arXiv:2603. 12408v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Motion imitation learning (IL) is increasingly used in robotics and human gait modeling, yet its ability to recover biomechanically consistent joint moments without explicit kinetic information remains unclear.
By Xinyi Liu, Jangwhan Ahn, Edgar Lobaton, Jennie Si, He Huang
The paper compares two leading motion‑imitation reinforcement learning pipelines—HyFyDy, which uses detailed musculotendon modeling, and MuJoCo, which focuses on computational speed. Using the same human motion‑capture and EMG data, both pipelines reproduce kinematics similarly, but HyFyDy’s muscle activation predictions align more closely with experimental EMG (RMSE 0.164, r = 0.4) than MuJoCo’s (RMSE 0.344, r = 0.11). The authors conclude that HyFyDy’s higher physiological realism makes it currently more suitable for musculoskeletal modeling, though both systems need further development for GPU‑parallelizable environments and robotic assistive‑device design.
By Ayah G. Ahmad, Claire E. Borden, Maegan Tucker
arXiv:2607. 24083v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement learning can produce robust humanoid controllers, but each new task is typically trained as a separate policy with its own reward design and training process.
By Valerio Belli (UNIROMA, UCL), Valerio Modugno (UCL), Enrico Mingo Hoffman (HUCEBOT), Fabio Amadio (HUCEBOT)
The paper introduces a Reflex-Informed Neuromuscular Reinforcement Learning framework for muscle-driven locomotion. It combines a fixed phase-dependent reflex controller with a reinforcement learning policy that adjusts reflex gains and thresholds for hip swing, knee support, and ankle propulsion. Experiments show the method produces physiologically plausible walking with improved kinematic accuracy, dynamic consistency, symmetry, and stride consistency, and remains robust to muscle weakness and perturbations without retraining.
By Jian Zhou, Xingyu Zhang, Rui Ma, Yu Cao, Shane Xie, Zhi-qiang Zhang
arXiv:2607. 12114v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: A humanoid that can walk should not relearn locomotion from scratch to jog or run.
By Kwan-Yee Lin, Zilin Wang, Janelle J. Liu, Stella X. Yu
arXiv:2609.09670v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Monocular pose estimation enables low-cost gait analysis but is sensitive to missing keypoints caused by occlusion, detection errors, or efficiency-dri...
By Shubham Jariwala
Humanoid motion imitation requires not only accurate perception of human kinematics but also faithful reproduction of physical interactions with the environment. However, existing pipelines rely primarily on vision-based motion capture and kinematic imitation, largely ignoring contact dynamics, leading to artifacts such as foot sliding, floor penetration, and unstable behaviors.
The paper introduces the λ-hold controller, a minimal-task-reward approach inspired by the equilibrium-point hypothesis, to train a muscle-actuated skeletal model for human-like sprinting. By fixing each muscle’s EP threshold length λ over gait-phase intervals, the controller dramatically reduces the action space and the frequency of policy queries, enabling efficient exploration and learning within an hour of training. This method demonstrates that physiologically grounded control can produce realistic human motion in predictive musculoskeletal simulations.
By Jun Hyuk Lee, Chihyeong Lee, Jooeun Ahn
arXiv:2511. 20532v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: The primary output of the nervous system is movement and behavior.
By Charles Y. Zhang (Harvard University), Yuanjia Yang (Salk Institute for Biological Studies), Aidan Sirbu (Mila), Elliott T. T. Abe (University of Washington), Emil W\"arnberg (Harvard University), Eric J. Leonardis (Salk Institute for Biological Studies), Diego E. Aldarondo (Harvard University), Adam Lee (Harvard University), Aaditya Prasad (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Jason Foat (Salk Institute for Biological Studies), Kaiwen Bian (Salk Institute for Biological Studies), Joshua Park (Salk Institute for Biological Studies), Rusham Bhatt (Salk Institute for Biological Studies), Vyom N. Patel (Neuromatch), Hutton Saunders (Salk Institute for Biological Studies), Austin O. Barbano (Salk Institute for Biological Studies), Akira Nagamori (Salk Institute for Biological Studies), Ayesha R. Thanawalla (Salk Institute for Biological Studies), Kee Wui Huang (Salk Institute for Biological Studies), Fabian Plum (Imperial College London), Hendrik K. Beck (Imperial College London), Steven W. Flavell (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), David Labonte (Imperial College London), Blake A. Richards (Mila), Bingni W. Brunton (University of Washington), Eiman Azim (Salk Institute for Biological Studies), Bence P. \"Olveczky (Harvard University), Talmo D. Pereira (Salk Institute for Biological Studies)
UniExo is a framework that builds a single, multi-skill musculoskeletal human policy by distilling four imitation experts—walking, turning, running, and backward walking—into one network guided by a skill latent. The human policy is fine‑tuned with reinforcement learning on transition sequences, achieving a 94.7% tracking success rate on unseen clips and greater robustness to perturbations. A hip exoskeleton controller is then co‑adapted with this human policy via multi‑agent reinforcement learning, enabling it to assist across four treadmill speeds and a continuous route of all four skills without explicit mode switching.
By Yifei Yuan, Jakob Wolf, Ghaith Androwis, Xianlian Zhou
arXiv:2608. 00715v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Learning-based controllers can deliver exoskeleton assistance after training entirely in physics-based simulation, yet few controllers that address human-device co-adaptation have been validated on real users by whole-body metabolic measurement, the standard benchmark for assistive walking.
By Yifei Yuan, Jakob Wolf, Ghaith Androwis, Xianlian Zhou
arXiv:2512.23649v5 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Humans learn locomotion through visual observation, interpreting visual content first before imitating actions. However, state-of-the-art hum...
By Zhe Li, Boan Zhu, Yangyang Wei, Shuanghao Bai, Yuheng Ji, Yibo Peng, Tao Huang, Pengwei Wang, Zhongyuan Wang, S. -H. Gary Chan, Chang Xu, Cheng Chi, Jianfei Yang, Shanghang Zhang