mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Deep Whole-Body Control: Learning a Unified Policy for Manipulation and Locomotion

arXiv 2210.10044 ↗First posted 18 Oct 2022cs.RO cs.AI cs.CVcited by 98

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Abstract (arXiv)

An attached arm can significantly increase the applicability of legged robots to several mobile manipulation tasks that are not possible for the wheeled or tracked counterparts. The standard hierarchical control pipeline for such legged manipulators is to decouple the controller into that of manipulation and locomotion. However, this is ineffective. It requires immense engineering to support coordination between the arm and legs, and error can propagate across modules causing non-smooth unnatural motions. It is also biological implausible given evidence for strong motor synergies across limbs. In this work, we propose to learn a unified policy for whole-body control of a legged manipulator using reinforcement learning. We propose Regularized Online Adaptation to bridge the Sim2Real gap for high-DoF control, and Advantage Mixing exploiting the causal dependency in the action space to overcome local minima during training the whole-body system. We also present a simple design for a low-cost legged manipulator, and find that our unified policy can demonstrate dynamic and agile behaviors across several task setups. Videos are at https://maniploco.github.io

Key facts. Cited by 98 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 35 of its 63 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 18 Oct 2022.

Builds on

35 of 63 references.

References · 35

  1. 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 14,441
  2. 2022Do As I Can, Not As I Say: Grounding Language in Robotic Affordancescited by 2,302
  3. 2021Isaac Gym: High Performance GPU-Based Physics Simulation For Robot Learningcited by 882
  4. 2015End-to-End Training of Deep Visuomotor Policiescited by 847
  5. 2019Solving Rubik's Cube with a Robot Handcited by 699
  6. 2020Learning Quadrupedal Locomotion over Challenging Terraincited by 494
  7. 2021RMA: Rapid Motor Adaptation for Legged Robotscited by 430
  8. 2019Learning agile and dynamic motor skills for legged robotscited by 402
  9. 2021Learning to Walk in Minutes Using Massively Parallel Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 395
  10. 2022Learning robust perceptive locomotion for quadrupedal robots in the wildcited by 299
  11. 2018Learning to Adapt in Dynamic, Real-World Environments Through Meta-Reinforcement Learningcited by 270
  12. 2020Learning Agile Robotic Locomotion Skills by Imitating Animalscited by 229
23 more
  1. 2022Rapid Locomotion via Reinforcement Learningcited by 130
  2. 2017Preparing for the Unknown: Learning a Universal Policy with Online System Identificationcited by 129
  3. 2021Reinforcement Learning for Robust Parameterized Locomotion Control of Bipedal Robotscited by 95
  4. 2021Learning Vision-Guided Quadrupedal Locomotion End-to-End with Cross-Modal Transformerscited by 71
  5. 2021Minimizing Energy Consumption Leads to the Emergence of Gaits in Legged Robotscited by 67
  6. 2021Legged Robots that Keep on Learning: Fine-Tuning Locomotion Policies in the Real Worldcited by 64
  7. 2021Error-Aware Imitation Learning from Teleoperation Data for Mobile Manipulationcited by 59
  8. 2020ReLMoGen: Leveraging Motion Generation in Reinforcement Learning for Mobile Manipulationcited by 47
  9. 2019Learning Fast Adaptation with Meta Strategy Optimizationcited by 46
  10. 2021Coupling Vision and Proprioception for Navigation of Legged Robotscited by 46
  11. 2020Rapidly Adaptable Legged Robots via Evolutionary Meta-Learningcited by 42
  12. 2018Policy Transfer with Strategy Optimizationcited by 41
  13. 2019Environment Probing Interaction Policiescited by 39
  14. 2021Learning to Jump from Pixelscited by 39
  15. 2020Bridging the Imitation Gap by Adaptive Insubordinationcited by 38
  16. 2022Combining Learning-based Locomotion Policy with Model-based Manipulation for Legged Mobile Manipulatorscited by 32
  17. 2021Fully Autonomous Real-World Reinforcement Learning with Applications to Mobile Manipulationcited by 30
  18. 2021Learning Kinematic Feasibility for Mobile Manipulation through Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 24
  19. 2013Bregman Alternating Direction Method of Multiplierscited by 19
  20. 2021Vision-Guided Quadrupedal Locomotion in the Wild with Multi-Modal Delay Randomizationcited by 18
  21. 2022Bi-Manual Manipulation and Attachment via Sim-to-Real Reinforcement Learningcited by 13
  22. 2020Catch the Ball: Accurate High-Speed Motions for Mobile Manipulators via Inverse Dynamics Learningcited by 7
  23. 2020Go Fetch: Mobile Manipulation in Unstructured Environmentscited by 5

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 23; 2024: 37; 2025: 29; 2026: 9.

98 papers.

