HumanoidNDM: Closing the Training-Deployment Gap of Motion Tracking via Humanoid Neural Dynamics Model
Authors: Chao Chen, Zhenrong Wang, Jilong Wang, Yusen Feng, Jiangran Lyu, Li Yi, He Wang
Organizations: CFCS, School of Computer Science, Peking University · Galbot · Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences · Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence · Tsinghua University
Humanoid robots have recently achieved remarkable success in motion tracking. However, during real-world deployment, robots inevitably encounter dynamics gaps arising from either extra physical disturbances or inaccurate simulation modeling, resulting in a significant training-deployment gap. Therefore, effectively leveraging real-world data to fine-tune policies represents the crucial last mile for robust deployment. To bridge this gap, we propose HumanoidNDM, an online fine-tuning framework for humanoid motion tracking driven by a real-world-trained neural dynamics model. First, in the data collection stage, we introduce a low-frequency reference perturbation method with an adaptive intensity mechanism, balancing deployment feasibility and exploration efficiency. Second, for the model training stage, we train a robust history-based, proprioceptive neural dynamics model in Euclidean space by incorporating differentiable forward kinematics, eliminating the reliance on costly motion capture systems. Finally, in the policy fine-tuning stage, we directly fine-tune the policy via backpropagated model gradients, achieving high data efficiency. Through physical validation on the Unitree G1 robot, we demonstrate that HumanoidNDM enables rapid real-world adaptation to various perturbations, representing the first online, MoCap-free fine-tuning framework for humanoid tracking policies.
Figures & tables
Figure 1: Comparison of direct transfer (left two frames) and fine-tuned performance (right two frames): (a) Swallow Balance : 1.5 kg weights on each calf; (b) Arm Swing : 1.5 kg weight on the left hand; (c) Pen Capping : 0.75 kg load on the left hand; (d) Lateral Raise : two elastic bands attached to wrists; (e) Bowing : damaged arm motor; and (f) Walking : 2 kg water bucket in hand.
Method
Deployment Feasibility
Policy-Relevant Coverage
Adaptive Intensity
Uncorrelated Action Noise [ 4 , 48 ]
×
✓
×
Observation Perturbation [ 23 , 29 ]
×
×
×
Passive Dynamic Exploration [ 18 , 15 ]
✓
×
×
Temporally Correlated Noise [ 31 , 7 ]
∼
✓
×
Ours (FENCE)
✓
✓
✓
Table 1: Comparison of exploration strategies. “ ∼ ” denotes partial or conditional capability.
Figure 2: Pipeline of HumanoidNDM. Left: HumanoidNDM uses a simulation-trained policy to collect real-world data for online fine-tuning. Each iteration comprises three stages: Data Collection , Model Training , and Policy Fine-tuning . Right: The key components of each stage.
Disturbance
Extra Weight
Scaled KP
Small Friction
Trajectory
Method
Elink_pos
Elink_rot
Eqpos
Ekey_qpos
Elink_pos
Elink_rot
Eqpos
Ekey_qpos
Elink_pos
Elink_rot
Eqpos
Ekey_qpos
Walk
PPO w/ Disturb.
3.11
0.28
2.01
3.83
2.74
0.28
1.70
1.94
2.45
0.24
1.46
1.70
Direct Transfer
5.33 ± 0.00
0.55 ± 0.00
3.29 ± 0.00
3.81 ± 0.00
4.92 ± 0.00
0.56 ± 0.00
3.20 ± 0.00
3.80 ± 0.00
4.64 ± 0.00
0.49 ± 0.00
3.06 ± 0.00
3.84 ± 0.00
ASAP
4.09 ± 0.20
0.41 ± 0.03
3.30 ± 0.09
2.93 ± 0.20
2.83 ± 0.12
0.47 ± 0.02
2.67 ± 0.05
2.02 ± 0.15
2.49 ± 0.08
0.31 ± 0.01
2.81 ± 0.01
2.35 ± 0.09
RWM
4.71 ± 0.15
0.40 ± 0.03
3.15 ± 0.07
2.91 ± 0.11
4.71 ± 0.28
0.32 ± 0.03
2.55 ± 0.07
2.98 ± 0.38
4.37 ± 0.64
0.36 ± 0.14
2.11 ± 0.18
2.33 ± 0.19
HumanoidNDM
3.59 ± 0.24
0.27 ± 0.03
2.15 ± 0.07
2.56 ± 0.23
2.90 ± 0.13
0.22 ± 0.02
1.80 ± 0.04
1.86 ± 0.13
2.49 ± 0.09
0.13 ± 0.01
1.54 ± 0.01
1.55 ± 0.08
Table 2: Comparison of HumanoidNDM and baselines across 5 random trials (mean ± std).
Figure 3: Comparison between exploration methods.
