ECO: Energy-Constrained Optimization with Reinforcement Learning for Humanoid Walking

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Huang, Weidong, Zhang, Jingwen, Li, Jiongye, Zhang, Shibowen, Wu, Jiayang, Wang, Jiayi, Liu, Hangxin, Yang, Yaodong, Su, Yao
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Huang, Weidong
Zhang, Jingwen
Li, Jiongye
Zhang, Shibowen
Wu, Jiayang
Wang, Jiayi
Liu, Hangxin
Yang, Yaodong
Su, Yao
author_facet Huang, Weidong
Zhang, Jingwen
Li, Jiongye
Zhang, Shibowen
Wu, Jiayang
Wang, Jiayi
Liu, Hangxin
Yang, Yaodong
Su, Yao
contents Achieving stable and energy-efficient locomotion is essential for humanoid robots to operate continuously in real-world applications. Existing MPC and RL approaches often rely on energy-related metrics embedded within a multi-objective optimization framework, which require extensive hyperparameter tuning and often result in suboptimal policies. To address these challenges, we propose ECO (Energy-Constrained Optimization), a constrained RL framework that separates energy-related metrics from rewards, reformulating them as explicit inequality constraints. This method provides a clear and interpretable physical representation of energy costs, enabling more efficient and intuitive hyperparameter tuning for improved energy efficiency. ECO introduces dedicated constraints for energy consumption and reference motion, enforced by the Lagrangian method, to achieve stable, symmetric, and energy-efficient walking for humanoid robots. We evaluated ECO against MPC, standard RL with reward shaping, and four state-of-the-art constrained RL methods. Experiments, including sim-to-sim and sim-to-real transfers on the kid-sized humanoid robot BRUCE, demonstrate that ECO significantly reduces energy consumption compared to baselines while maintaining robust walking performance. These results highlight a substantial advancement in energy-efficient humanoid locomotion. All experimental demonstrations can be found on the project website: https://sites.google.com/view/eco-humanoid.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_06445
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ECO: Energy-Constrained Optimization with Reinforcement Learning for Humanoid Walking
Huang, Weidong
Zhang, Jingwen
Li, Jiongye
Zhang, Shibowen
Wu, Jiayang
Wang, Jiayi
Liu, Hangxin
Yang, Yaodong
Su, Yao
Robotics
Achieving stable and energy-efficient locomotion is essential for humanoid robots to operate continuously in real-world applications. Existing MPC and RL approaches often rely on energy-related metrics embedded within a multi-objective optimization framework, which require extensive hyperparameter tuning and often result in suboptimal policies. To address these challenges, we propose ECO (Energy-Constrained Optimization), a constrained RL framework that separates energy-related metrics from rewards, reformulating them as explicit inequality constraints. This method provides a clear and interpretable physical representation of energy costs, enabling more efficient and intuitive hyperparameter tuning for improved energy efficiency. ECO introduces dedicated constraints for energy consumption and reference motion, enforced by the Lagrangian method, to achieve stable, symmetric, and energy-efficient walking for humanoid robots. We evaluated ECO against MPC, standard RL with reward shaping, and four state-of-the-art constrained RL methods. Experiments, including sim-to-sim and sim-to-real transfers on the kid-sized humanoid robot BRUCE, demonstrate that ECO significantly reduces energy consumption compared to baselines while maintaining robust walking performance. These results highlight a substantial advancement in energy-efficient humanoid locomotion. All experimental demonstrations can be found on the project website: https://sites.google.com/view/eco-humanoid.
title ECO: Energy-Constrained Optimization with Reinforcement Learning for Humanoid Walking
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.06445