mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Imitate and Repurpose: Learning Reusable Robot Movement Skills From Human and Animal Behaviors

arXiv 2203.17138 ↗First posted 31 Mar 2022cs.RO cs.AI cs.LGcited by 27

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Abstract (arXiv)

We investigate the use of prior knowledge of human and animal movement to learn reusable locomotion skills for real legged robots. Our approach builds upon previous work on imitating human or dog Motion Capture (MoCap) data to learn a movement skill module. Once learned, this skill module can be reused for complex downstream tasks. Importantly, due to the prior imposed by the MoCap data, our approach does not require extensive reward engineering to produce sensible and natural looking behavior at the time of reuse. This makes it easy to create well-regularized, task-oriented controllers that are suitable for deployment on real robots. We demonstrate how our skill module can be used for imitation, and train controllable walking and ball dribbling policies for both the ANYmal quadruped and OP3 humanoid. These policies are then deployed on hardware via zero-shot simulation-to-reality transfer. Accompanying videos are available at https://bit.ly/robot-npmp.

Key facts. Cited by 27 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 41 of its 69 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 31 Mar 2022.

Builds on

41 of 69 references.

References · 41

  1. 2016Layer Normalizationcited by 5,579
  2. 2016WaveNet: A Generative Model for Raw Audiocited by 1,710
  3. 2017Domain Randomization for Transferring Deep Neural Networks from Simulation to the Real Worldcited by 1,401
  4. 2016Deep Variational Information Bottleneckcited by 915
  5. 2018IMPALA: Scalable Distributed Deep-RL with Importance Weighted Actor-Learner Architecturescited by 866
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  7. 2017Sim-to-Real Transfer of Robotic Control with Dynamics Randomizationcited by 616
  8. 2020Learning Quadrupedal Locomotion over Challenging Terraincited by 494
  9. 2019Learning agile and dynamic motor skills for legged robotscited by 402
  10. 2020dm_control: Software and Tasks for Continuous Controlcited by 368
  11. 2022Learning robust perceptive locomotion for quadrupedal robots in the wildcited by 299
  12. 2018Sim-to-Real: Learning Agile Locomotion For Quadruped Robotscited by 277
29 more
  1. 2020Learning Agile Robotic Locomotion Skills by Imitating Animalscited by 229
  2. 2016CAD2RL: Real Single-Image Flight without a Single Real Imagecited by 227
  3. 2017Emergence of Locomotion Behaviours in Rich Environmentscited by 159
  4. 2018Learning to Walk via Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 153
  5. 2019MCP: Learning Composable Hierarchical Control with Multiplicative Compositional Policiescited by 105
  6. 2018Neural probabilistic motor primitives for humanoid controlcited by 96
  7. 2021Reinforcement Learning for Robust Parameterized Locomotion Control of Bipedal Robotscited by 95
  8. 2021From Motor Control to Team Play in Simulated Humanoid Footballcited by 87
  9. 2017Robust Imitation of Diverse Behaviorscited by 85
  10. 2019V-MPO: On-Policy Maximum a Posteriori Policy Optimization for Discrete and Continuous Controlcited by 85
  11. 2019InfoBot: Transfer and Exploration via the Information Bottleneckcited by 78
  12. 2017Learning human behaviors from motion capture by adversarial imitationcited by 75
  13. 2021Blind Bipedal Stair Traversal via Sim-to-Real Reinforcement Learningcited by 73
  14. 2022Adversarial Motion Priors Make Good Substitutes for Complex Reward Functionscited by 68
  15. 2020Multi-expert learning of adaptive legged locomotioncited by 62
  16. 2020Dynamics Randomization Revisited:A Case Study for Quadrupedal Locomotioncited by 54
  17. 2019Information asymmetry in KL-regularized RLcited by 53
  18. 2020A Distributional View on Multi-Objective Policy Optimizationcited by 51
  19. 2019Sim-to-Real Transfer for Biped Locomotioncited by 50
  20. 2019Policies Modulating Trajectory Generatorscited by 47
  21. 2020RLOC: Terrain-Aware Legged Locomotion using Reinforcement Learning and Optimal Controlcited by 46
  22. 2020Behavior Priors for Efficient Reinforcement Learningcited by 40
  23. 2019Value constrained model-free continuous controlcited by 34
  24. 2019MPC-Net: A First Principles Guided Policy Searchcited by 28
  25. 2020Guided Constrained Policy Optimization for Dynamic Quadrupedal Robot Locomotioncited by 24
  26. 2020Learning a Contact-Adaptive Controller for Robust, Efficient Legged Locomotioncited by 22
  27. 2020Towards General and Autonomous Learning of Core Skills: A Case Study in Locomotioncited by 10
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  29. 2021Learning Coordinated Terrain-Adaptive Locomotion by Imitating a Centroidal Dynamics Plannercited by 4

