As of September 6th, 2024, I have officially defended my thesis! Check it out here..

In recent years, many wheeled, bipedal, and quadrupedal robots have been released to the market. However, their presence in public spaces remains limited, with most robots confined to controlled environments like factories and warehouses. What is hindering robots from making broader impacts? This thesis investigates the challenges robots face by synthesizing insights from control theory, social science, and public policy. Each of these often-siloed fields offers valuable perspectives for developing robots that are safe, trustworthy, and equitable. The first part of this thesis presents methods to analyze legged robot locomotion and generate safe, robust trajectories for challenging environments. Legged robots are hybrid systems that undergo discontinuous changes in state and dynamics upon foot touchdown, violating assumptions of many traditional control architectures. The presented hybrid systems analysis uses the fundamental solution matrix to characterize the evolution of initial errors through a trajectory. This analysis leads to novel trajectory optimization methods that explicitly consider the stability and convergence of hybrid trajectories, improving tracking performance across various systems. Additionally, this analysis enhances our fundamental understanding of how gait parameters like duty factor impact a robot’s performance on difficult terrain. This thesis also explores legal theory and community attitudes to develop frameworks for equitable robot design, ensuring fair distribution of benefits and risks. I emphasize grounding robot design in the needs of all community members, not just customer preferences. By considering self-defense law and the perspectives of food pantry patrons toward autonomous delivery robots, this work aims to improve both robot design and public policies. Overall, this thesis tackles the diverse factors essential for enabling robots to make wide-ranging, positive impacts on the world. Neglecting any technical, social, or regulatory aspect of robotics risks undermining their lofty potential.