Learning Whole-Body Control for a Salamander Robot

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Tian, Mengze, Fu, Qiyuan, Ning, Chuanfang, Pey, Javier Jia Jie, Ijspeert, Auke
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Tian, Mengze
Fu, Qiyuan
Ning, Chuanfang
Pey, Javier Jia Jie
Ijspeert, Auke
author_facet Tian, Mengze
Fu, Qiyuan
Ning, Chuanfang
Pey, Javier Jia Jie
Ijspeert, Auke
contents Amphibious legged robots inspired by salamanders are promising in applications in complex amphibious environments. However, despite the significant success of training controllers that achieve diverse locomotion behaviors in conventional quadrupedal robots, most salamander robots relied on central-pattern-generator (CPG)-based and model-based coordination strategies for locomotion control. Learning unified joint-level whole-body control that reliably transfers from simulation to highly articulated physical salamander robots remains relatively underexplored. In addition, few legged robots have tried learning-based controllers in amphibious environments. In this work, we employ Reinforcement Learning to map proprioceptive observations and commanded velocities to joint-level actions, allowing coordinated locomotor behaviors to emerge. To deploy these policies on hardware, we adopt a system-level real-to-sim matching and sim-to-real transfer strategy. The learned controller achieves stable and coordinated walking on both flat and uneven terrains in the real world. Beyond terrestrial locomotion, the framework enables transitions between walking and swimming in simulation, highlighting a phenomenon of interest for understanding locomotion across distinct physical modes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_16683
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Learning Whole-Body Control for a Salamander Robot
Tian, Mengze
Fu, Qiyuan
Ning, Chuanfang
Pey, Javier Jia Jie
Ijspeert, Auke
Robotics
Amphibious legged robots inspired by salamanders are promising in applications in complex amphibious environments. However, despite the significant success of training controllers that achieve diverse locomotion behaviors in conventional quadrupedal robots, most salamander robots relied on central-pattern-generator (CPG)-based and model-based coordination strategies for locomotion control. Learning unified joint-level whole-body control that reliably transfers from simulation to highly articulated physical salamander robots remains relatively underexplored. In addition, few legged robots have tried learning-based controllers in amphibious environments. In this work, we employ Reinforcement Learning to map proprioceptive observations and commanded velocities to joint-level actions, allowing coordinated locomotor behaviors to emerge. To deploy these policies on hardware, we adopt a system-level real-to-sim matching and sim-to-real transfer strategy. The learned controller achieves stable and coordinated walking on both flat and uneven terrains in the real world. Beyond terrestrial locomotion, the framework enables transitions between walking and swimming in simulation, highlighting a phenomenon of interest for understanding locomotion across distinct physical modes.
title Learning Whole-Body Control for a Salamander Robot
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.16683