Heracles: Bridging Precise Tracking and Generative Synthesis for General Humanoid Control

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Tao, Zelin, Su, Zeran, Liu, Peiran, Sun, Jingkai, Que, Wenqiang, Ma, Jiahao, Yu, Jialin, Cao, Jiahang, Sun, Pihai, Liang, Hao, Han, Gang, Zhao, Wen, Xu, Zhiyuan, Tang, Jian, Zhang, Qiang, Guo, Yijie
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Tao, Zelin
Su, Zeran
Liu, Peiran
Sun, Jingkai
Que, Wenqiang
Ma, Jiahao
Yu, Jialin
Cao, Jiahang
Sun, Pihai
Liang, Hao
Han, Gang
Zhao, Wen
Xu, Zhiyuan
Tang, Jian
Zhang, Qiang
Guo, Yijie
author_facet Tao, Zelin
Su, Zeran
Liu, Peiran
Sun, Jingkai
Que, Wenqiang
Ma, Jiahao
Yu, Jialin
Cao, Jiahang
Sun, Pihai
Liang, Hao
Han, Gang
Zhao, Wen
Xu, Zhiyuan
Tang, Jian
Zhang, Qiang
Guo, Yijie
contents Achieving general-purpose humanoid control requires a delicate balance between the precise execution of commanded motions and the flexible, anthropomorphic adaptability needed to recover from unpredictable environmental perturbations. Current general controllers predominantly formulate motion control as a rigid reference-tracking problem. While effective in nominal conditions, these trackers often exhibit brittle, non-anthropomorphic failure modes under severe disturbances, lacking the generative adaptability inherent to human motor control. To overcome this limitation, we propose Heracles, a novel state-conditioned diffusion middleware that bridges precise motion tracking and generative synthesis. Rather than relying on rigid tracking paradigms or complex explicit mode-switching, Heracles operates as an intermediary layer between high-level reference motions and low-level physics trackers. By conditioning on the robot's real-time state, the diffusion model implicitly adapts its behavior: it approximates an identity map when the state closely aligns with the reference, preserving zero-shot tracking fidelity. Conversely, when encountering significant state deviations, it seamlessly transitions into a generative synthesizer to produce natural, anthropomorphic recovery trajectories. Our framework demonstrates that integrating generative priors into the control loop not only significantly enhances robustness against extreme perturbations but also elevates humanoid control from a rigid tracking paradigm to an open-ended, generative general-purpose architecture.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_27756
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Heracles: Bridging Precise Tracking and Generative Synthesis for General Humanoid Control
Tao, Zelin
Su, Zeran
Liu, Peiran
Sun, Jingkai
Que, Wenqiang
Ma, Jiahao
Yu, Jialin
Cao, Jiahang
Sun, Pihai
Liang, Hao
Han, Gang
Zhao, Wen
Xu, Zhiyuan
Tang, Jian
Zhang, Qiang
Guo, Yijie
Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Achieving general-purpose humanoid control requires a delicate balance between the precise execution of commanded motions and the flexible, anthropomorphic adaptability needed to recover from unpredictable environmental perturbations. Current general controllers predominantly formulate motion control as a rigid reference-tracking problem. While effective in nominal conditions, these trackers often exhibit brittle, non-anthropomorphic failure modes under severe disturbances, lacking the generative adaptability inherent to human motor control. To overcome this limitation, we propose Heracles, a novel state-conditioned diffusion middleware that bridges precise motion tracking and generative synthesis. Rather than relying on rigid tracking paradigms or complex explicit mode-switching, Heracles operates as an intermediary layer between high-level reference motions and low-level physics trackers. By conditioning on the robot's real-time state, the diffusion model implicitly adapts its behavior: it approximates an identity map when the state closely aligns with the reference, preserving zero-shot tracking fidelity. Conversely, when encountering significant state deviations, it seamlessly transitions into a generative synthesizer to produce natural, anthropomorphic recovery trajectories. Our framework demonstrates that integrating generative priors into the control loop not only significantly enhances robustness against extreme perturbations but also elevates humanoid control from a rigid tracking paradigm to an open-ended, generative general-purpose architecture.
title Heracles: Bridging Precise Tracking and Generative Synthesis for General Humanoid Control
topic Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.27756