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Humanoid Whole-Body Locomotion on Narrow Terrain via Dynamic Balance and Reinforcement Learning

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arxiv 2502.17219 v2 pith:6KITD3XW submitted 2025-02-24 cs.RO cs.LG

classification cs.ROcs.LG
keywords balancedynamiclocomotionextremehumanoidnarrowrewardsterrains
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
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Humans possess delicate dynamic balance mechanisms that enable them to maintain stability across diverse terrains and under extreme conditions. However, despite significant advances recently, existing locomotion algorithms for humanoid robots are still struggle to traverse extreme environments, especially in cases that lack external perception (e.g., vision or LiDAR). This is because current methods often rely on gait-based or perception-condition rewards, lacking effective mechanisms to handle unobservable obstacles and sudden balance loss. To address this challenge, we propose a novel whole-body locomotion algorithm based on dynamic balance and Reinforcement Learning (RL) that enables humanoid robots to traverse extreme terrains, particularly narrow pathways and unexpected obstacles, using only proprioception. Specifically, we introduce a dynamic balance mechanism by leveraging an extended measure of Zero-Moment Point (ZMP)-driven rewards and task-driven rewards in a whole-body actor-critic framework, aiming to achieve coordinated actions of the upper and lower limbs for robust locomotion. Experiments conducted on a full-sized Unitree H1-2 robot verify the ability of our method to maintain balance on extremely narrow terrains and under external disturbances, demonstrating its effectiveness in enhancing the robot's adaptability to complex environments. The videos are given at https://whole-body-loco.github.io.

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Cited by 5 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. First Deployable Dynamic-CoM: A Unified Policy and Method-Agnostic Benchmark for Humanoid Single-Leg Balance

    cs.RO 2026-08 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    A support-relative dynamic capture-point observation, reconstructible without base linear velocity, lets a humanoid policy hold clean single-leg balance at 86/90 in simulation and deploy on a Unitree G1 without distillation.

  2. KungfuBot: Physics-Based Humanoid Whole-Body Control for Learning Highly-Dynamic Skills

    cs.RO 2025-06 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    A robot control method that adaptively tightens motion-tracking reward tolerances achieves lower tracking errors on dynamic skills and transfers zero-shot to a real humanoid.

  3. Hold My Beer: Learning Gentle Humanoid Locomotion and End-Effector Stabilization Control

    cs.RO 2025-05 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    A slow-fast two-agent reinforcement learning architecture with separate upper- and lower-body policies reduces end-effector shaking during humanoid locomotion.

  4. RobotDancing: Residual-Action Reinforcement Learning Enables Robust Long-Horizon Humanoid Motion Tracking

    cs.RO 2025-09 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    Residual-action reinforcement learning, with selective corrections on hip and knee pitch joints, enables zero-shot long-horizon dance tracking on real humanoid robots.

  5. Robust RL Control for Bipedal Locomotion with Closed Kinematic Chains

    cs.RO 2025-07 conditional novelty 4.0 of 10

    A reinforcement-learning gait controller that explicitly models closed kinematic chains outperforms one trained on a simplified serial model, both in simulation and on the physical TopA robot.

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