Papers › An Open Torque-Controlled Modular Robot Architecture for Legged Locomotion Research
An Open Torque-Controlled Modular Robot Architecture for Legged Locomotion Research
Felix Grimminger, Avadesh Meduri, Majid Khadiv, Julian Viereck, Manuel Wüthrich, Maximilien Naveau, Vincent Berenz, Steve Heim, Felix Widmaier, Thomas Flayols, Jonathan Fiene, Alexander Badri-Spröwitz, Ludovic Righetti
The archive published only this paper's code-link row. Authors, date and abstract are from arXiv's metadata (CC0), read from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12 where its title matched the archive's; the title is the archive's.
We present a new open-source torque-controlled legged robot system, with a low-cost and low-complexity actuator module at its core. It consists of a high-torque brushless DC motor and a low-gear-ratio transmission suitable for impedance and force control. We also present a novel foot contact sensor suitable for legged locomotion with hard impacts. A 2.2 kg quadruped robot with a large range of motion is assembled from eight identical actuator modules and four lower legs with foot contact sensors. Leveraging standard plastic 3D printing and off-the-shelf parts results in a lightweight and inexpensive robot, allowing for rapid distribution and duplication within the research community. We systematically characterize the achieved impedance at the foot in both static and dynamic scenarios, and measure a maximum dimensionless leg stiffness of 10.8 without active damping, which is comparable to the leg stiffness of a running human. Finally, to demonstrate the capabilities of the quadruped, we present a novel controller which combines feedforward contact forces computed from a kino-dynamic optimizer with impedance control of the center of mass and base orientation. The controller can regulate complex motions while being robust to environmental uncertainty.
In Syntology Open this paper in Syntology's Atlas, the map of the papers in Syntology's graph and their citations.
Code
Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.
Code Syntology ran Syntology
Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.
Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28
No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.
Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections