Emergent Dexterity via Diverse Resets and Large-Scale Reinforcement Learning
On the map: Deep reinforcement learning methods → RL for robot locomotion and manipulation
Abstract (arXiv)
Reinforcement learning in massively parallel physics simulations has driven major progress in sim-to-real robot learning. However, current approaches remain brittle and task-specific, relying on extensive per-task engineering to design rewards, curricula, and demonstrations. Even with this engineering, they often fail on long-horizon, contact-rich manipulation tasks and do not meaningfully scale with compute, as performance quickly saturates when training revisits the same narrow regions of state space. We introduce OmniReset, a simple and scalable framework that enables on-policy reinforcement learning to robustly solve a broad class of dexterous manipulation tasks using a single reward function, fixed algorithm hyperparameters, no curricula, and no human demonstrations. Our key insight is that long-horizon exploration can be dramatically simplified by using simulator resets to systematically expose the RL algorithm to the diverse set of robot-object interactions which underlie dexterous manipulation. OmniReset programmatically generates such resets with minimal human input, converting additional compute directly into broader behavioral coverage and continued performance gains. We show that OmniReset gracefully scales to long-horizon dexterous manipulation tasks beyond the capabilities of existing approaches and is able to learn robust policies over significantly wider ranges of initial conditions than baselines. Finally, we distill OmniReset into visuomotor policies which display robust retrying behavior and substantially higher success rates than baselines when transferred to the real world zero-shot. Project webpage: https://weirdlabuw.github.io/omnireset/
Key facts. Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in RL for robot locomotion and manipulation, one of 15 directions in Deep reinforcement learning methods. Builds on 48 of its 57 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 16 Mar 2026.
Builds on
48 of 57 references.
Closest ancestors · 2
Same direction, newest first
- 2024SPIRE: Synergistic Planning, Imitation, and Reinforcement Learning for Long-Horizon Manipulation23 Oct
- 2024DemoStart: Demonstration-led auto-curriculum applied to sim-to-real with multi-fingered robots10 Sep
Other references · 46
- 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 15,215
- 2018Soft Actor-Critic: Off-Policy Maximum Entropy Deep Reinforcement Learning with a Stochastic Actorcited by 4,885
- 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusioncited by 2,838
- 2017Curiosity-driven Exploration by Self-supervised Predictioncited by 1,194
- 2018Exploration by Random Network Distillationcited by 993
- 2018Diversity is All You Need: Learning Skills without a Reward Functioncited by 752
- 2019Solving Rubik's Cube with a Robot Handcited by 734
- 2017Learning Complex Dexterous Manipulation with Deep Reinforcement Learning and Demonstrationscited by 715
- 2016Unifying Count-Based Exploration and Intrinsic Motivationcited by 639
- 2020Learning Quadrupedal Locomotion over Challenging Terraincited by 604
- 2016Deep Exploration via Bootstrapped DQNcited by 527
- 2019Learning agile and dynamic motor skills for legged robotscited by 504
34 more
- 2017A Tutorial on Thompson Samplingcited by 433
- 2017Overcoming Exploration in Reinforcement Learning with Demonstrationscited by 340
- 2023MimicGen: A Data Generation System for Scalable Robot Learning using Human Demonstrationscited by 327
- 2017Leveraging Demonstrations for Deep Reinforcement Learning on Robotics Problems with Sparse Rewardscited by 319
- 2023Orbit: A Unified Simulation Framework for Interactive Robot Learning Environmentscited by 295
- 2020Emergent Complexity and Zero-shot Transfer via Unsupervised Environment Designcited by 275
- 2017Count-Based Exploration with Neural Density Modelscited by 257
- 2017Asymmetric Actor Critic for Image-Based Robot Learningcited by 238
- 2017Reverse Curriculum Generation for Reinforcement Learningcited by 198
- 2021A System for General In-Hand Object Re-Orientationcited by 165
- 2017Deep Exploration via Randomized Value Functionscited by 156
- 2022DeXtreme: Transfer of Agile In-hand Manipulation from Simulation to Realitycited by 149
- 2023FurnitureBench: Reproducible Real-World Benchmark for Long-Horizon Complex Manipulationcited by 133
- 2023UniDexGrasp: Universal Robotic Dexterous Grasping via Learning Diverse Proposal Generation and Goal-Conditioned Policycited by 124
