RL for Legged Locomotion

RL: Reinforcement Learning

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15 papers in the last four weeks, against 2 the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

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Isaac Sim-to-Real: Reinforcement Learning based Locomotion for Quadrupeds
Jul 20, 2026Jordan Dowdy, Jean Chagas VazSim-to-Real Transfer Whole-Body Control
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Louisville · Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, 40208, USA
Predictive Training with Latent Imagination for Visual Quadruped Navigation
Jul 20, 2026Yancheng Zhu, Wanli Ma, Chen Han +3Robot Navigation RL for Legged Locomotion
Anker Spatial Perception Lab
Agile perceptive multi-skill locomotion for quadrupedal robots in the wild
Jul 15, 2026Jun-Gill Kang, Jaehyun Park, Tae-Gyu Song +3Terrain-Aware Robot Locomotion Robot Locomotion
1Agency for Defense Development, Daejeon 34186, Republic of Korea · Department of Mechanical Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon 34141, Republic of Korea · 3DIDEN Robotics, Seoul 04799, Republic of Korea +2
SKooP: Symmetric Koopman Predictions for Faster and More Generalizable Legged Robot Locomotion with Reinforcement Learning
Jul 13, 2026Evelyn D'Elia, Weishu Zhan, Giulio Turrisi +5Reinforcement Learning Koopman Operator Learning
Machine Learning and Optimisation, University of Manchester, M13 9PL Manchester, U.K. · Dynamic Legged Systems Lab, IIT, 16163 Genoa, Italy · Generative Bionics S.R.L, 16163 Genoa, Italy +3
Learning Roller-Skating Motions of Humanoid Robots Based on Adversarial Motion Priors
Jul 12, 2026Yunkang Cheng, Yutong Wu, Menghan Li +2Humanoid Robot Locomotion RL for Legged Locomotion
Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China · Beijing Key Laboratory of Embodied Intelligence Systems, Beijing, China · Institute for Embodied Intelligence and Robotics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Physics-Guided Biomechanical Gait Adaptation for Humanoid Locomotion on Extreme Sloped Terrains
Jul 8, 2026Xuanyu Chen, Mohan Liu, Dengchen Mei +6Humanoid Robot Locomotion Reinforcement Learning
Nanyang Technological University · A*STAR
Learning Gait-Aware Quadruped Locomotion with Temporal Logic Specifications
Jul 1, 2026Merve Atasever, Cagan Bakirci, Alfredo Reina Corona +2Reinforcement Learning Robot Skill Learning
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA
Learning Locomotion on Discrete Terrain via Minimal Proximity Sensing
Jun 30, 2026Jiale Fan, Connor Flynn, Tianao Xu +4Terrain-Aware Robot Locomotion Robot Locomotion
All authors are with the Robotic Systems Lab, ETH Zurich.
Reinforcement Learning-Based Control for an Inline Skating Humanoid Robot
Jun 30, 2026Ethan Marot, Thomas Bi, Clemens Schwarke +3Humanoid Robot Locomotion Robot Locomotion
Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. · Robotic Systems Lab, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
FastDSAC: Enhancing Policy Plasticity via Constrained Exploration for Scalable Humanoid Locomotion
Jun 30, 2026Guanchen Lu, Yajuan Dun, Yi Zhou +4Distributional RL Reinforcement Learning
Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044, China · Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Beijing 100804, China · Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China +1
X-Morph: Human Motion Priors for Scalable Robot Learning Across Morphologies
Jun 29, 2026Ritwik Sharma, Shivam Sood, Arhaan Jain +3Cross-Embodiment Robot Learning Motion Retargeting
National University of Singapore
Booster Lab: A Data-Centric Pipeline for Learning Deployable Humanoid Locomotion Policies
Jun 26, 2026Penghui Chen, Tinglong Zheng, Yufeng Zhang +1Humanoid Robot Locomotion Robot Skill Learning
Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China · Booster Robotics Technology Co., Ltd, Beijing, China · School of Mechanical and Electronic Control Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China
MPC-Injection: Biasing Off-Policy Locomotion RL Toward Controller-Induced Behavior Basins
Jun 24, 2026Roy Xing, Seyoung Ree, Brian PlancherReinforcement Learning RL for Legged Locomotion
Dartmouth College · Harvard University
Mixture-of-Experts RL for Fault-Tolerant Legged Locomotion
Jun 24, 2026Giulio Turrisi, Ozan Pali, Luca Oneto +1Legged Robotics Mixture of Experts
Dynamic Legged Systems Laboratory, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Genova, Italy. · Dipartimento di Informatica, Bioingegneria, Robotica e Ingegneria dei Sistemi (DIBRIS), Universita di Genova, Genova, Italy
StairMaster: Learning to Conquer Risky Hollow Stairs for Agile Quadrupedal Robots
Jun 24, 2026Xincheng Tang, Youhan Xie, Zhengjie Shu +5Sim-to-Real Transfer Terrain-Aware Robot Locomotion
Shanghai Jiao Tong University
MAPL: Multi-Objective Preference Learning for Robot Locomotion
Jun 24, 2026Xiyue Chen, Muhan Lin, Shuyang Shi +1Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning Reward Modeling
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47906, USA · Department of Computer Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47906, USA · independent researcher
WaveForward: An Omnidirectional Passive Wheeled Quadruped Robot with Casters
Jun 24, 2026Chuanlin Zhao, Qifeng Zheng, Shuhan Wang +3Robot Locomotion RL for Legged Locomotion
State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Learning Perceptive Platform Adaptive Locomotion Controllers for Quadrupedal Robots
Jun 23, 2026David Rytz, Kim Tien Ly, Ioannis HavoutisRobot Skill Learning Cross-Embodiment Robot Learning
Dynamic Robot Systems, Oxford Robotics Institute, University of Oxford
