Recent advances in control have enabled bipedal-wheeled robots to traverse slopes and single-step obstacles, yet long staircase traversal remains challenging as current teacher-student frameworks suffer from weakened dynamics-aware representations and incomplete terrain geometry encoding. To bridge this gap, we propose DynaWM, a dynamics-aware representation learning framework. To enhance terrain encoding capability and enable transparent assessment, we introduce a world model as a regularizer to enforce forward-dynamics awareness, preserving comprehensive terrain geometry while facilitating hierarchical encoding visualization. To stabilize knowledge transfer, we employ a momentum target encoder to provide consistent distillation targets, preventing dimensional collapse from non-stationary teacher updates. Evaluation of the learned representations through Principal Component Analysis (PCA) visualization and quantitative metrics reveals that our encoder hierarchically captures terrain geometry with higher terrain encoding capability, leading to enhanced terrain adaptability and motion smoothness. Experimental results in simulation and real hardware demonstrate that our method achieves superior terrain adaptability and motion smoothness, enabling bipedal-wheeled robots to overcome diverse continuous stairs, as shown in Fig. 1.
Climbing hollow stairs remains a challenging problem for quadruped robots due to the high risk of leg trapping, severe depth sparsity, and high-frequency depth-sensing noise. In this paper, we propose StairMaster, a novel three-stage reinforcement learning framework for stable locomotion on such extreme discontinuous terrains. Our architecture integrates a Cross-Attention mechanism to extract structural features from noisy depth data, alongside a Spatial-aware Recurrent Unit (SRU) that maintains robust spatio-temporal memory to mitigate perception blind spots. To bridge the sim-to-real gap in depth perception, we propose a high-fidelity sim-to-real depth sensor modeling pipeline that faithfully replicates real-world sensor artifacts. Additionally, we employ a 3D waypoint-guided active perception reward for proactive sensing, alongside hollow gap kinematic and stair edge penalties to ensure precise foothold placement. We successfully deployed StairMaster on a Unitree Go2 robot, demonstrating its ability to conquer hollow stairs with an unprecedented incline of up to 55∘ through zero-shot transfer. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first RL-based policy to achieve such steep hollow stair climbing in real-world environments. Project Website: https://sivan666666.github.io/StairMaster/.
Robust humanoid stair climbing remains challenging due to geometric discontinuities, sensitivity to step height variations, and perception uncertainty in real-world environments. Existing learning-based locomotion policies often rely on implicit terrain representations or blind proprioceptive feedback, limiting their ability to generalize across varying stair geometries and to anticipate required gait adjustments. This paper proposes an explicit stair geometry conditioning framework for robust humanoid stair climbing. Instead of encoding terrain as high-dimensional latent features, we extract a compact set of interpretable geometric parameters, including step height, step depth, and current yaw angle relative to the robot heading. These explicit stair parameters directly condition a Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO)-based locomotion policy, enabling proactive modulation of swing-foot clearance and stride characteristics according to stair structure. Simulation experiments demonstrate improved generalization across unseen stair heights beyond the training distribution. Real-world experiments on the Unitree G1 humanoid validate reliable indoor and outdoor stair traversal. In challenging outdoor scenarios, the robot successfully ascends 33 consecutive steps without failure, demonstrating robustness and practical deployability.
Model-free reinforcement learning has enabled impressive humanoid locomotion; however, control on steep slopes remains largely unexplored. Unlike flat or discrete terrains, sloped terrains impose a persistent gravitational bias that demands simultaneous stability and posture control. Consequently, under generic reward formulations, policies can converge to slow, conservative low-center-of-mass (CoM) crouched gaits. In this work, we propose a novel two-stage physics-guided framework, dubbed HumoSlope, dedicated to robust humanoid locomotion on diverse sloped terrains. Specifically, Stage I establishes a terrain-consistent balance prior by introducing a slope-adaptive Zero Moment Point (ZMP) regularizer evaluated directly on the local inclined support plane rather than a world-horizontal reference. To prevent the resulting policy from defaulting to a crouched posture, Stage II introduces the Biomechanical Slope Gait Adapter (BSGA). Utilizing extracted macroscopic terrain descriptors as privileged, training-only signals, BSGA dynamically gates soft reward priors to modulate CoM height and lower-limb coordination based on the estimated slope geometry -- encouraging hip-dominant uphill propulsion and knee-oriented downhill braking. Crucially, the deployed actor remains entirely proprioceptive, requiring no online exteroceptive sensing. Extensive Sim-to-Real experiments demonstrate that our framework effectively mitigates posture degeneration and enables blind, continuous traversal of outdoor grass slopes up to 62.7% (32.1∘), validating a physics-guided approach to challenging slope terrain adaptation.