Learning Whole-Body Humanoid Locomotion via Motion Generation and Motion Tracking

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhang, Zewei, Wen, Kehan, Xu, Michael, He, Junzhe, Li, Chenhao, Miki, Takahiro, Schwarke, Clemens, Zhang, Chong, Peng, Xue Bin, Hutter, Marco
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Zhang, Zewei
Wen, Kehan
Xu, Michael
He, Junzhe
Li, Chenhao
Miki, Takahiro
Schwarke, Clemens
Zhang, Chong
Peng, Xue Bin
Hutter, Marco
author_facet Zhang, Zewei
Wen, Kehan
Xu, Michael
He, Junzhe
Li, Chenhao
Miki, Takahiro
Schwarke, Clemens
Zhang, Chong
Peng, Xue Bin
Hutter, Marco
contents Whole-body humanoid locomotion is challenging due to high-dimensional control, morphological instability, and the need for real-time adaptation to various terrains using onboard perception. Directly applying reinforcement learning (RL) with reward shaping to humanoid locomotion often leads to lower-body-dominated behaviors, whereas imitation-based RL can learn more coordinated whole-body skills but is typically limited to replaying reference motions without a mechanism to adapt them online from perception for terrain-aware locomotion. To address this gap, we propose a whole-body humanoid locomotion framework that combines skills learned from reference motions with terrain-aware adaptation. We first train a diffusion model on retargeted human motions for real-time prediction of terrain-aware reference motions. Concurrently, we train a whole-body reference tracker with RL using this motion data. To improve robustness under imperfectly generated references, we further fine-tune the tracker with a frozen motion generator in a closed-loop setting. The resulting system supports directional goal-reaching control with terrain-aware whole-body adaptation, and can be deployed on a Unitree G1 humanoid robot with onboard perception and computation. The hardware experiments demonstrate successful traversal over boxes, hurdles, stairs, and mixed terrain combinations. Quantitative results further show the benefits of incorporating online motion generation and fine-tuning the motion tracker for improved generalization and robustness.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_17335
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Learning Whole-Body Humanoid Locomotion via Motion Generation and Motion Tracking
Zhang, Zewei
Wen, Kehan
Xu, Michael
He, Junzhe
Li, Chenhao
Miki, Takahiro
Schwarke, Clemens
Zhang, Chong
Peng, Xue Bin
Hutter, Marco
Robotics
Whole-body humanoid locomotion is challenging due to high-dimensional control, morphological instability, and the need for real-time adaptation to various terrains using onboard perception. Directly applying reinforcement learning (RL) with reward shaping to humanoid locomotion often leads to lower-body-dominated behaviors, whereas imitation-based RL can learn more coordinated whole-body skills but is typically limited to replaying reference motions without a mechanism to adapt them online from perception for terrain-aware locomotion. To address this gap, we propose a whole-body humanoid locomotion framework that combines skills learned from reference motions with terrain-aware adaptation. We first train a diffusion model on retargeted human motions for real-time prediction of terrain-aware reference motions. Concurrently, we train a whole-body reference tracker with RL using this motion data. To improve robustness under imperfectly generated references, we further fine-tune the tracker with a frozen motion generator in a closed-loop setting. The resulting system supports directional goal-reaching control with terrain-aware whole-body adaptation, and can be deployed on a Unitree G1 humanoid robot with onboard perception and computation. The hardware experiments demonstrate successful traversal over boxes, hurdles, stairs, and mixed terrain combinations. Quantitative results further show the benefits of incorporating online motion generation and fine-tuning the motion tracker for improved generalization and robustness.
title Learning Whole-Body Humanoid Locomotion via Motion Generation and Motion Tracking
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.17335