Method
Policy Evaluation Performance
Data Collection Performance
Elink_pos↓
Eqpos↓
Sqpos(×10−3)↓
Sroll-pitch(×10−4)↓
ASAP
3.68 ± 0.20
3.03 ± 0.10
4.79 ± 6.47
0.95 ± 3.06
ASAP w/ FENCE
3.53 ± 0.18
3.13 ± 0.08
5.84 ± 6.27
1.23 ± 4.25
RWM
4.42 ± 0.23
2.68 ± 0.11
27.44 ± 13.82
11.06 ± 9.73
RWM w/ FENCE
4.23 ± 0.35
2.72 ± 0.13
5.43 ± 5.12
1.48 ± 4.19
Table 3: Effectiveness of FENCE on baselines (mean ± std).
Figure 4: Left: Training w/ and w/o Euclidean-space objective. Right: Model w/ and w/o history.
Setting
Swallow Balance (w/ leg weights)
Arm Swing (w/ hand weights)
Pen Capping (w/ hand weight)
Method
Elink_pos↓
Eqpos↓
air time (s) ↑
Elink_pos↓
Eqpos↓
arm height (m) ↑
Elink_pos↓
Eqpos↓
EE distance (cm) ↓
PPO w/ Disturb.
4.72 ± 0.28
2.90 ± 0.39
0.40 ± 0.11
2.72 ± 0.01
2.34 ± 0.03
1.43 ± 0.02
6.58 ± 0.00
3.27 ± 0.00
0.00 ± 0.00
Direct Transfer
5.34 ± 0.06
3.40 ± 0.07
0.00 ± 0.00
5.85 ± 0.02
3.33 ± 0.01
0.98 ± 0.00
6.96 ± 0.00
3.50 ± 0.00
3.50 ± 0.00
HumanoidNDM
4.44 ± 0.13
2.98 ± 0.34
1.90 ± 0.61
2.98 ± 0.00
2.30 ± 0.01
1.40 ± 0.01
6.82 ± 0.00
3.36 ± 0.00
0.00 ± 0.00
Setting
Lateral Raise (w/ elastic bands)
Walking (w/ water bucket)
Bowing (w/ damaged motor)
Method
Elink_pos↓
Eqpos↓
arm height (m) ↑
Elink_pos↓
Eqpos↓
deviation angle ( ∘ ) ↓
Elink_pos↓
Eqpos↓
noise level (dB) ↓
Table 4: Performance under added weight disturbances (top) and hard-to-model disturbances (bottom) (mean ± std). The third column represents the task-specific metric reflecting task completeness.
Method
Sqpos↓
Sroll-pitch↓
FENCE
0.099 ± 0.018
0.126 ± 0.023
Action Gaussian Noise
1.275 ± 0.313
1.678 ± 0.455
Action OU Noise
0.707 ± 0.180
0.739 ± 0.210
Obs Gaussian Noise
1.151 ± 0.315
1.033 ± 0.218
No Noise
0.076 ± 0.005
0.106 ± 0.008
Table 5: Real-world comparison of exploration methods (mean ± std).
Appendix figures & tables17 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
Variable
Value
Data Collection
Max perturbation frequency ( kc )
1.0 Hz
Roll-pitch termination threshold
1.0
Radial bin number
2
Directional bin number
16
MAB exploration scale ( β )
0.05
Appendix
Table 6: Hyperparameters of HumanoidNDM
Figure 5: Walk: Extra Weight (top), Scaled KP (middle), Small Friction (bottom).
Figure 6: Balance: Extra Weight (top), Scaled KP (middle), Small Friction (bottom).
Figure 7: Squat: Extra Weight (top), Scaled KP (middle), Small Friction (bottom).
Figure 8: Swing: Extra Weight (top), Scaled KP (middle), Small Friction (bottom).
Figure 9: Stride: Extra Weight (top), Scaled KP (middle), Small Friction (bottom).
Figure 10: Comparison between the adaptive and fixed σ under the default simulation setting.
Figure 11: Comparison between adaptive and fixed perturbation intensities in real-world experiments on swing and stride motions.
Figure 12: Comparison between the adaptive and fixed σ using policies with varying degrees of responsiveness ( top : weak ; middle : medium ; bottom : strong ).
Disturbance
Extra Weight
Scaled KP
Small Friction
Trajectory
Method
Elink_pos
Elink_rot
Eqpos
Ekey_qpos
Elink_pos
Elink_rot
Eqpos
Ekey_qpos
Elink_pos
Elink_rot
Eqpos
Ekey_qpos
Jump
PPO w/ Disturb.
3.03
0.34
1.90
1.64
4.15
0.50
2.86
3.63
4.42
0.31
2.05
1.77
Direct Transfer
6.74 ± 0.00
1.56 ± 0.00
4.77 ± 0.00
6.50 ± 0.00
7.41 ± 0.00
1.77 ± 0.00
5.01 ± 0.00
8.75 ± 0.00
7.53 ± 0.00
1.80 ± 0.00
4.92 ± 0.00
6.74 ± 0.00
ASAP
3.18 ± 0.11
0.63 ± 0.07
3.30 ± 0.14
3.15 ± 0.20
7.08 ± 0.09
1.98 ± 0.12
4.56 ± 0.16
5.98 ± 0.41
4.59 ± 0.09
0.47 ± 0.03
3.52 ± 0.02
5.05 ± 0.27
RWM
5.79 ± 0.99
0.92 ± 0.33
3.49 ± 0.04
3.29 ± 0.33
5.66 ± 0.03
0.75 ± 0.02
3.99 ± 0.01
5.81 ± 0.25
4.73 ± 0.04
0.64 ± 0.01
3.73 ± 0.03
3.60 ± 0.03
HumanoidNDM
3.31 ± 0.12
0.37 ± 0.01
2.97 ± 0.03
2.42 ± 0.09
4.68 ± 0.22
0.55 ± 0.03
3.25 ± 0.05
5.78 ± 0.34
4.28 ± 0.98
0.46 ± 0.19
2.63 ± 0.28
2.40 ± 0.68
Appendix
Table 7: Performance comparison of HumanoidNDM and baseline methods on the jump motion across 5 random trials.
