mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Barkour: Benchmarking Animal-level Agility with Quadruped Robots

arXiv 2305.14654 ↗First posted 24 May 2023cs.RO cs.AIcited by 33

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Abstract (arXiv)

Animals have evolved various agile locomotion strategies, such as sprinting, leaping, and jumping. There is a growing interest in developing legged robots that move like their biological counterparts and show various agile skills to navigate complex environments quickly. Despite the interest, the field lacks systematic benchmarks to measure the performance of control policies and hardware in agility. We introduce the Barkour benchmark, an obstacle course to quantify agility for legged robots. Inspired by dog agility competitions, it consists of diverse obstacles and a time based scoring mechanism. This encourages researchers to develop controllers that not only move fast, but do so in a controllable and versatile way. To set strong baselines, we present two methods for tackling the benchmark. In the first approach, we train specialist locomotion skills using on-policy reinforcement learning methods and combine them with a high-level navigation controller. In the second approach, we distill the specialist skills into a Transformer-based generalist locomotion policy, named Locomotion-Transformer, that can handle various terrains and adjust the robot's gait based on the perceived environment and robot states. Using a custom-built quadruped robot, we demonstrate that our method can complete the course at half the speed of a dog. We hope that our work represents a step towards creating controllers that enable robots to reach animal-level agility.

Key facts. Cited by 33 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 29 of its 46 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 24 May 2023.

Builds on

29 of 46 references.

References · 29

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
  2. 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 14,441
  3. 2022RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scalecited by 2,007
  4. 2018IMPALA: Scalable Distributed Deep-RL with Importance Weighted Actor-Learner Architecturescited by 866
  5. 2022A Generalist Agentcited by 802
  6. 2017Sim-to-Real Transfer of Robotic Control with Dynamics Randomizationcited by 616
  7. 2020Learning Quadrupedal Locomotion over Challenging Terraincited by 494
  8. 2021RMA: Rapid Motor Adaptation for Legged Robotscited by 430
  9. 2019Learning agile and dynamic motor skills for legged robotscited by 402
  10. 2021Learning to Walk in Minutes Using Massively Parallel Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 395
  11. 2021Brax -- A Differentiable Physics Engine for Large Scale Rigid Body Simulationcited by 375
  12. 2022Video PreTraining (VPT): Learning to Act by Watching Unlabeled Online Videoscited by 338
17 more
  1. 2022Learning robust perceptive locomotion for quadrupedal robots in the wildcited by 299
  2. 2018Sim-to-Real: Learning Agile Locomotion For Quadruped Robotscited by 277
  3. 2020Learning Agile Robotic Locomotion Skills by Imitating Animalscited by 229
  4. 2022Multi-Game Decision Transformerscited by 212
  5. 2022Legged Locomotion in Challenging Terrains using Egocentric Visioncited by 131
  6. 2022Rapid Locomotion via Reinforcement Learningcited by 130
  7. 2020Sim-to-Real Learning of All Common Bipedal Gaits via Periodic Reward Compositioncited by 71
  8. 2021Legged Robots that Keep on Learning: Fine-Tuning Locomotion Policies in the Real Worldcited by 64
  9. 2020Dynamics Randomization Revisited:A Case Study for Quadrupedal Locomotioncited by 54
  10. 2019Policies Modulating Trajectory Generatorscited by 47
  11. 2019Highly Dynamic Quadruped Locomotion via Whole-Body Impulse Control and Model Predictive Controlcited by 43
  12. 2021Learning to Jump from Pixelscited by 39
  13. 2022Advanced Skills by Learning Locomotion and Local Navigation End-to-Endcited by 39
  14. 2022PI-ARS: Accelerating Evolution-Learned Visual-Locomotion with Predictive Information Representationscited by 10
  15. 2020Learning Agile Locomotion Skills with a Mentorcited by 7
  16. 2021Rapid and Reliable Quadruped Motion Planning with Omnidirectional Jumpingcited by 3
  17. 2022Zero-Shot Retargeting of Learned Quadruped Locomotion Policies Using Hybrid Kinodynamic Model Predictive Controlcited by 2

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 8; 2024: 15; 2025: 3; 2026: 7.

