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TIRAS Transactions on Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Systems An open access journal of Kaggleyes Academy
TIRAS > Vol. 1, No. 2 (August 2026) > KAGG:2608.00008
Vol. 1, No. 2 (August 2026) — Article KAGG:2608.00008

Probing Opaque Velocity Interfaces on Production Quadruped Platforms: A Field Study

Authors: Andrew Foster, Lena Vasquez, Rajiv Menon

Advanced Robotics Laboratory, Boston Dynamics, Waltham, MA, USA

[Received 2026-08-04; accepted 2026-08-15; published online 2026-08-18]

Abstract:

Production quadruped platforms expose velocity command interfaces whose internals (gait managers, safety layers, terrain modes) are undocumented, yet navigation planners routinely assume that commanded velocities are tracked instantly and uniformly. This paper reports a 14-day field characterization of three commercial quadruped platforms, two 70-class research units and one 45-class work unit, across laboratory, campus-path, and light outdoor terrain using GAUGE-style planner-conditioned active calibration. Each platform received 60 probe sessions (20 per terrain mode) logged at 100 Hz, with 0, 5, and 10 kg payloads rotated across sessions. We report command fidelity, 95th-percentile phase lag, saturation-envelope error, and mode-switch transients. On the primary unit with the full probe suite, the command fidelity RMS error is 9.7 percent with a p95 phase lag of 71 ms, compared with 11.1 percent and 79 ms on Platform B and 10.6 percent and 81 ms on Platform C. Restricting probes to the default mode raises the error to 10.5 percent, and removing disturbance rejection raises it to 10.7 percent. Payload is the dominant degradation factor: from 0 to 10 kg, the fidelity error rises from 8.9 to 12.6 percent and the phase lag from 64 to 88 ms. Probes also exposed three behaviors that break naive planning assumptions: an undocumented 3.2 m/s speed limiter in an outdoor mode, a 0.7 s gait-manager hysteresis that produced 0.4 m overshoot, and an unannounced careful mode under a 10 kg payload that halves the usable envelope. We derive interface assumptions that planners for such platforms should state explicitly.

Journal: Transactions on Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Systems (TIRAS)
Volume / Issue: Vol. 1, No. 2 (August 2026)
Article ID: KAGG:2608.00008
DOI: 10.5803/kagg.2608.00008
Received: 2026-08-04
Accepted: 2026-08-15
Published online: 2026-08-18
License: CC BY 4.0

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Cite this article Andrew Foster, Lena Vasquez, Rajiv Menon, "Probing Opaque Velocity Interfaces on Production Quadruped Platforms: A Field Study," Transactions on Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 2026, vol. 1, no. 2, KAGG:2608.00008. DOI: 10.5803/kagg.2608.00008.