Bipedal Obstacle Avoidance and Point-Goal Navigation (Cassie)
Vision-augmented heuristic navigation layered on top of a blind RL locomotion controller.
Cassie’s blind RL locomotion controller — known for setting the Guinness world record for fastest 100m bipedal run — takes only high-level speed commands and proprioception as input, so it fails when it needs to react to terrain such as stepping on a block or avoiding an obstacle. This project added a depth camera and built an autonomous navigation heuristic on top of the controller, enabling Cassie to navigate terrain with obstacles without relying on constant user commands.
