Reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms classically suffer from poor sample efficiency. In robotics, a recent line of work has emerged addressing this problem by encoding physics priors in the learning process.
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. 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: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
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
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. To bypass this limitation, we leverage Sample-based Model Predictive Control (SMPC) entirely in simulation as an automated, rapidly tunable expert to generate massive offline datasets.