SCOPE for Hexapod Gait Generation

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: O'Connor, Jim, Nash, Jay B., Gezgin, Derin, Parker, Gary B.
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author O'Connor, Jim
Nash, Jay B.
Gezgin, Derin
Parker, Gary B.
author_facet O'Connor, Jim
Nash, Jay B.
Gezgin, Derin
Parker, Gary B.
contents Evolutionary methods have previously been shown to be an effective learning method for walking gaits on hexapod robots. However, the ability of these algorithms to evolve an effective policy rapidly degrades as the input space becomes more complex. This degradation is due to the exponential growth of the solution space, resulting from an increasing parameter count to handle a more complex input. In order to address this challenge, we introduce Sparse Cosine Optimized Policy Evolution (SCOPE). SCOPE utilizes the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) to learn directly from the feature coefficients of an input matrix. By truncating the coefficient matrix returned by the DCT, we can reduce the dimensionality of an input while retaining the highest energy features of the original input. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this method by using SCOPE to learn the gait of a hexapod robot. The hexapod controller is given a matrix input containing time-series information of previous poses, which are then transformed to gait parameters by an evolved policy. In this task, the addition of SCOPE to a reference algorithm achieves a 20% increase in efficacy. SCOPE achieves this result by reducing the total input size of the time-series pose data from 2700 to 54, a 98% decrease. Additionally, SCOPE is capable of compressing an input to any output shape, provided that each output dimension is no greater than the corresponding input dimension. This paper demonstrates that SCOPE is capable of significantly compressing the size of an input to an evolved controller, resulting in a statistically significant gain in efficacy.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_13539
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SCOPE for Hexapod Gait Generation
O'Connor, Jim
Nash, Jay B.
Gezgin, Derin
Parker, Gary B.
Robotics
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Evolutionary methods have previously been shown to be an effective learning method for walking gaits on hexapod robots. However, the ability of these algorithms to evolve an effective policy rapidly degrades as the input space becomes more complex. This degradation is due to the exponential growth of the solution space, resulting from an increasing parameter count to handle a more complex input. In order to address this challenge, we introduce Sparse Cosine Optimized Policy Evolution (SCOPE). SCOPE utilizes the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) to learn directly from the feature coefficients of an input matrix. By truncating the coefficient matrix returned by the DCT, we can reduce the dimensionality of an input while retaining the highest energy features of the original input. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this method by using SCOPE to learn the gait of a hexapod robot. The hexapod controller is given a matrix input containing time-series information of previous poses, which are then transformed to gait parameters by an evolved policy. In this task, the addition of SCOPE to a reference algorithm achieves a 20% increase in efficacy. SCOPE achieves this result by reducing the total input size of the time-series pose data from 2700 to 54, a 98% decrease. Additionally, SCOPE is capable of compressing an input to any output shape, provided that each output dimension is no greater than the corresponding input dimension. This paper demonstrates that SCOPE is capable of significantly compressing the size of an input to an evolved controller, resulting in a statistically significant gain in efficacy.
title SCOPE for Hexapod Gait Generation
topic Robotics
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.13539