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2022: 8; 2023: 10; 2024: 7; 2025: 1; 2026: 1.

27 papers.

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  1. 2022DayDreamer: World Models for Physical Robot Learningcited by 372
  2. 2024Learning Human-to-Humanoid Real-Time Whole-Body Teleoperationcited by 112
  3. 2023Learning Agile Soccer Skills for a Bipedal Robot with Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 111
  4. 2023Universal Humanoid Motion Representations for Physics-Based Controlcited by 109
  5. 2023PhysHOI: Physics-Based Imitation of Dynamic Human-Object Interactioncited by 72
  6. 2022NeRF2Real: Sim2real Transfer of Vision-guided Bipedal Motion Skills using Neural Radiance Fieldscited by 41
  7. 2023DTC: Deep Tracking Controlcited by 37
  8. 2023DribbleBot: Dynamic Legged Manipulation in the Wildcited by 33
  9. 2023Lifelike Agility and Play in Quadrupedal Robots using Reinforcement Learning and Generative Pre-trained Modelscited by 30
  10. 2022MoCapAct: A Multi-Task Dataset for Simulated Humanoid Controlcited by 24
  11. 2022Creating a Dynamic Quadrupedal Robotic Goalkeeper with Reinforcement Learningcited by 17
  12. 2023Generalized Animal Imitator: Agile Locomotion with Versatile Motion Priorcited by 17
15 more
  1. 2024Real-Time Simulated Avatar from Head-Mounted Sensorscited by 17
  2. 2022Learning and Deploying Robust Locomotion Policies with Minimal Dynamics Randomizationcited by 15
  3. 2022Learn what matters: cross-domain imitation learning with task-relevant embeddingscited by 14
  4. 2023Replay across Experiments: A Natural Extension of Off-Policy RLcited by 10
  5. 2024Video2Reward: Generating Reward Function from Videos for Legged Robot Behavior Learningcited by 8
  6. 2023Learning Robust, Agile, Natural Legged Locomotion Skills in the Wildcited by 7
  7. 2022SkillS: Adaptive Skill Sequencing for Efficient Temporally-Extended Explorationcited by 6
  8. 2024Language-Model-Assisted Bi-Level Programming for Reward Learning from Internet Videoscited by 3
  9. 2022Leveraging Demonstrations with Latent Space Priorscited by 2
  10. 2024DexDribbler: Learning Dexterous Soccer Manipulation via Dynamic Supervisioncited by 2
  11. 2023Roll-Drop: accounting for observation noise with a single parametercited by 1
  12. 2024Imitation of human motion achieves natural head movements for humanoid robots in an active-speaker detection taskcited by 1
  13. 2026Agile perceptive multi-skill locomotion for quadrupedal robots in the wildcited by 1
  14. 2024Reinforcement Learning from Wild Animal Videoscited by 0
  15. 2025Embodied sensorimotor control: computational modeling of the neural control of movementcited by 0