field robotics engineers

Abstract: We present RAIWAY, an in-house wheeled bipedal robot with 20-inch wheels, together with a contact-informed control approach for rolling locomotion across irregular and discontinuous terrain. Such locomotion is fundamentally contact-dominated, governed by local wheel--terrain interaction that is impractical to instrument directly and depends on more than terrain geometry alone. The proposed framework exploits the contact information available in simulation, distilling multi-contact events into a latent representation. At deployment, the controller infers this representation online from proprioception, requiring no contact sensing. In real-world experiments, the proposed system traverses diverse environments including steep slopes, gravel beds, studded surfaces, and rocky terrain, and demonstrates continuous ascent on the tested outdoor staircases with riser heights up to 15~cm. On our platform, the proposed controller further outperforms baselines without the contact-informed mechanism across challenging indoor and outdoor settings. The video can be found at https://youtu.be/Ch0divLg64w.

Abstract: Field robots operating across time of day and sensing modalities require accurate image correspondences within onboard time and resource budgets. However, accuracy and runtime reported for individual methods on a single device provide limited guidance for choosing a matcher and its configuration on a target platform. We present MatcherCompass, a deployment-aware benchmark for choosing local feature matchers in field robotics. Under common input and pose-evaluation procedures, we compare nine classical and learned matching pipelines across four image resolutions and supported numerical precisions. Four visual conditions cover viewpoint variation, day--night matching in visible and thermal imagery, and daytime visible--thermal matching. We evaluate pose accuracy using the area under the error--recall curve (AUC) at $5^\circ$, $10^\circ$, and $20^\circ$, and measure runtime, GPU memory, and energy per image pair on four GPU platforms spanning workstation and onboard computers. The results show that changes in hardware, input resolution, and numerical precision can move a matcher across a runtime budget boundary, altering the feasible choices. We organize the measurements into a selection guide that returns all configurations satisfying user-specified time and resource limits, together with their accuracy under the selected visual condition. MatcherCompass provides measured evidence for choosing matching pipelines that fit a robot's sensing conditions and computing hardware. Project page: https://matchercompass.github.io/.

Abstract: In field robotics, acquiring independent large-scale reference trajectories more accurate than the evaluated estimates remains an open challenge. The domain is widely reliant on Absolute Trajectory Error (ATE) and Relative Pose Error (RPE), computed with automated tools, that rest on assumptions and evaluation parameters rarely made explicit. When unreported, the errors can be misleading and hinder fair comparisons. This paper introduces a trajectory-evaluation protocol for standardized and reliable accuracy assessment in state estimation, localization, and Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM). The approach combines a novel temporal alignment method based on curvature signals with an error metric normalized by travelled distance. We explicitly account for temporal synchronization, sampling alignment, and extrinsic calibration, quantifying their influence through a sensitivity analysis. The proposed protocol contributes to more rigorous, reproducible, and standardized trajectory evaluation.

Abstract: Reconfigurable robots can change their contact geometry when a fixed body cannot negotiate an obstacle. A variable-geometry truss (VGT) distributes this shape change through a load-bearing structure, but coupling it to a mobile base creates a high-dimensional coordination problem. GeoTrussRover combines an electrically actuated VGT, a wheeled base, and contact-semantic morphology planning and control. We solve one source traversal and extract four contact-semantic primitives that describe coordination among 21 members. Physics-constrained projection adapts them to unseen step heights with the same contact topology. When every phase remains feasible, adaptation does not recompute the complete motion. If one phase violates the new physical constraints, only that phase is recomputed. A full-space QP then tracks the adapted motion and corrects member and wheel errors. For transfer from 0.10m to 0.075m, the method reduces objective-function evaluations by 63.7% relative to full recomputation. Contact-phase feasibility analysis covers step heights from 0.10 to 0.46m, or 1.08 to 4.97 wheel radii, with the upper value near the theoretical feasible boundary. The electric prototype traverses 2.11 wheel radii. The resulting low-dimensional representation stores task coordination in a hyper-redundant, load-bearing morphology and reuses it during locomotion.