Figure 13: Jump: Extra Weight (top), Scaled KP (middle), Small Friction (bottom).
Figure 14: Comparison of HumanoidNDM with and without pretrained NDM.
Figure 15: Model visualization and performance for balance motion with extra weight.
Figure 16: Model visualization and performance for squat motion with extra weight.
Figure 17: Model visualization and performance for walk motion with scaled KP.
Figure 18: Model visualization and performance for stride motion with small friction.
Figure 19: Model visualization and performance for swing motion with small friction.
Humanoid general motion tracking requires policies that can follow diverse whole-body references while maintaining balance. Building such policies involves many practical design choices, and their individual effects are often hard to assess. We address this issue with an empirical study of common modeling and training factors used in recent humanoid motion-imitation pipelines. To make the study controlled and reproducible, we developed YAHMP, an open-source modular framework for training, evaluating, and deploying whole-body motion tracking policies on the Unitree G1. Within YAHMP, we define a nominal configuration and compare variants that differ in motion-command representation, observation history, action representation, actuation profile, hand-force randomization during training, and training approach. We evaluate the resulting policies on a test set of retargeted human motions and compare the nominal policy with TWIST2 as an external baseline trained on the same motion set. The results distinguish choices with clear tracking effects from choices that mainly change actuation effort, training complexity, or physical interaction capability. Finally, we deploy YAHMP policies zero-shot on the real Unitree G1, demonstrating diverse whole-body motion tracking, balance under external perturbations, and forceful interaction.
Fabio Amadio, Enrico Mingo Hoffman
HUCEBOT · Inria, Université de Lorraine, CNRS, Nancy, France
High-fidelity motion tracking serves as the ultimate litmus test for generalizable, human-level motor skills. However, current policies often hit a "generality barrier": as motion libraries scale in diversity, tracking fidelity inevitably collapses - especially for real-world deployment of high-dynamic motions. We identify this failure as the result of two compounding factors: the learning bottleneck in scaling multi-motion optimization and the physical executability constraints that arise in real-world actuation. To overcome these challenges, we introduce OmniXtreme, a scalable framework that decouples general motor skill learning from sim-to-real physical skill refinement. Our approach uses a flow-matching policy with high-capacity architectures to scale representation capacity without interference-intensive multi-motion RL optimization, followed by an actuation-aware refinement phase that ensures robust performance on physical hardware. Extensive experiments demonstrate that OmniXtreme maintains high-fidelity tracking across diverse, high-difficulty datasets. On real robots, the unified policy successfully executes multiple extreme motions, effectively breaking the long-standing fidelity-scalability trade-off in high-dynamic humanoid control.
Yunshen Wang, Shaohang Zhu, Peiyuan Zhi +7
State Key Laboratory of General Artificial Intelligence, Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence (BIGAI) · Joint Laboratory of Embodied AI and Humanoid Robots, BIGAI & Unitree Robotics · Shanghai Jiao Tong University +4
Learning motion tracking from rich human motion data is a foundational task for achieving general control in humanoid robots, enabling them to perform diverse behaviors. However, discrepancies in morphology and dynamics between humans and robots, combined with data noise, introduce physically infeasible artifacts in reference motions, such as floating and penetration. During both training and execution, these artifacts create a conflict between following inaccurate reference motions and maintaining the robot's stability, hindering the development of a generalizable motion tracking policy. To address these challenges, we introduce OmniTrack, a general tracking framework that explicitly decouples physical feasibility from general motion tracking. In the first stage, a privileged generalist policy generates physically plausible motions that strictly adhere to the robot's dynamics via trajectory rollout in simulation. In the second stage, the general control policy is trained to track these physically feasible motions, ensuring stable and coherent control transfer to the real robot. Experiments show that OmniTrack improves tracking accuracy and demonstrates strong generalization to unseen motions. In real-world tests, OmniTrack achieves hour-long, consistent, and stable tracking, including complex acrobatic motions such as flips and cartwheels. Additionally, we show that OmniTrack supports human-style stable and dynamic online teleoperation, highlighting its robustness and adaptability to varying user inputs.
Yuhan Li, Peiyuan Zhi, Yunshen Wang +6
Huazhong University of Science and Technology · State Key Lab of General AI, Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence (BIGAI) · Shanghai Jiao Tong University