h2>A unified policy to coordinate a gripper on Unitree Robotics Go1
A quadruped robot equipped with an arm can be used in a much greater variety of contexts.
Traditionally, a quadruped with a robot arm will use its controller to manage walking and grasping operations separately. This is not optimal and takes a lot of time and effort to set up. There’s also a high risk of errors propagating through the different modules with the likelihood of jerky movements.
To overcome this problem, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh has turned to reinforcement learning and is testing a unified policy system to control the quadruped and the arm together. The result? Smoother, more precise movements and better arm/leg coordination.
The two students working on this project with their teacher are using the Go1 robot by Unitree Robotics, known for its cost-effective reliability and excellent performance. The arm they have chosen to mount on their robot is the WidowX 250 (6 axis) by Trossen Robotics.
Their experiment has shown how this unified policy system allows agile and dynamic behaviour in several scenarios.