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  1. 2024Mobile ALOHA: Learning Bimanual Mobile Manipulation with Low-Cost Whole-Body Teleoperationcited by 377
  2. 2024NaVILA: Legged Robot Vision-Language-Action Model for Navigationcited by 201
  3. 2023Perpetual Humanoid Control for Real-time Simulated Avatarscited by 198
  4. 2024OmniH2O: Universal and Dexterous Human-to-Humanoid Whole-Body Teleoperation and Learningcited by 167
  5. 2024Deep Reinforcement Learning for Robotics: A Survey of Real-World Successescited by 153
  6. 2023Trace and Pace: Controllable Pedestrian Animation via Guided Trajectory Diffusioncited by 137
  7. 2024Open-TeleVision: Teleoperation with Immersive Active Visual Feedbackcited by 137
  8. 2023Extreme Parkour with Legged Robotscited by 120
  9. 2024Expressive Whole-Body Control for Humanoid Robotscited by 117
  10. 2023Robot Parkour Learningcited by 115
  11. 2023Universal Humanoid Motion Representations for Physics-Based Controlcited by 109
  12. 2025ASAP: Aligning Simulation and Real-World Physics for Learning Agile Humanoid Whole-Body Skillscited by 104
38 more
  1. 2023Toward General-Purpose Robots via Foundation Models: A Survey and Meta-Analysiscited by 99
  2. 2024Reinforcement Learning for Versatile, Dynamic, and Robust Bipedal Locomotion Controlcited by 63
  3. 2024SplatSim: Zero-Shot Sim2Real Transfer of RGB Manipulation Policies Using Gaussian Splattingcited by 63
  4. 2024Visual Whole-Body Control for Legged Loco-Manipulationcited by 58
  5. 2023Stabilize to Act: Learning to Coordinate for Bimanual Manipulationcited by 36
  6. 2023DribbleBot: Dynamic Legged Manipulation in the Wildcited by 33
  7. 2023Not Only Rewards But Also Constraints: Applications on Legged Robot Locomotioncited by 33
  8. 2023Hybrid Internal Model: Learning Agile Legged Locomotion with Simulated Robot Responsecited by 31
  9. 2023Legs as Manipulator: Pushing Quadrupedal Agility Beyond Locomotioncited by 30
  10. 2024Adaptive Mobile Manipulation for Articulated Objects In the Open Worldcited by 30
  11. 2025BEHAVIOR Robot Suite: Streamlining Real-World Whole-Body Manipulation for Everyday Household Activitiescited by 29
  12. 2025RSL-RL: A Learning Library for Robotics Researchcited by 28
  13. 2023Robust and Versatile Bipedal Jumping Control through Reinforcement Learningcited by 27
  14. 2024SPIN: Simultaneous Perception, Interaction and Navigationcited by 27
  15. 2023Brain-inspired learning in artificial neural networks: a reviewcited by 26
  16. 2024M2Diffuser: Diffusion-based Trajectory Optimization for Mobile Manipulation in 3D Scenescited by 26
  17. 2024Learning Smooth Humanoid Locomotion through Lipschitz-Constrained Policiescited by 26
  18. 2024Learning Quadruped Locomotion Using Differentiable Simulationcited by 22
  19. 2025The Reality Gap in Robotics: Challenges, Solutions, and Best Practicescited by 22
  20. 2025Learning Getting-Up Policies for Real-World Humanoid Robotscited by 21
  21. 2024Learning Force Control for Legged Manipulationcited by 19
  22. 2023Causal Policy Gradient for Whole-Body Mobile Manipulationcited by 18
  23. 2023Generalized Animal Imitator: Agile Locomotion with Versatile Motion Priorcited by 17
  24. 2024SAPG: Split and Aggregate Policy Gradientscited by 17
  25. 2023Harmonic Mobile Manipulationcited by 16
  26. 2024Learning Multi-Modal Whole-Body Control for Real-World Humanoid Robotscited by 16
  27. 2025Learning coordinated badminton skills for legged manipulatorscited by 16
  28. 2024Learning Visual Quadrupedal Loco-Manipulation from Demonstrationscited by 15
  29. 2024Commonsense Reasoning for Legged Robot Adaptation with Vision-Language Modelscited by 15
  30. 2025MoMa-Kitchen: A 100K+ Benchmark for Affordance-Grounded Last-Mile Navigation in Mobile Manipulationcited by 12
  31. 2025Bridging the Sim-to-Real Gap for Athletic Loco-Manipulationcited by 11
  32. 2025KungfuBot2: Learning Versatile Motion Skills for Humanoid Whole-Body Controlcited by 11
  33. 2025Physical Plausibility-aware Trajectory Prediction via Locomotion Embodimentcited by 10
  34. 2023MOMA-Force: Visual-Force Imitation for Real-World Mobile Manipulationcited by 9
  35. 2024Learning Multi-Agent Loco-Manipulation for Long-Horizon Quadrupedal Pushingcited by 9
  36. 2023Bridging the Sim-to-Real Gap from the Information Bottleneck Perspectivecited by 8
  37. 2024Helpful DoggyBot: Open-World Object Fetching using Legged Robots and Vision-Language Modelscited by 8
  38. 2025Human2LocoMan: Learning Versatile Quadrupedal Manipulation with Human Pretrainingcited by 8

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