DiffCoTune: Differentiable Co-Tuning for Cross-domain Robot Control

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Krishna, Lokesh, Cheng, Sheng, Li, Junheng, Hovakimyan, Naira, Nguyen, Quan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Krishna, Lokesh
Cheng, Sheng
Li, Junheng
Hovakimyan, Naira
Nguyen, Quan
author_facet Krishna, Lokesh
Cheng, Sheng
Li, Junheng
Hovakimyan, Naira
Nguyen, Quan
contents The deployment of robot controllers is hindered by modeling discrepancies due to necessary simplifications for computational tractability or inaccuracies in data-generating simulators. Such discrepancies typically require ad-hoc tuning to meet the desired performance, thereby ensuring successful transfer to a target domain. We propose a framework for automated, gradient-based tuning to enhance performance in the deployment domain by leveraging differentiable simulators. Our method collects rollouts in an iterative manner to co-tune the simulator and controller parameters, enabling systematic transfer within a few trials in the deployment domain. Specifically, we formulate multi-step objectives for tuning and employ alternating optimization to effectively adapt the controller to the deployment domain. The scalability of our framework is demonstrated by co-tuning model-based and learning-based controllers of arbitrary complexity for tasks ranging from low-dimensional cart-pole stabilization to high-dimensional quadruped and biped tracking, showing performance improvements across different deployment domains.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_24068
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle DiffCoTune: Differentiable Co-Tuning for Cross-domain Robot Control
Krishna, Lokesh
Cheng, Sheng
Li, Junheng
Hovakimyan, Naira
Nguyen, Quan
Robotics
The deployment of robot controllers is hindered by modeling discrepancies due to necessary simplifications for computational tractability or inaccuracies in data-generating simulators. Such discrepancies typically require ad-hoc tuning to meet the desired performance, thereby ensuring successful transfer to a target domain. We propose a framework for automated, gradient-based tuning to enhance performance in the deployment domain by leveraging differentiable simulators. Our method collects rollouts in an iterative manner to co-tune the simulator and controller parameters, enabling systematic transfer within a few trials in the deployment domain. Specifically, we formulate multi-step objectives for tuning and employ alternating optimization to effectively adapt the controller to the deployment domain. The scalability of our framework is demonstrated by co-tuning model-based and learning-based controllers of arbitrary complexity for tasks ranging from low-dimensional cart-pole stabilization to high-dimensional quadruped and biped tracking, showing performance improvements across different deployment domains.
title DiffCoTune: Differentiable Co-Tuning for Cross-domain Robot Control
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.24068