-body virtual model control.

Julia for robotics: RigidBodyDynamics.jl and related tools

Twan Koolen and Robin Deits will present a one-hour overview of a variety of robotics-related tools written in the relatively-new Julia programming language. The focus will be on RigidBodyDynamics.jl, a Julia library that implements various kinematics and dynamics algorithms. The library is:

fast: performance for the main algorithms is close to that of the fastest C++ implementations available. The library was used to simulate the Atlas robot walking at close to 2x realtime rate.
user-friendly: Julia is Python-like in its productivity, and the library was designed with both power users and new students in mind. The installation process takes about 5 minutes, including installing Julia itself.
generic: dynamics are needed in various forms for various applications. RigidBodyDynamics.jl handles this requirement by supporting e.g. symbolic inputs (from SymPy.jl) if the dynamics are needed in symbolic form for analysis purposes, or hyperdual numbers (from e.g. ForwardDiff.jl) if gradients of the dynamics are needed for a trajectory optimization task.

We will give a brief introduction to the Julia language itself, and discuss some of its pros and cons relative to other languages.

13th Annual Dynamic Walking Conference

The aim of this meeting, the thirteenth of an annual series, was to provide insight into the fundamental principles that underlie legged locomotion. Topics central to dynamic walking include energetics, stability and control, predictive principles and models, dynamic modeling, empirical data with a conceptual tie in, and robot successes and failures. Participants included both students and professors, with a mixture of researchers studying human walking and those designing walking robots.

To promote open sharing of information, the meetings were organized to provide as much interaction between participants as possible. The format was highly informal and fluid, with a single track of presentations and extensive time scheduled for interaction, brainstorming, and idea sharing. The schedule included many hands-on tutorials and demonstrations of dynamic walking robots.

Conference Proceedings

Tentative Schedule

Sunday, May 20

2pm - 8pm Welcome Reception

7pm Check-in to beach houses

Monday, May 21

9am - 6pm Conference Talks

Tuesday, May 22

9am - 1pm Fun Activities

2pm - 6pm Conference Talks

6:30pm - 9pm Softball Game and Group Dinner

Wednesday, May 23

9am - 5pm Conference Talks

5:30pm - 7pm Plenary Talk

Thursday, May 24

9am - 12pm Conference Talks

1pm - 4pm Hardware Demonstrations

6pm - 8pm Group Dinner

Friday, May 25

9am - 2pm Optional Workshop/Tutorials

Accommodations, Meals, and Transportation:

Meals: Most meals will be included in the conference registration price. Breakfast and lunch will be served at IHMC on all meeting days. There will be a welcome reception on Sunday, May 20th at the Pensacola MESS Hall with pizza, a special dinner on Tuesday evening, no-host on Wednesday evening, and a special dinner on Thursday evening.

Accommodations: Local beach houses have been reserved and attendees will be assigned to a beach house based on their preferences. Check-in is 7pm on Sunday, May 20th, and check-out is 10am on Friday, May 25. Beach houses will be within walking distance of each other to encourage fun and conversation.

Transportation: Trolleys have been hired to transport attendees to and from the conference site at IHMC. There will also be airport shuttles on Sunday and Friday.