# Pedipulate: Enabling Manipulation Skills using a Quadruped Robot's Leg

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.10837 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10837/

## Key facts

- Cited by 27 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 19 of its 37 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Feb 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [Isaac Gym: High Performance GPU-Based Physics Simulation For Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10470/) (2021)
- [Learning Quadrupedal Locomotion over Challenging Terrain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11251/) (2020)
- [Learning to Walk in Minutes Using Massively Parallel Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.11978/) (2021)
- [Learning agile and dynamic motor skills for legged robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.08652/) (2019)
- [Learning robust perceptive locomotion for quadrupedal robots in the wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.08117/) (2022)
- [ANYmal Parkour: Learning Agile Navigation for Quadrupedal Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.14874/) (2023)
- [Legged Locomotion in Challenging Terrains using Egocentric Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.07638/) (2022)
- [Articulated Object Interaction in Unknown Scenes with Whole-Body Mobile Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10534/) (2021)
- [Multi-Agent Manipulation via Locomotion using Hierarchical Sim2Real](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.05224/) (2019)
- [Legs as Manipulator: Pushing Quadrupedal Agility Beyond Locomotion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11330/) (2023)
- [Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning for Precise Soccer Shooting Skills using a Quadrupedal Robot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01160/) (2022)
- [Versatile Multi-Contact Planning and Control for Legged Loco-Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09179/) (2023)
- [Learning Whole-body Manipulation for Quadrupedal Robot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16820/) (2023)
- [Scientific Exploration of Challenging Planetary Analog Environments with a Team of Legged Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10079/) (2023)
- [Circus ANYmal: A Quadruped Learning Dexterous Manipulation with Its Limbs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.08811/) (2020)
- [RoLoMa: Robust Loco-Manipulation for Quadruped Robots with Arms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.01446/) (2022)
- [Autonomous Obstacle Legipulation with a Hexapod Robot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.06227/) (2020)
- [A Novel Design and Evaluation of a Dactylus-Equipped Quadruped Robot for Mobile Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.08765/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 27 of 27)

- [RSL-RL: A Learning Library for Robotics Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.10771/) (2025)
- [BEHAVIOR Robot Suite: Streamlining Real-World Whole-Body Manipulation for Everyday Household Activities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.05652/) (2025)
- [The Reality Gap in Robotics: Challenges, Solutions, and Best Practices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.20808/) (2025)
- [Learning Visual Quadrupedal Loco-Manipulation from Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.20328/) (2024)
- [Generative Image as Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07875/) (2024)
- [RobotKeyframing: Learning Locomotion with High-Level Objectives via Mixture of Dense and Sparse Rewards](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11562/) (2024)
- [Learning Multi-Agent Loco-Manipulation for Long-Horizon Quadrupedal Pushing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.07104/) (2024)
- [Learning Whole-Body Loco-Manipulation for Omni-Directional Task Space Pose Tracking with a Wheeled-Quadrupedal-Manipulator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03012/) (2024)
- [Human2LocoMan: Learning Versatile Quadrupedal Manipulation with Human Pretraining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.16475/) (2025)
- [Helpful DoggyBot: Open-World Object Fetching using Legged Robots and Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.00231/) (2024)
- [Deep Reinforcement Learning for Bipedal Locomotion: A Brief Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.17070/) (2024)
- [Whole-body End-Effector Pose Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.16048/) (2024)
- [Versatile Loco-Manipulation through Flexible Interlimb Coordination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07876/) (2025)
- [Bipedalism for Quadrupedal Robots: Versatile Loco-Manipulation through Risk-Adaptive Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.20382/) (2025)
- [Latent Conditioned Loco-Manipulation Using Motion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.16061/) (2025)
- [Transferable Latent-to-Latent Locomotion Policy for Efficient and Versatile Motion Control of Diverse Legged Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17626/) (2025)
- [Agile and versatile bipedal robot tracking control through reinforcement learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.08246/) (2024)
- [Periodic Skill Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.03187/) (2025)
- [Path Planning and Reinforcement Learning-Driven Control of On-Orbit Free-Flying Multi-Arm Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.23182/) (2026)
- [CAIMAN: Causal Action Influence Detection for Sample-efficient Loco-manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.00835/) (2025)
- [Dynamic Legged Ball Manipulation on Rugged Terrains with Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14989/) (2025)
- [Scoop-and-Toss: Dynamic Object Collection for Quadrupedal Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09406/) (2025)
- [GeCCo -- a Generalist Contact-Conditioned Policy for Loco-Manipulation Skills on Legged Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17582/) (2025)
- [Pretraining in Actor-Critic Reinforcement Learning for Locomotion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.12363/) (2025)
- [Whole-Body Mobile Manipulation using Offline Reinforcement Learning on Sub-optimal Controllers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.12509/) (2026)
- [Affordance-Based Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning for Quadruped Pedipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.07506/) (2026)
- [Embodied Multimodal Grounding for Open-Vocabulary Mobile Manipulation via Semantic 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.10756/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Legged robots have the potential to become vital in maintenance, home support, and exploration scenarios. In order to interact with and manipulate their environments, most legged robots are equipped with a dedicated robot arm, which means additional mass and mechanical complexity compared to standard legged robots. In this work, we explore pedipulation - using the legs of a legged robot for manipulation. By training a reinforcement learning policy that tracks position targets for one foot, we enable a dedicated pedipulation controller that is robust to disturbances, has a large workspace through whole-body behaviors, and can reach far-away targets with gait emergence, enabling loco-pedipulation. By deploying our controller on a quadrupedal robot using teleoperation, we demonstrate various real-world tasks such as door opening, sample collection, and pushing obstacles. We demonstrate load carrying of more than 2.0 kg at the foot. Additionally, the controller is robust to interaction forces at the foot, disturbances at the base, and slippery contact surfaces. Videos of the experiments are available at https://sites.google.com/leggedrobotics.com/pedipulate.