SixthSense: Task-Agnostic Proprioception-Only Whole-Body Wrench Estimation for Humanoids
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arXiv
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2026
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| _version_ | 1866918478073561088 |
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| author | Chen, Xingzhou Xu, Xiayan Ning, Yan Yu, Jiyu Zhang, Yizheng Qian, Siyi Xiang, Lingzhu Chen, Jiahao Wang, Yuquan Zhang, Haodong Shi, Ling |
| author_facet | Chen, Xingzhou Xu, Xiayan Ning, Yan Yu, Jiyu Zhang, Yizheng Qian, Siyi Xiang, Lingzhu Chen, Jiahao Wang, Yuquan Zhang, Haodong Shi, Ling |
| contents | Humanoid robots are entering our physical world at scale, yet as oversized toys--good at singing and dancing, but short on force-interaction capabilities for practical tasks. Bridging this gap necessitates prioritizing reliable contact perception as a fundamental requirement. Estimating external wrenches in humanoids is complicated by floating-base dynamics and indeterminate contact locations. Existing analytical frameworks require idealistic assumptions and hard-to-obtain measurements, which are often unavailable in practice. To bridge this gap, we propose SixthSense, a task-agnostic approach that infers whole-body contact timing, location, and wrenches from proprioception and IMU data alone. To capture the multi-modal dynamics between unstructured contact inputs and the uncertain motion outputs, we employ conditional flow matching to tokenize proprioceptive histories and estimate a spatiotemporally sparse contact-event flow. SixthSense serves as a plug-and-play perception module for applications including collision detection, physical human-robot interaction, and force-feedback teleoperation. Experiments across standing, walking, and whole-body motion-tracking policies showcased unprecedented performance in diverse behaviors. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_01427 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | SixthSense: Task-Agnostic Proprioception-Only Whole-Body Wrench Estimation for Humanoids Chen, Xingzhou Xu, Xiayan Ning, Yan Yu, Jiyu Zhang, Yizheng Qian, Siyi Xiang, Lingzhu Chen, Jiahao Wang, Yuquan Zhang, Haodong Shi, Ling Robotics Humanoid robots are entering our physical world at scale, yet as oversized toys--good at singing and dancing, but short on force-interaction capabilities for practical tasks. Bridging this gap necessitates prioritizing reliable contact perception as a fundamental requirement. Estimating external wrenches in humanoids is complicated by floating-base dynamics and indeterminate contact locations. Existing analytical frameworks require idealistic assumptions and hard-to-obtain measurements, which are often unavailable in practice. To bridge this gap, we propose SixthSense, a task-agnostic approach that infers whole-body contact timing, location, and wrenches from proprioception and IMU data alone. To capture the multi-modal dynamics between unstructured contact inputs and the uncertain motion outputs, we employ conditional flow matching to tokenize proprioceptive histories and estimate a spatiotemporally sparse contact-event flow. SixthSense serves as a plug-and-play perception module for applications including collision detection, physical human-robot interaction, and force-feedback teleoperation. Experiments across standing, walking, and whole-body motion-tracking policies showcased unprecedented performance in diverse behaviors. |
| title | SixthSense: Task-Agnostic Proprioception-Only Whole-Body Wrench Estimation for Humanoids |
| topic | Robotics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.01427 |