arXiv Machine Learning

Morphology-Conditioned World Model for Cross-Embodiment Quadrupedal Locomotion

arXiv:2604. 08780v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: World models promise a paradigm shift in robotics, where an agent learns the physics of its environment once and then acquires behaviors efficiently.

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 18

GLAMDRING: Gait Learning And Morphology co-Design via Reinforcement LearnING of CPGs

GLAMDRING is a framework that jointly designs a quadruped robot’s morphology and its gait controller using reinforcement learning of Hopf-oscillator Central Pattern Generators (CPGs). Given specifications such as forward‑velocity bounds, actuator power budgets, an actuator library, and payload requirements, the system returns an optimized robot design and a corresponding gait policy, ranking designs by objectives like maximum speed, minimum Cost of Transport, or maximum payload margin. Experiments demonstrate that co‑designing body and gait is essential for meeting locomotion constraints, that actuator feasibility determines payload capacity, and that natural animal gaits emerge from the design process, with a real‑world demonstration confirming the approach’s effectiveness.

By Amogh Joshi, Kaushik Roy
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 4

Rapid Embodiment Adaptation for Quadrupedal Locomotion

arXiv:2608. 01506v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Humans readily adapt their movements as their bodies change through aging, injury, or load carrying, but learning-based robot policies often break when hardware properties shift.

By Dichen Li, Bo Ai, Nico Bohlinger, Jan Peters, Hao Su, Henrik I. Christensen
arXiv AI
Aug 10

Learning to Walk With Less: A Dyna-Style Approach to Quadrupedal Locomotion

arXiv:2509. 06296v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Traditional on-policy reinforcement learning (RL) controllers for quadrupedal locomotion often suffer from low data efficiency, requiring millions of interactions with simulated environments to achieve stable control.

By Francisco Affonso, Felipe Tommaselli, Jo\~ao H. Al\'essio, Vivian S. Medeiros, Mateus V. Gasparino, Girish Chowdhary, Marcelo Becker
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 17

RecMorph: Topology-Guided Spatial Recurrence for Generalized Morphology Control

RecMorph introduces a topology‑guided spatial recurrent architecture for generalized morphology control, converting a kinematic tree into a sequence that enables joint cross‑limb communication and representation transformation. The design incorporates residual preservation, RMS normalization, and input‑dependent channel modulation to stabilize repeated spatial transformations, achieving linear token complexity. Across five UNIMAL tasks and a four‑platform quadruped setting, RecMorph outperforms existing controllers in training performance, inference throughput, and generalization to unseen bodies with up to 30 limbs, while also demonstrating robust real‑world performance on Go1/Go2 trials.

By Quanrui Rao, Yong Liu, Xueming Xiao, Yingbo Luo, Kun Wu, Zhenyu Xu, Meibao Yao
arXiv AI
Jul 2

Learning Gait-Aware Quadruped Locomotion with Temporal Logic Specifications

arXiv:2607. 00442v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) for quadruped locomotion commonly depends on fixed, hand-crafted, and Markovian reward functions that limit both interpretability of learned policies and lack explicit control over gait behaviors.

By Merve Atasever, Cagan Bakirci, Alfredo Reina Corona, Keyan Azbijari, Jyotirmoy V. Deshmukh
arXiv AI
Aug 20

GigaBrain-WBC-0.5: A Behavior World Model for Robust Whole-Body Control with Environment Interaction

GigaBrain-WBC-0.5 is a Behavior World Model that uses a causal Transformer to predict next actions, states, and a distribution over latent behavior commands for humanoid whole-body control. It incorporates an automatic terrain-annotation pipeline to recover 3D contact geometry from motion data, allowing the model to learn how terrain and objects influence dynamics. The system detects implausible commands online, retracts them onto learned behaviors, and achieves high success rates in terrain interaction, command robustness, and fall recovery, with promising hardware trials on different robots.

By Ziyang Cheng, Tianshu Tang, Jinxin Lan, Xinze Chen, Yuhan Gong, Zhichao Liu, Changzhong Wu, Yahao Mao, Zongyan Deng, Mingxuan Ma, Huasen Xi, Yilong Liu, Yutong Wu, Xiaofeng Wang, Yang Wang, Yun Ye, Guan Huang, Xiaojie Jin, Zheng Zhu, Jiwen Lu