A MATLAB Framework for Control and Experimental Research in Quadruped Robots

Quadruped robots are increasingly used as experimental platforms for studying locomotion and control strategies in robotics. However, developing and validating control approaches often requires low-level programming and fragmented vendor tooling, which can hinder rapid experimentation and reduce repeatability. This work presents a MATLAB-based framework that enables systematic experimentation on a physical quadruped robot through a wireless communication layer while leveraging the robot’s existing onboard motion stack. Instead of implementing gaits from scratch, the framework provides MATLAB-side access to baseline locomotion primitives already available on the platform (e.g., forward, stop, and turning commands), enabling the controlled experimentation and parameterized testing of locomotion and actuation behaviors, and complements them with low-level actuator access for controlled posture and joint/servo-level tests under conservative bounds and safety-oriented rate limiting. On the sensing side, the framework consolidates sensor feedback streams for experimental observation and logging, including actuator state and onboard sensing data used during experiments, depending on the available hardware configuration. The result is a simple closed-loop workflow in which MATLAB issues commands, the robot executes them using existing motion routines, and MATLAB captures synchronized feedback for repeatable trials and dataset generation. Experimental feasibility is demonstrated through experiments on a physical quadruped robot, including locomotion and posture command execution with real-time monitoring. The proposed framework lowers the barrier to structured experimentation and provides a practical foundation for future extensions, including adaptive control and learning-based methods for legged robots.