Dribble Master: Learning Agile Humanoid Dribbling through Legged Locomotion

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wang, Zhuoheng, Zhou, Jinyin, Wu, Qi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Wang, Zhuoheng
Zhou, Jinyin
Wu, Qi
author_facet Wang, Zhuoheng
Zhou, Jinyin
Wu, Qi
contents Humanoid soccer dribbling is a highly challenging task that demands dexterous ball manipulation while maintaining dynamic balance. Traditional rule-based methods often struggle to achieve accurate ball control due to their reliance on fixed walking patterns and limited adaptability to real-time ball dynamics. To address these challenges, we propose a two-stage curriculum learning framework that enables a humanoid robot to acquire dribbling skills without explicit dynamics or predefined trajectories. In the first stage, the robot learns basic locomotion skills; in the second stage, we fine-tune the policy for agile dribbling maneuvers. We further introduce a virtual camera model in simulation that simulates the field of view and perception constraints of the real robot, enabling realistic ball perception during training. We also design heuristic rewards to encourage active sensing, promoting a broader visual range for continuous ball perception. The policy is trained in simulation and successfully transferred to a physical humanoid robot. Experiment results demonstrate that our method enables effective ball manipulation, achieving flexible and visually appealing dribbling behaviors across multiple environments. This work highlights the potential of reinforcement learning in developing agile humanoid soccer robots. Additional details and videos are available at https://zhuoheng0910.github.io/dribble-master/.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_12679
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Dribble Master: Learning Agile Humanoid Dribbling through Legged Locomotion
Wang, Zhuoheng
Zhou, Jinyin
Wu, Qi
Robotics
Humanoid soccer dribbling is a highly challenging task that demands dexterous ball manipulation while maintaining dynamic balance. Traditional rule-based methods often struggle to achieve accurate ball control due to their reliance on fixed walking patterns and limited adaptability to real-time ball dynamics. To address these challenges, we propose a two-stage curriculum learning framework that enables a humanoid robot to acquire dribbling skills without explicit dynamics or predefined trajectories. In the first stage, the robot learns basic locomotion skills; in the second stage, we fine-tune the policy for agile dribbling maneuvers. We further introduce a virtual camera model in simulation that simulates the field of view and perception constraints of the real robot, enabling realistic ball perception during training. We also design heuristic rewards to encourage active sensing, promoting a broader visual range for continuous ball perception. The policy is trained in simulation and successfully transferred to a physical humanoid robot. Experiment results demonstrate that our method enables effective ball manipulation, achieving flexible and visually appealing dribbling behaviors across multiple environments. This work highlights the potential of reinforcement learning in developing agile humanoid soccer robots. Additional details and videos are available at https://zhuoheng0910.github.io/dribble-master/.
title Dribble Master: Learning Agile Humanoid Dribbling through Legged Locomotion
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.12679