CReF: Cross-modal and Recurrent Fusion for Depth-conditioned Humanoid Locomotion

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hao, Yuan, Yu, Ruiqi, Luo, Shixin, Zhang, Guoteng, Wu, Jun, Zhu, Qiuguo
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Hao, Yuan
Yu, Ruiqi
Luo, Shixin
Zhang, Guoteng
Wu, Jun
Zhu, Qiuguo
author_facet Hao, Yuan
Yu, Ruiqi
Luo, Shixin
Zhang, Guoteng
Wu, Jun
Zhu, Qiuguo
contents Stable traversal over geometrically complex terrain increasingly requires exteroceptive perception, yet prior perceptive humanoid locomotion methods often remain tied to explicit geometric abstractions, either by mediating control through robot-centric 2.5D terrain representations or by shaping depth learning with auxiliary geometry-related targets. Such designs inherit the representational bias of the intermediate or supervisory target and can be restrictive for vertical structures, perforated obstacles, and complex real-world clutter. We propose CReF (Cross-modal and Recurrent Fusion), a single-stage depth-conditioned humanoid locomotion framework that learns locomotion-relevant features directly from raw forward-facing depth without explicit geometric intermediates. CReF couples proprioception and depth tokens through proprioception-queried cross-modal attention, fuses the resulting representation with a gated residual fusion block, and performs temporal integration with a Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) regulated by a highway-style output gate for state-dependent blending of recurrent and feedforward features. To further improve terrain interaction, we introduce a terrain-aware foothold placement reward that extracts supportable foothold candidates from foot-end point-cloud samples and rewards touchdown locations that lie close to the nearest supportable candidate. Experiments in simulation and on a physical humanoid demonstrate robust traversal over diverse terrains and effective zero-shot transfer to real-world scenes containing handrails, hollow pallet assemblies, severe reflective interference, and visually cluttered outdoor surroundings.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_29452
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle CReF: Cross-modal and Recurrent Fusion for Depth-conditioned Humanoid Locomotion
Hao, Yuan
Yu, Ruiqi
Luo, Shixin
Zhang, Guoteng
Wu, Jun
Zhu, Qiuguo
Robotics
Stable traversal over geometrically complex terrain increasingly requires exteroceptive perception, yet prior perceptive humanoid locomotion methods often remain tied to explicit geometric abstractions, either by mediating control through robot-centric 2.5D terrain representations or by shaping depth learning with auxiliary geometry-related targets. Such designs inherit the representational bias of the intermediate or supervisory target and can be restrictive for vertical structures, perforated obstacles, and complex real-world clutter. We propose CReF (Cross-modal and Recurrent Fusion), a single-stage depth-conditioned humanoid locomotion framework that learns locomotion-relevant features directly from raw forward-facing depth without explicit geometric intermediates. CReF couples proprioception and depth tokens through proprioception-queried cross-modal attention, fuses the resulting representation with a gated residual fusion block, and performs temporal integration with a Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) regulated by a highway-style output gate for state-dependent blending of recurrent and feedforward features. To further improve terrain interaction, we introduce a terrain-aware foothold placement reward that extracts supportable foothold candidates from foot-end point-cloud samples and rewards touchdown locations that lie close to the nearest supportable candidate. Experiments in simulation and on a physical humanoid demonstrate robust traversal over diverse terrains and effective zero-shot transfer to real-world scenes containing handrails, hollow pallet assemblies, severe reflective interference, and visually cluttered outdoor surroundings.
title CReF: Cross-modal and Recurrent Fusion for Depth-conditioned Humanoid Locomotion
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.29452