SayTap: Language to Quadrupedal Locomotion
Authors: name: Yujin Tang, name: Wenhao Yu, name: Jie Tan, name: Heiga Zen, name: Aleksandra Faust, name: Tatsuya Harada

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated the potential to perform
high-level planning. Yet, it remains a challenge for LLMs to comprehend
low-level commands, such as joint angle targets or motor torques. This paper
proposes an approach to use foot contact patterns as an interface that bridges
human commands in natural language and a locomotion controller that outputs
these low-level commands. This results in an interactive system for quadrupedal
robots that allows the users to craft diverse locomotion behaviors flexibly. We
contribute an LLM prompt design, a reward function, and a method to expose the
controller to the feasible distribution of contact patterns. The results are a
controller capable of achieving diverse locomotion patterns that can be
transferred to real robot hardware. Compared with other design choices, the
proposed approach enjoys more than 50% success rate in predicting the correct
contact patterns and can solve 10 more tasks out of a total of 30 tasks. Our
project site is: https://saytap.github.io.