mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

RoboPianist: Dexterous Piano Playing with Deep Reinforcement Learning

arXiv 2304.04150 ↗First posted 9 Apr 2023cs.RO cs.AIcited by 29

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Abstract (arXiv)

Replicating human-like dexterity in robot hands represents one of the largest open problems in robotics. Reinforcement learning is a promising approach that has achieved impressive progress in the last few years; however, the class of problems it has typically addressed corresponds to a rather narrow definition of dexterity as compared to human capabilities. To address this gap, we investigate piano-playing, a skill that challenges even the human limits of dexterity, as a means to test high-dimensional control, and which requires high spatial and temporal precision, and complex finger coordination and planning. We introduce RoboPianist, a system that enables simulated anthropomorphic hands to learn an extensive repertoire of 150 piano pieces where traditional model-based optimization struggles. We additionally introduce an open-sourced environment, benchmark of tasks, interpretable evaluation metrics, and open challenges for future study. Our website featuring videos, code, and datasets is available at https://kzakka.com/robopianist/

Key facts. Cited by 29 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 30 of its 60 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 9 Apr 2023.

Builds on

30 of 60 references.

References · 30

  1. 2016Layer Normalizationcited by 5,579
  2. 2018Soft Actor-Critic: Off-Policy Maximum Entropy Deep Reinforcement Learning with a Stochastic Actorcited by 4,635
  3. 2018Addressing Function Approximation Error in Actor-Critic Methodscited by 2,302
  4. 2015Deep Reinforcement Learning with Double Q-learningcited by 1,704
  5. 2020D4RL: Datasets for Deep Data-Driven Reinforcement Learningcited by 1,406
  6. 2019Solving Rubik's Cube with a Robot Handcited by 699
  7. 2017Learning Complex Dexterous Manipulation with Deep Reinforcement Learning and Demonstrationscited by 685
  8. 2018Learning Dexterous In-Hand Manipulationcited by 643
  9. 2020dm_control: Software and Tasks for Continuous Controlcited by 368
  10. 2019Dynamics-Aware Unsupervised Discovery of Skillscited by 308
  11. 2019Deep Dynamics Models for Learning Dexterous Manipulationcited by 200
  12. 2017Emergence of Locomotion Behaviours in Rich Environmentscited by 159
18 more
  1. 2021A System for General In-Hand Object Re-Orientationcited by 155
  2. 2022DeXtreme: Transfer of Agile In-hand Manipulation from Simulation to Realitycited by 136
  3. 2022Towards Human-Level Bimanual Dexterous Manipulation with Reinforcement Learningcited by 113
  4. 2021Dropout Q-Functions for Doubly Efficient Reinforcement Learningcited by 108
  5. 2022In-Hand Object Rotation via Rapid Motor Adaptationcited by 102
  6. 2018Neural probabilistic motor primitives for humanoid controlcited by 96
  7. 2022Visual Dexterity: In-Hand Reorientation of Novel and Complex Object Shapescited by 92
  8. 2020State-Only Imitation Learning for Dexterous Manipulationcited by 90
  9. 2022A Walk in the Park: Learning to Walk in 20 Minutes With Model-Free Reinforcement Learningcited by 76
  10. 2022Adversarial Motion Priors Make Good Substitutes for Complex Reward Functionscited by 68
  11. 2022Global Planning for Contact-Rich Manipulation via Local Smoothing of Quasi-dynamic Contact Modelscited by 46
  12. 2022Predictive Sampling: Real-time Behaviour Synthesis with MuJoCocited by 39
  13. 2021Towards Learning to Play Piano with Dexterous Hands and Touchcited by 14
  14. 2020Solving Challenging Dexterous Manipulation Tasks With Trajectory Optimisation and Reinforcement Learningcited by 12
  15. 2018Relaxed-Rigidity Constraints: Kinematic Trajectory Optimization and Collision Avoidance for In-Grasp Manipulationcited by 11
  16. 2019Statistical Learning and Estimation of Piano Fingeringcited by 7
  17. 2020Design and Control of Roller Grasper V2 for In-Hand Manipulationcited by 6
  18. 2021An Unconstrained Convex Formulation of Compliant Contactcited by 3

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 1; 2024: 13; 2025: 13; 2026: 2.

29 papers.

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  1. 2024Learning Visuotactile Skills with Two Multifingered Handscited by 71
  2. 2025ManipTrans: Efficient Dexterous Bimanual Manipulation Transfer via Residual Learningcited by 56
  3. 2025Sim-to-Real Reinforcement Learning for Vision-Based Dexterous Manipulation on Humanoidscited by 40
  4. 2024PerAct2: Benchmarking and Learning for Robotic Bimanual Manipulation Taskscited by 37
  5. 2024Twisting Lids Off with Two Handscited by 36
  6. 2024ViViDex: Learning Vision-based Dexterous Manipulation from Human Videoscited by 33
  7. 2024BiGym: A Demo-Driven Mobile Bi-Manual Manipulation Benchmarkcited by 30
  8. 2025ManipBench: Benchmarking Vision-Language Models for Low-Level Robot Manipulationcited by 24
  9. 2024Lessons from Learning to Spin "Pens"cited by 22
  10. 2024VoxAct-B: Voxel-Based Acting and Stabilizing Policy for Bimanual Manipulationcited by 21
  11. 2023Grasp Multiple Objects with One Handcited by 18
  12. 2024Privileged Sensing Scaffolds Reinforcement Learningcited by 18
17 more
  1. 2024PianoMime: Learning a Generalist, Dexterous Piano Player from Internet Demonstrationscited by 8
  2. 2024F"urElise: Capturing and Physically Synthesizing Hand Motions of Piano Performancecited by 8
  3. 2026An Unexpected Robot Policy: Early Evaluations of GPT-6 Astra on RoboDojo and Beyondcited by 8
  4. 2024PianoMotion10M: Dataset and Benchmark for Hand Motion Generation in Piano Performancecited by 5
  5. 2025Dual-Robust Cross-Domain Offline Reinforcement Learning Against Dynamics Shiftscited by 5
  6. 2025Separate to Collaborate: Dual-Stream Diffusion Model for Coordinated Piano Hand Motion Synthesiscited by 4
  7. 2025D-CODA: Diffusion for Coordinated Dual-Arm Data Augmentationcited by 4
  8. 2025House of Dextra: Cross-embodied Co-design for Dexterous Handscited by 4
  9. 2024RP1M: A Large-Scale Motion Dataset for Piano Playing with Bi-Manual Dexterous Robot Handscited by 3
  10. 2025Space Robotics Bench: Robot Learning Beyond Earthcited by 3
  11. 2024Bimanual Grasp Synthesis for Dexterous Robot Handscited by 2
  12. 2025VTAO-BiManip: Masked Visual-Tactile-Action Pre-training with Object Understanding for Bimanual Dexterous Manipulationcited by 2
  13. 2025PANDORA: Diffusion Policy Learning for Dexterous Robotic Piano Playingcited by 2
  14. 2025Learning Robot Manipulation from Audio World Modelscited by 2
  15. 2025Learning to Play Piano in the Real Worldcited by 1
  16. 2025ROPA: Synthetic Robot Pose Generation for RGB-D Bimanual Data Augmentationcited by 1
  17. 2026JODA: Composable Joint Dynamics for Articulated Objectscited by 0