Bridging the Sim-to-Real Gap for Athletic Loco-Manipulation

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Fey, Nolan, Margolis, Gabriel B., Peticco, Martin, Agrawal, Pulkit
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Fey, Nolan
Margolis, Gabriel B.
Peticco, Martin
Agrawal, Pulkit
author_facet Fey, Nolan
Margolis, Gabriel B.
Peticco, Martin
Agrawal, Pulkit
contents Achieving athletic loco-manipulation on robots requires moving beyond traditional tracking rewards - which simply guide the robot along a reference trajectory - to task rewards that drive truly dynamic, goal-oriented behaviors. Commands such as "throw the ball as far as you can" or "lift the weight as quickly as possible" compel the robot to exhibit the agility and power inherent in athletic performance. However, training solely with task rewards introduces two major challenges: these rewards are prone to exploitation (reward hacking), and the exploration process can lack sufficient direction. To address these issues, we propose a two-stage training pipeline. First, we introduce the Unsupervised Actuator Net (UAN), which leverages real-world data to bridge the sim-to-real gap for complex actuation mechanisms without requiring access to torque sensing. UAN mitigates reward hacking by ensuring that the learned behaviors remain robust and transferable. Second, we use a pre-training and fine-tuning strategy that leverages reference trajectories as initial hints to guide exploration. With these innovations, our robot athlete learns to lift, throw, and drag with remarkable fidelity from simulation to reality.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_10894
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bridging the Sim-to-Real Gap for Athletic Loco-Manipulation
Fey, Nolan
Margolis, Gabriel B.
Peticco, Martin
Agrawal, Pulkit
Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Achieving athletic loco-manipulation on robots requires moving beyond traditional tracking rewards - which simply guide the robot along a reference trajectory - to task rewards that drive truly dynamic, goal-oriented behaviors. Commands such as "throw the ball as far as you can" or "lift the weight as quickly as possible" compel the robot to exhibit the agility and power inherent in athletic performance. However, training solely with task rewards introduces two major challenges: these rewards are prone to exploitation (reward hacking), and the exploration process can lack sufficient direction. To address these issues, we propose a two-stage training pipeline. First, we introduce the Unsupervised Actuator Net (UAN), which leverages real-world data to bridge the sim-to-real gap for complex actuation mechanisms without requiring access to torque sensing. UAN mitigates reward hacking by ensuring that the learned behaviors remain robust and transferable. Second, we use a pre-training and fine-tuning strategy that leverages reference trajectories as initial hints to guide exploration. With these innovations, our robot athlete learns to lift, throw, and drag with remarkable fidelity from simulation to reality.
title Bridging the Sim-to-Real Gap for Athletic Loco-Manipulation
topic Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.10894