- 2018Learning Montezuma's Revenge from a Single Demonstrationcited by 80
- 2020Smooth Exploration for Robotic Reinforcement Learningcited by 54
- 2023IndustReal: Transferring Contact-Rich Assembly Tasks from Simulation to Realitycited by 53
- 2017Count-Based Exploration in Feature Space for Reinforcement Learningcited by 49
- 2024DextrAH-RGB: Visuomotor Policies to Grasp Anything with Dexterous Handscited by 45
- 2024JUICER: Data-Efficient Imitation Learning for Robotic Assemblycited by 38
- 2022Curious Exploration via Structured World Models Yields Zero-Shot Object Manipulationcited by 31
- 2023CCIL: Continuity-based Data Augmentation for Corrective Imitation Learningcited by 29
- 2022Lyapunov Design for Robust and Efficient Robotic Reinforcement Learningcited by 28
- 2024AutoMate: Specialist and Generalist Assembly Policies over Diverse Geometriescited by 26
- 2020Guided Uncertainty-Aware Policy Optimization: Combining Learning and Model-Based Strategies for Sample-Efficient Policy Learningcited by 25
- 2018BaRC: Backward Reachability Curriculum for Robotic Reinforcement Learningcited by 23
- 2018Backplay: "Man muss immer umkehren"cited by 21
- 2022Mastering the Unsupervised Reinforcement Learning Benchmark from Pixelscited by 21
- 2024SAPG: Split and Aggregate Policy Gradientscited by 21
- 2018Forward-Backward Reinforcement Learningcited by 19
- 2024Reverse Forward Curriculum Learning for Extreme Sample and Demonstration Efficiency in Reinforcement Learningcited by 13
- 2025Towards bridging the gap: Systematic sim-to-real transfer for diverse legged robotscited by 12
- 2025Staggered Environment Resets Improve Massively Parallel On-Policy Reinforcement Learningcited by 3
- 2024Dense Dynamics-Aware Reward Synthesis: Integrating Prior Experience with Demonstrationscited by 2
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 10.
10 papers.
- 2026ADEPT: Accelerating Dexterity via Pre-Training and Post-Training using Reinforcement Learningcited by 2
- 2026Play2Perfect: What Matters in Dexterous Play Pretraining for Precise Assembly?cited by 1
- 2026Support-Constrained RL Enables Real-World Policy Improvement without Real-World Experiencecited by 1
- 2026Mana: Dexterous Manipulation of Articulated Toolscited by 0
- 2026Per-Context Reverse Curricula for Sparse-Reward Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
- 2026An Empirical Study on What Matters for Viewpoint-Generalizable Policies in Visual Imitation Learningcited by 0
- 2026X-Reset: Scaling Object-Centric Reinforcement Learning via Cross-Embodiment Resetscited by 0
- 2026Rho: A Foundation for Efficiently Adaptable VLA Modelscited by 0
- 2026A Balanced Data Diet: Addressing the Exploration Bottleneck in Mega-Scale RL for Robot Controlcited by 0
- 2026AlphaNIST: Emergent Assembly Skills from Binary Task Rewardscited by 0
- 2026AlphaNIST: Emergent Assembly Skills from Binary Task Rewards9 Oct 2026
- 2026A Balanced Data Diet: Addressing the Exploration Bottleneck in Mega-Scale RL for Robot Control8 Oct 2026
- 2026Rho: A Foundation for Efficiently Adaptable VLA Models29 Sep 2026
- 2026X-Reset: Scaling Object-Centric Reinforcement Learning via Cross-Embodiment Resets28 Sep 2026
- 2026An Empirical Study on What Matters for Viewpoint-Generalizable Policies in Visual Imitation Learning26 Sep 2026
- 2026ADEPT: Accelerating Dexterity via Pre-Training and Post-Training using Reinforcement Learning19 Aug 2026
- 2026Per-Context Reverse Curricula for Sparse-Reward Reinforcement Learning29 Jul 2026
- 2026Support-Constrained RL Enables Real-World Policy Improvement without Real-World Experience25 Jun 2026
- 2026Play2Perfect: What Matters in Dexterous Play Pretraining for Precise Assembly?24 Jun 2026
- 2026Mana: Dexterous Manipulation of Articulated Tools11 Jun 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2025Towards Human-level Dexterity via Robot Learning
- 2024Precise and Dexterous Robotic Manipulation via Human-in-the-Loop Reinforcement Learning
- 2024R×R: Rapid eXploration for Reinforcement Learning via Sampling-based Reset Distributions and Imitation Pre-training
- 2026Dex-One2Many: Learning Dexterous Manipulation from a Single Human Demonstration
- 2026Emerging Extrinsic Dexterity in Cluttered Scenes via Dynamics-aware Policy Learning
- 2026A Minimalist Retargeting-Guided Reinforcement Learning Recipe for Dexterous Manipulation
- 2026Res-HIL: Human-Guided Residual Reinforcement Learning for Sample-Efficient Dexterous Manipulation
- 2026Coherent Off-Policy Improvement of Large Behavior Models with Learned Rewards