AME-2: Agile and Generalized Legged Locomotion via Attention-Based Neural Map Encoding

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Zhang, Chong, Klemm, Victor, Yang, Fan, Hutter, Marco
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866910066999820288
author Zhang, Chong
Klemm, Victor
Yang, Fan
Hutter, Marco
author_facet Zhang, Chong
Klemm, Victor
Yang, Fan
Hutter, Marco
contents Achieving agile and generalized legged locomotion across terrains requires tight integration of perception and control, especially under occlusions and sparse footholds. Existing methods have demonstrated agility on parkour courses but often rely on end-to-end sensorimotor models with limited generalization and interpretability. By contrast, methods targeting generalized locomotion typically exhibit limited agility and struggle with visual occlusions. We introduce AME-2, a unified reinforcement learning (RL) framework for agile and generalized locomotion that incorporates a novel attention-based map encoder in the control policy. This encoder extracts local and global mapping features and uses attention mechanisms to focus on salient regions, producing an interpretable and generalized embedding for RL-based control. We further propose a learning-based mapping pipeline that provides fast, uncertainty-aware terrain representations robust to noise and occlusions, serving as policy inputs. It uses neural networks to convert depth observations into local elevations with uncertainties, and fuses them with odometry. The pipeline also integrates with parallel simulation so that we can train controllers with online mapping, aiding sim-to-real transfer. We validate AME-2 with the proposed mapping pipeline on a quadruped and a biped robot, and the resulting controllers demonstrate strong agility and generalization to unseen terrains in simulation and in real-world experiments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_08485
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle AME-2: Agile and Generalized Legged Locomotion via Attention-Based Neural Map Encoding
Zhang, Chong
Klemm, Victor
Yang, Fan
Hutter, Marco
Robotics
Achieving agile and generalized legged locomotion across terrains requires tight integration of perception and control, especially under occlusions and sparse footholds. Existing methods have demonstrated agility on parkour courses but often rely on end-to-end sensorimotor models with limited generalization and interpretability. By contrast, methods targeting generalized locomotion typically exhibit limited agility and struggle with visual occlusions. We introduce AME-2, a unified reinforcement learning (RL) framework for agile and generalized locomotion that incorporates a novel attention-based map encoder in the control policy. This encoder extracts local and global mapping features and uses attention mechanisms to focus on salient regions, producing an interpretable and generalized embedding for RL-based control. We further propose a learning-based mapping pipeline that provides fast, uncertainty-aware terrain representations robust to noise and occlusions, serving as policy inputs. It uses neural networks to convert depth observations into local elevations with uncertainties, and fuses them with odometry. The pipeline also integrates with parallel simulation so that we can train controllers with online mapping, aiding sim-to-real transfer. We validate AME-2 with the proposed mapping pipeline on a quadruped and a biped robot, and the resulting controllers demonstrate strong agility and generalization to unseen terrains in simulation and in real-world experiments.
title AME-2: Agile and Generalized Legged Locomotion via Attention-Based Neural Map Encoding
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.08485