Robust Humanoid Walking on Compliant and Uneven Terrain with Deep Reinforcement Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Singh, Rohan P., Morisawa, Mitsuharu, Benallegue, Mehdi, Xie, Zhaoming, Kanehiro, Fumio
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Singh, Rohan P.
Morisawa, Mitsuharu
Benallegue, Mehdi
Xie, Zhaoming
Kanehiro, Fumio
author_facet Singh, Rohan P.
Morisawa, Mitsuharu
Benallegue, Mehdi
Xie, Zhaoming
Kanehiro, Fumio
contents For the deployment of legged robots in real-world environments, it is essential to develop robust locomotion control methods for challenging terrains that may exhibit unexpected deformability and irregularity. In this paper, we explore the application of sim-to-real deep reinforcement learning (RL) for the design of bipedal locomotion controllers for humanoid robots on compliant and uneven terrains. Our key contribution is to show that a simple training curriculum for exposing the RL agent to randomized terrains in simulation can achieve robust walking on a real humanoid robot using only proprioceptive feedback. We train an end-to-end bipedal locomotion policy using the proposed approach, and show extensive real-robot demonstration on the HRP-5P humanoid over several difficult terrains inside and outside the lab environment. Further, we argue that the robustness of a bipedal walking policy can be improved if the robot is allowed to exhibit aperiodic motion with variable stepping frequency. We propose a new control policy to enable modification of the observed clock signal, leading to adaptive gait frequencies depending on the terrain and command velocity. Through simulation experiments, we show the effectiveness of this policy specifically for walking over challenging terrains by controlling swing and stance durations. The code for training and evaluation is available online at https://github.com/rohanpsingh/LearningHumanoidWalking. Demo video is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgfNzGAkk2Q.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_13619
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Robust Humanoid Walking on Compliant and Uneven Terrain with Deep Reinforcement Learning
Singh, Rohan P.
Morisawa, Mitsuharu
Benallegue, Mehdi
Xie, Zhaoming
Kanehiro, Fumio
Robotics
For the deployment of legged robots in real-world environments, it is essential to develop robust locomotion control methods for challenging terrains that may exhibit unexpected deformability and irregularity. In this paper, we explore the application of sim-to-real deep reinforcement learning (RL) for the design of bipedal locomotion controllers for humanoid robots on compliant and uneven terrains. Our key contribution is to show that a simple training curriculum for exposing the RL agent to randomized terrains in simulation can achieve robust walking on a real humanoid robot using only proprioceptive feedback. We train an end-to-end bipedal locomotion policy using the proposed approach, and show extensive real-robot demonstration on the HRP-5P humanoid over several difficult terrains inside and outside the lab environment. Further, we argue that the robustness of a bipedal walking policy can be improved if the robot is allowed to exhibit aperiodic motion with variable stepping frequency. We propose a new control policy to enable modification of the observed clock signal, leading to adaptive gait frequencies depending on the terrain and command velocity. Through simulation experiments, we show the effectiveness of this policy specifically for walking over challenging terrains by controlling swing and stance durations. The code for training and evaluation is available online at https://github.com/rohanpsingh/LearningHumanoidWalking. Demo video is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgfNzGAkk2Q.
title Robust Humanoid Walking on Compliant and Uneven Terrain with Deep Reinforcement Learning
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.13619