33 papers.

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  1. 2023Language to Rewards for Robotic Skill Synthesiscited by 307
  2. 2023Robot Parkour Learningcited by 115
  3. 2023QUAR-VLA: Vision-Language-Action Model for Quadruped Robotscited by 55
  4. 2023Prompt a Robot to Walk with Large Language Modelscited by 44
  5. 2024One Policy to Run Them All: an End-to-end Learning Approach to Multi-Embodiment Locomotioncited by 34
  6. 2023Hybrid Internal Model: Learning Agile Legged Locomotion with Simulated Robot Responsecited by 31
  7. 2023Lifelike Agility and Play in Quadrupedal Robots using Reinforcement Learning and Generative Pre-trained Modelscited by 30
  8. 2024Commonsense Reasoning for Legged Robot Adaptation with Vision-Language Modelscited by 15
  9. 2024Eurekaverse: Environment Curriculum Generation via Large Language Modelscited by 14
  10. 2026Perceptive Humanoid Parkour: Chaining Dynamic Human Skills via Motion Matchingcited by 13
  11. 2025Towards Embodiment Scaling Laws in Robot Locomotioncited by 12
  12. 2024SoloParkour: Constrained Reinforcement Learning for Visual Locomotion from Privileged Experiencecited by 10
21 more
  1. 2024Stage-Wise Reward Shaping for Acrobatic Robots: A Constrained Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning Approachcited by 10
  2. 2024QUART-Online: Latency-Free Large Multimodal Language Model for Quadruped Robot Learningcited by 9
  3. 2024Gaitor: Learning a Unified Representation Across Gaits for Real-World Quadruped Locomotioncited by 6
  4. 2024Investigating Pre-Training Objectives for Generalization in Vision-Based Reinforcement Learningcited by 4
  5. 2025SLIM: Sim-to-Real Legged Instructive Manipulation via Long-Horizon Visuomotor Learningcited by 4
  6. 2024Transformer-Based Fault-Tolerant Control for Fixed-Wing UAVs Using Knowledge Distillation and In-Context Adaptationcited by 3
  7. 2024Offline Adaptation of Quadruped Locomotion using Diffusion Modelscited by 3
  8. 2026Learning Human-Like Badminton Skills for Humanoid Robotscited by 3
  9. 2023DeepTransition: Viability Leads to the Emergence of Gait Transitions in Learning Anticipatory Quadrupedal Locomotion Skillscited by 2
  10. 2024TOP-Nav: Legged Navigation Integrating Terrain, Obstacle and Proprioception Estimationcited by 2
  11. 2026Learning Gait-Aware Quadruped Locomotion with Temporal Logic Specificationscited by 2
  12. 2025Efficiently Generating Expressive Quadruped Behaviors via Language-Guided Preference Learningcited by 1
  13. 2023A Population-Level Analysis of Neural Dynamics in Robust Legged Robotscited by 0
  14. 2024Impedance Matching: Enabling an RL-Based Running Jump in a Quadruped Robotcited by 0
  15. 2024BricksRL: A Platform for Democratizing Robotics and Reinforcement Learning Research and Education with LEGOcited by 0
  16. 2024Improving generalization of robot locomotion policies via Sharpness-Aware Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
  17. 2024Reinforcement Learning from Wild Animal Videoscited by 0
  18. 2026ARC-RL: A Reinforcement Learning Playground Inspired by ARC Raiderscited by 0
  19. 2026From LLM-Generated Specifications to Learned Quadruped Locomotioncited by 0
  20. 2026Do World Models Make Better Robots? A Survey of Evaluation Benchmarks for Predictive Embodied Intelligencecited by 0
  21. 2026Video2STL: Grounding VLM-Generated Temporal Specifications for Robot Learningcited by 0