mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Closing the Sim-to-Real Loop: Adapting Simulation Randomization with Real World Experience

arXiv 1810.05687 ↗First posted 12 Oct 2018cs.RO cs.LGcited by 217

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Cited by 40 in Deep reinforcement learning methods, but placed by its own abstract, which didn’t fit.

Abstract (arXiv)

We consider the problem of transferring policies to the real world by training on a distribution of simulated scenarios. Rather than manually tuning the randomization of simulations, we adapt the simulation parameter distribution using a few real world roll-outs interleaved with policy training. In doing so, we are able to change the distribution of simulations to improve the policy transfer by matching the policy behavior in simulation and the real world. We show that policies trained with our method are able to reliably transfer to different robots in two real world tasks: swing-peg-in-hole and opening a cabinet drawer. The video of our experiments can be found at https://sites.google.com/view/simopt

Key facts. Cited by 217 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 12 Oct 2018.

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Citing papers per year: 2020: 3; 2021: 40; 2022: 32; 2023: 34; 2024: 28; 2025: 37; 2026: 43.

217 papers.

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  1. 2020Offline Reinforcement Learning: Tutorial, Review, and Perspectives on Open Problemscited by 1,920
  2. 2023Identifying the Risks of LM Agents with an LM-Emulated Sandboxcited by 548
  3. 2025RoboTwin 2.0: A Scalable Data Generator and Benchmark with Strong Domain Randomization for Robust Bimanual Robotic Manipulationcited by 518
  4. 2024Evaluating Real-World Robot Manipulation Policies in Simulationcited by 495
  5. 2023Habitat 3.0: A Co-Habitat for Humans, Avatars and Robotscited by 228
  6. 2024Deep Reinforcement Learning for Robotics: A Survey of Real-World Successescited by 176
  7. 2023FurnitureBench: Reproducible Real-World Benchmark for Long-Horizon Complex Manipulationcited by 133
  8. 2025ASAP: Aligning Simulation and Real-World Physics for Learning Agile Humanoid Whole-Body Skillscited by 130
  9. 2021Stabilizing Deep Q-Learning with ConvNets and Vision Transformers under Data Augmentationcited by 105
  10. 2022A Walk in the Park: Learning to Walk in 20 Minutes With Model-Free Reinforcement Learningcited by 83
  11. 2024DrEureka: Language Model Guided Sim-To-Real Transfercited by 83
  12. 2023Decomposing the Generalization Gap in Imitation Learning for Visual Robotic Manipulationcited by 82
38 more
  1. 2021VAT-Mart: Learning Visual Action Trajectory Proposals for Manipulating 3D ARTiculated Objectscited by 80
  2. 2021Understanding Domain Randomization for Sim-to-real Transfercited by 80
  3. 2021Robot Learning from Randomized Simulations: A Reviewcited by 63
  4. 2022When to Trust Your Simulator: Dynamics-Aware Hybrid Offline-and-Online Reinforcement Learningcited by 60
  5. 2022Pre-Trained Image Encoder for Generalizable Visual Reinforcement Learningcited by 60
  6. 2024TRANSIC: Sim-to-Real Policy Transfer by Learning from Online Correctioncited by 59
  7. 2023Benchmarks and Algorithms for Offline Preference-Based Reward Learningcited by 56
  8. 2022Factory: Fast Contact for Robotic Assemblycited by 54
  9. 2024GenSim2: Scaling Robot Data Generation with Multi-modal and Reasoning LLMscited by 52
  10. 2021Auto-Tuned Sim-to-Real Transfercited by 49
  11. 2022GenLoco: Generalized Locomotion Controllers for Quadrupedal Robotscited by 48
  12. 2025Sim-and-Real Co-Training: A Simple Recipe for Vision-Based Robotic Manipulationcited by 46
  13. 2022Visual Reinforcement Learning with Self-Supervised 3D Representationscited by 45
  14. 2024Dream to Manipulate: Compositional World Models Empowering Robot Imitation Learning with Imaginationcited by 45
  15. 2022NeRF2Real: Sim2real Transfer of Vision-guided Bipedal Motion Skills using Neural Radiance Fieldscited by 44
  16. 2021Transferring Dexterous Manipulation from GPU Simulation to a Remote Real-World TriFingercited by 38
  17. 2022DiffCloud: Real-to-Sim from Point Clouds with Differentiable Simulation and Rendering of Deformable Objectscited by 31
  18. 2023Cross-Domain Policy Adaptation via Value-Guided Data Filteringcited by 31
  19. 2025DiWA: Diffusion Policy Adaptation with World Modelscited by 31
  20. 2025Vid2Sim: Realistic and Interactive Simulation from Video for Urban Navigationcited by 30
  21. 2025Real-to-Sim Robot Policy Evaluation with Gaussian Splatting Simulation of Soft-Body Interactionscited by 30
  22. 2023DexPBT: Scaling up Dexterous Manipulation for Hand-Arm Systems with Population Based Trainingcited by 29
  23. 2023Polybot: Training One Policy Across Robots While Embracing Variabilitycited by 28
  24. 2024CyberDemo: Augmenting Simulated Human Demonstration for Real-World Dexterous Manipulationcited by 28
  25. 2024ASID: Active Exploration for System Identification in Robotic Manipulationcited by 28
  26. 2025X-Sim: Cross-Embodiment Learning via Real-to-Sim-to-Realcited by 28
  27. 2020Differentiable Physics Models for Real-world Offline Model-based Reinforcement Learningcited by 27
  28. 2022Sim-to-Lab-to-Real: Safe Reinforcement Learning with Shielding and Generalization Guaranteescited by 27
  29. 2022Context is Everything: Implicit Identification for Dynamics Adaptationcited by 27
  30. 2024ReVLA: Reverting Visual Domain Limitation of Robotic Foundation Modelscited by 27
  31. 2022Phone2Proc: Bringing Robust Robots Into Our Chaotic Worldcited by 26
  32. 2023On the Role of the Action Space in Robot Manipulation Learning and Sim-to-Real Transfercited by 26
  33. 2023GINA-3D: Learning to Generate Implicit Neural Assets in the Wildcited by 25
  34. 2023Seeing is not Believing: Robust Reinforcement Learning against Spurious Correlationcited by 25
  35. 2024Cross-Domain Policy Adaptation by Capturing Representation Mismatchcited by 25
  36. 2025The Reality Gap in Robotics: Challenges, Solutions, and Best Practicescited by 24
  37. 2022DROPO: Sim-to-Real Transfer with Offline Domain Randomizationcited by 19
  38. 2022Temporal Disentanglement of Representations for Improved Generalisation in Reinforcement Learningcited by 19

50 most cited of 217 All 217 (JSON)