Long-Distance Real-World Navigation of the Legged-Wheeled Robot Go2-W Using Deep Reinforcement Learning
Jun 19, 2026Takaaki Matsuzawa, Kiyoshi Irie, Tomoaki Yoshida +3Robot Navigation Robot Locomotion
Future Robotics Technology Center (fuRo), Chiba Institute of Technology, Narashino, Chiba, Japan.
CTS-MoE: Implicit Terrain Adaptation via Mixture-of-Experts for Perceptive Locomotion
Jun 17, 2026Francisco Affonso, Matheus P. Angarola, Ana Luiza Mineiro +3Robot Policy Adaptation Terrain-Aware Robot Locomotion
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · University of São Paulo
SRL: Combining SLIP Model and Reinforcement Learning for Agile Robotic Jumping
Jun 17, 2026Xiaowen Hu, Linqi Ye, Yudi Zhu +4Robot Locomotion RL for Legged Locomotion
Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Shanghai University, Shangda Road 99, Baoshan District, 200444, Shanghai, China · Institute of Machine Intelligence, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Jungong Road 516, Yangpu District, 200093, Shanghai, China
LoComposition: Terrain-Adaptive Energy-Efficient Quadruped Locomotion without Gait Priors
Jun 14, 2026Loukas Kordos, Leonard T. Franz, Simon Rappenecker +4Legged Robotics RL for Robotics
Technical University of Munich. · University of Tübingen. · Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research & Center for Integrative Neuroscience. +1
Robust Fall Recovery for Armless Bipedal-Wheeled Robots Via Force-Guided Learning
Jun 12, 2026Haidong Hou, Zhangguo Yu, Tao Han +6Robot Failure Recovery Robot Locomotion
School of Mechatronical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
GUIDE: Goal-Initialized Directional Understanding for End-to-End Legged Navigation
Jun 9, 2026Liang Wang, Jin Jin, KanZhong Yao +6Robot Navigation RL for Legged Locomotion
Institute of Cyber-Systems and Control, Zhejiang University · Institute of Artificial Intelligence (TeleAI), China Telecom · Oxford Robotics Institute, University of Oxford +2
MARCH: Model-Assisted Reinforcement Learning for the Perceptive Control of Humanoids over Sparse Footholds
Jun 9, 2026Codrin Crismariu, Ryan K. CosnerHumanoid Robot Locomotion Terrain-Aware Robot Locomotion
Department of Mechanical Engineering Tufts University, Medford, MA, United States
Locomotion analysis of a quadruped interacting with the lunar granular surface
Jun 9, 2026Yash J VyasRobotics Simulation Gait Analysis
Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Padua
Mind Your Steps: A General Learning Framework for Accurate Humanoid Foothold Tracking
Jun 6, 2026Alessandro Montenegro, Shihao Li, Puze Liu +2Robot Trajectory Tracking Humanoid Robot Locomotion
Politecnico di Milano · Tongji University · Technische Universität Darmstadt +2
Rapid co-design of Buoyancy-assisted robots for Challenging Locomotion using Gaussian Evolutionary Specialists
Jun 5, 2026Ankit Sinha, Nitish Sontakke, Dennis Hong +2Legged Robotics Robot Morphology-Control Co-Design
School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, TSRB 85 5th St NW, Atlanta, GA - 30332, USA · Dept. of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, 420 Westwood Plaza, CA 90095, USA · Robotic Systems Lab, ETH Zurich, Leonhardstrasse 21, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland
Shield-Loco: Shielding Locomotion Policies with Predictive Safety Filtering
Jun 5, 2026Aditya Shirwatkar, Sebastian Sanokowski, Shishir Kolathaya +2Robot Safety Safety Filtering
Robert Bosch Center for Cyber Physical Systems, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India · Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI), Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany · Department of Computer Science & Automation, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India +2
Predictive Style Matching: Natural and Robust Humanoid Locomotion
Jun 5, 2026Simeon Nedelchev, Ekaterina Chaikovskaia, Egor Davydenko +2Humanoid Robot Locomotion Reward Shaping
Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), Dolgoprudny, Moscow Region, Russia · Innopolis University, Innopolis, Russia · Sber Robotics Center, Moscow, Russia

Jul 20, 2026, cs.ROJ/K move · Enter open · S save

Isaac Sim-to-Real: Reinforcement Learning based Locomotion for Quadrupeds

Jordan Dowdy, Jean Chagas Vaz

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Louisville · Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, 40208, USA

Sim-to-Real Transfer Whole-Body Control RL for Legged Locomotion Quadruped Locomotion

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Learning-based approaches to locomotion have risen in popularity in recent years, showing the capability for complex legged locomotion and whole-body control. Reinforcement learning (RL), the primary learning-based approach for locomotion, often utilizes a high-performance simulation tool, providing a controlled and efficient training and development environment. However, policies that perform well in simulation frequently encounter unexpected challenges when deployed on a physical system, known as the sim-to-real gap. This work presents a robust RL locomotion framework capable of whole-body control. The proposed RL framework utilizes Nvidia's new set of simulation tools, Isaac Sim, and its companion RL framework, Isaac Lab, for training, achieving a zero-shot sim-to-real policy. The performance of our policy is validated on physical hardware using the Unitree Go1, with experimental results showing similar velocity tracking performance to the quadruped's integrated controller, with a greater ability to recover from large disturbances, and achieve linear velocities of 2.0 m/s and angular velocities of 1.8 rad/s.

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