mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Learning a Contact-Adaptive Controller for Robust, Efficient Legged Locomotion

arXiv 2009.10019 ↗First posted 21 Sep 2020cs.RO cs.LGcited by 22

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Abstract (arXiv)

We present a hierarchical framework that combines model-based control and reinforcement learning (RL) to synthesize robust controllers for a quadruped (the Unitree Laikago). The system consists of a high-level controller that learns to choose from a set of primitives in response to changes in the environment and a low-level controller that utilizes an established control method to robustly execute the primitives. Our framework learns a controller that can adapt to challenging environmental changes on the fly, including novel scenarios not seen during training. The learned controller is up to 85~percent more energy efficient and is more robust compared to baseline methods. We also deploy the controller on a physical robot without any randomization or adaptation scheme.

Key facts. Cited by 22 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 21 Sep 2020.

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Citing papers per year: 2021: 8; 2022: 6; 2023: 3; 2024: 4; 2025: 1.

22 papers.

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  1. 2023Robot Parkour Learningcited by 115
  2. 2021Learning Vision-Guided Quadrupedal Locomotion End-to-End with Cross-Modal Transformerscited by 71
  3. 2021Minimizing Energy Consumption Leads to the Emergence of Gaits in Legged Robotscited by 67
  4. 2021Fast and Efficient Locomotion via Learned Gait Transitionscited by 50
  5. 2022Factory: Fast Contact for Robotic Assemblycited by 49
  6. 2021Learning to Jump from Pixelscited by 39
  7. 2022Imitate and Repurpose: Learning Reusable Robot Movement Skills From Human and Animal Behaviorscited by 27
  8. 2021GLiDE: Generalizable Quadrupedal Locomotion in Diverse Environments with a Centroidal Modelcited by 23
  9. 2022Learning Torque Control for Quadrupedal Locomotioncited by 22
  10. 2021Vision-Guided Quadrupedal Locomotion in the Wild with Multi-Modal Delay Randomizationcited by 18
  11. 2021Value Iteration in Continuous Actions, States and Timecited by 17
  12. 2024Learning Multi-Modal Whole-Body Control for Real-World Humanoid Robotscited by 16
10 more
  1. 2022Sim-to-Real Transfer for Quadrupedal Locomotion via Terrain Transformercited by 12
  2. 2024Learning Multi-Agent Loco-Manipulation for Long-Horizon Quadrupedal Pushingcited by 9
  3. 2023Physics-Regulated Deep Reinforcement Learning: Invariant Embeddingscited by 8
  4. 2022Learning to Walk by Steering: Perceptive Quadrupedal Locomotion in Dynamic Environmentscited by 7
  5. 2024Vegetable Peeling: A Case Study in Constrained Dexterous Manipulationcited by 7
  6. 2021Learning Quadruped Locomotion Policies using Logical Rulescited by 6
  7. 2023Continuous Versatile Jumping Using Learned Action Residualscited by 5
  8. 2024An Efficient Model-Based Approach on Learning Agile Motor Skills without Reinforcementcited by 2
  9. 2022A Transferable Legged Mobile Manipulation Framework Based on Disturbance Predictive Controlcited by 1
  10. 2025Adaptive MPC-based quadrupedal robot control under periodic disturbancescited by 0