mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Learning agile and dynamic motor skills for legged robots

arXiv 1901.08652 ↗First posted 24 Jan 2019cs.RO cs.LG stat.MLcited by 402

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Cited by 20 in Offline RL and imitation learning from data, but placed by its own abstract, which didn’t fit.

Abstract (arXiv)

Legged robots pose one of the greatest challenges in robotics. Dynamic and agile maneuvers of animals cannot be imitated by existing methods that are crafted by humans. A compelling alternative is reinforcement learning, which requires minimal craftsmanship and promotes the natural evolution of a control policy. However, so far, reinforcement learning research for legged robots is mainly limited to simulation, and only few and comparably simple examples have been deployed on real systems. The primary reason is that training with real robots, particularly with dynamically balancing systems, is complicated and expensive. In the present work, we introduce a method for training a neural network policy in simulation and transferring it to a state-of-the-art legged system, thereby leveraging fast, automated, and cost-effective data generation schemes. The approach is applied to the ANYmal robot, a sophisticated medium-dog-sized quadrupedal system. Using policies trained in simulation, the quadrupedal machine achieves locomotion skills that go beyond what had been achieved with prior methods: ANYmal is capable of precisely and energy-efficiently following high-level body velocity commands, running faster than before, and recovering from falling even in complex configurations.

Key facts. Cited by 402 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 24 Jan 2019.

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Citing papers per year: 2020: 4; 2021: 51; 2022: 59; 2023: 67; 2024: 73; 2025: 76; 2026: 72.

402 papers.

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  1. 2021Isaac Gym: High Performance GPU-Based Physics Simulation For Robot Learningcited by 882
  2. 2024Evaluating Real-World Robot Manipulation Policies in Simulationcited by 484
  3. 2021RMA: Rapid Motor Adaptation for Legged Robotscited by 430
  4. 2021Learning to Walk in Minutes Using Massively Parallel Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 395
  5. 2024Diffusion Policy Policy Optimizationcited by 255
  6. 2023Orbit: A Unified Simulation Framework for Interactive Robot Learning Environmentscited by 239
  7. 2023RVT: Robotic View Transformer for 3D Object Manipulationcited by 224
  8. 2021How to Train Your Robot with Deep Reinforcement Learning; Lessons We've Learnedcited by 201
  9. 2021BEHAVIOR: Benchmark for Everyday Household Activities in Virtual, Interactive, and Ecological Environmentscited by 161
  10. 2024Deep Reinforcement Learning for Robotics: A Survey of Real-World Successescited by 153
  11. 2022DeXtreme: Transfer of Agile In-hand Manipulation from Simulation to Realitycited by 136
  12. 2024Reconciling Reality through Simulation: A Real-to-Sim-to-Real Approach for Robust Manipulationcited by 135
38 more
  1. 2023Real-World Humanoid Locomotion with Reinforcement Learningcited by 132
  2. 2022Legged Locomotion in Challenging Terrains using Egocentric Visioncited by 131
  3. 2022Rapid Locomotion via Reinforcement Learningcited by 130
  4. 2025BeyondMimic: From Motion Tracking to Versatile Humanoid Control via Guided Diffusioncited by 128
  5. 2023Robot Parkour Learningcited by 115
  6. 2022Walk These Ways: Tuning Robot Control for Generalization with Multiplicity of Behaviorcited by 113
  7. 2023Learning Agile Soccer Skills for a Bipedal Robot with Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 111
  8. 2025ASAP: Aligning Simulation and Real-World Physics for Learning Agile Humanoid Whole-Body Skillscited by 104
  9. 2024HumanoidBench: Simulated Humanoid Benchmark for Whole-Body Locomotion and Manipulationcited by 101
  10. 2023Toward General-Purpose Robots via Foundation Models: A Survey and Meta-Analysiscited by 99
  11. 2022Deep Whole-Body Control: Learning a Unified Policy for Manipulation and Locomotioncited by 98
  12. 2021Reinforcement Learning for Robust Parameterized Locomotion Control of Bipedal Robotscited by 95
  13. 2022Accelerated Policy Learning with Parallel Differentiable Simulationcited by 92
  14. 2021From Motor Control to Team Play in Simulated Humanoid Footballcited by 87
  15. 2021Q-attention: Enabling Efficient Learning for Vision-based Robotic Manipulationcited by 85
  16. 2022A Walk in the Park: Learning to Walk in 20 Minutes With Model-Free Reinforcement Learningcited by 76
  17. 2021Asymmetric self-play for automatic goal discovery in robotic manipulationcited by 71
  18. 2021Learning Vision-Guided Quadrupedal Locomotion End-to-End with Cross-Modal Transformerscited by 71
  19. 2020f-IRL: Inverse Reinforcement Learning via State Marginal Matchingcited by 67
  20. 2021Minimizing Energy Consumption Leads to the Emergence of Gaits in Legged Robotscited by 67
  21. 2022A Survey on Model-based Reinforcement Learningcited by 65
  22. 2024Reinforcement Learning for Versatile, Dynamic, and Robust Bipedal Locomotion Controlcited by 63
  23. 2022Concurrent Training of a Control Policy and a State Estimator for Dynamic and Robust Legged Locomotioncited by 61
  24. 2025Visual Imitation Enables Contextual Humanoid Controlcited by 57
  25. 2024GRUtopia: Dream General Robots in a City at Scalecited by 54
  26. 2021A Survey of Machine Learning for Computer Architecture and Systemscited by 53
  27. 2024Agile But Safe: Learning Collision-Free High-Speed Legged Locomotioncited by 53
  28. 2021Fast and Efficient Locomotion via Learned Gait Transitionscited by 50
  29. 2024TRANSIC: Sim-to-Real Policy Transfer by Learning from Online Correctioncited by 50
  30. 2021Coupling Vision and Proprioception for Navigation of Legged Robotscited by 46
  31. 2022Evolution Gym: A Large-Scale Benchmark for Evolving Soft Robotscited by 44
  32. 2023Prompt a Robot to Walk with Large Language Modelscited by 44
  33. 2022Learning rigid dynamics with face interaction graph networkscited by 43
  34. 2025Residual Off-Policy RL for Finetuning Behavior Cloning Policiescited by 42
  35. 2022NeRF2Real: Sim2real Transfer of Vision-guided Bipedal Motion Skills using Neural Radiance Fieldscited by 41
  36. 2024An Intelligent Agentic System for Complex Image Restoration Problemscited by 41
  37. 2023Neural Volumetric Memory for Visual Locomotion Controlcited by 40
  38. 2025Sim-to-Real Reinforcement Learning for Vision-Based Dexterous Manipulation on Humanoidscited by 40

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