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
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:2508. 18066v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Controlling high-dimensional and nonlinear musculoskeletal models of the human body is a foundational scientific challenge.
By Boshi An, Alberto Silvio Chiappa, Merkourios Simos, Chengkun Li, Alexander Mathis
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:2610.02196v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: We study test-time evolution for humanoid loco-manipulation: solving tasks that a controller was never trained for by repurposing its existing skills...
By Zhuo Lin, Sirui Xu, Liuyu Bian, Yu-Xiong Wang, Liang-Yan Gui
Accurate contact prediction is useful for robotic manipulation only if it supports effective decisions. We investigate this connection using a compact, randomly initialized visuotactile world model, t...
arXiv:2609.38653v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Recent advances in musculoskeletal modeling and reinforcement learning have enabled muscle-actuated agents to reproduce increasingly complex human mo...
By Merkourios Simos, Chengkun Li, Bianca Ziliotto, Alexander Mathis
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)
arXiv:2602. 15245v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL)-based biomechanical simulations have the potential to revolutionise HCI research and interaction design, but currently lack usability and interpretability.
By Ankit Bhattarai, Hannah Selder, Florian Fischer, Arthur Fleig, Per Ola Kristensson
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.
By Mohamad H. Danesh, Chenhao Li, Amin Abyaneh, Anas Houssaini, Kirsty Ellis, Glen Berseth, Marco Hutter, Hsiu-Chin Lin
arXiv:2607. 26434v2 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Deploying learned control policies on low-cost robotic platforms introduces transport latencies and noisy motor feedback that systematically widens the sim-to-real gap.
By Javier C. Weddington, Bence P. \"Olveczky, Stephen A. Baccus
arXiv:2608. 12063v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Integrating locomotion and manipulation is essential for robot autonomy, but scaling standard Reinforcement Learning (RL) to complex tasks is severely bottlenecked by the slow, manual process of dense reward shaping.
By Martin Schuck, Maks Sorokin, Simone Manni, Duy Ta, Angela P. Schoellig, Marco Hutter, Simon Le Cleac'H, Jan Br\"udigam