mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Emergent Dexterity via Diverse Resets and Large-Scale Reinforcement Learning

arXiv 2603.15789 ↗First posted 16 Mar 2026cs.ROcited by 10

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

  1. 2024SPIRE: Synergistic Planning, Imitation, and Reinforcement Learning for Long-Horizon Manipulation23 Oct
  2. 2024DemoStart: Demonstration-led auto-curriculum applied to sim-to-real with multi-fingered robots10 Sep

Other references · 46

  1. 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 15,215
  2. 2018Soft Actor-Critic: Off-Policy Maximum Entropy Deep Reinforcement Learning with a Stochastic Actorcited by 4,885
  3. 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusioncited by 2,838
  4. 2017Curiosity-driven Exploration by Self-supervised Predictioncited by 1,194
  5. 2018Exploration by Random Network Distillationcited by 993
  6. 2018Diversity is All You Need: Learning Skills without a Reward Functioncited by 752
  7. 2019Solving Rubik's Cube with a Robot Handcited by 734
  8. 2017Learning Complex Dexterous Manipulation with Deep Reinforcement Learning and Demonstrationscited by 715
  9. 2016Unifying Count-Based Exploration and Intrinsic Motivationcited by 639
  10. 2020Learning Quadrupedal Locomotion over Challenging Terraincited by 604
  11. 2016Deep Exploration via Bootstrapped DQNcited by 527
  12. 2019Learning agile and dynamic motor skills for legged robotscited by 504
34 more
  1. 2017A Tutorial on Thompson Samplingcited by 433
  2. 2017Overcoming Exploration in Reinforcement Learning with Demonstrationscited by 340
  3. 2023MimicGen: A Data Generation System for Scalable Robot Learning using Human Demonstrationscited by 327
  4. 2017Leveraging Demonstrations for Deep Reinforcement Learning on Robotics Problems with Sparse Rewardscited by 319
  5. 2023Orbit: A Unified Simulation Framework for Interactive Robot Learning Environmentscited by 295
  6. 2020Emergent Complexity and Zero-shot Transfer via Unsupervised Environment Designcited by 275
  7. 2017Count-Based Exploration with Neural Density Modelscited by 257
  8. 2017Asymmetric Actor Critic for Image-Based Robot Learningcited by 238
  9. 2017Reverse Curriculum Generation for Reinforcement Learningcited by 198
  10. 2021A System for General In-Hand Object Re-Orientationcited by 165
  11. 2017Deep Exploration via Randomized Value Functionscited by 156
  12. 2022DeXtreme: Transfer of Agile In-hand Manipulation from Simulation to Realitycited by 149
  13. 2023FurnitureBench: Reproducible Real-World Benchmark for Long-Horizon Complex Manipulationcited by 133
  14. 2023UniDexGrasp: Universal Robotic Dexterous Grasping via Learning Diverse Proposal Generation and Goal-Conditioned Policycited by 124
  15. 2018Learning Montezuma's Revenge from a Single Demonstrationcited by 80
  16. 2020Smooth Exploration for Robotic Reinforcement Learningcited by 54
  17. 2023IndustReal: Transferring Contact-Rich Assembly Tasks from Simulation to Realitycited by 53
  18. 2017Count-Based Exploration in Feature Space for Reinforcement Learningcited by 49
  19. 2024DextrAH-RGB: Visuomotor Policies to Grasp Anything with Dexterous Handscited by 45
  20. 2024JUICER: Data-Efficient Imitation Learning for Robotic Assemblycited by 38
  21. 2022Curious Exploration via Structured World Models Yields Zero-Shot Object Manipulationcited by 31
  22. 2023CCIL: Continuity-based Data Augmentation for Corrective Imitation Learningcited by 29
  23. 2022Lyapunov Design for Robust and Efficient Robotic Reinforcement Learningcited by 28
  24. 2024AutoMate: Specialist and Generalist Assembly Policies over Diverse Geometriescited by 26
  25. 2020Guided Uncertainty-Aware Policy Optimization: Combining Learning and Model-Based Strategies for Sample-Efficient Policy Learningcited by 25
  26. 2018BaRC: Backward Reachability Curriculum for Robotic Reinforcement Learningcited by 23
  27. 2018Backplay: "Man muss immer umkehren"cited by 21
  28. 2022Mastering the Unsupervised Reinforcement Learning Benchmark from Pixelscited by 21
  29. 2024SAPG: Split and Aggregate Policy Gradientscited by 21
  30. 2018Forward-Backward Reinforcement Learningcited by 19
  31. 2024Reverse Forward Curriculum Learning for Extreme Sample and Demonstration Efficiency in Reinforcement Learningcited by 13
  32. 2025Towards bridging the gap: Systematic sim-to-real transfer for diverse legged robotscited by 12
  33. 2025Staggered Environment Resets Improve Massively Parallel On-Policy Reinforcement Learningcited by 3
  34. 2024Dense Dynamics-Aware Reward Synthesis: Integrating Prior Experience with Demonstrationscited by 2

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 10.

10 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025Towards Human-level Dexterity via Robot Learning
  2. 2024Precise and Dexterous Robotic Manipulation via Human-in-the-Loop Reinforcement Learning
  3. 2024R×R: Rapid eXploration for Reinforcement Learning via Sampling-based Reset Distributions and Imitation Pre-training
  4. 2026Dex-One2Many: Learning Dexterous Manipulation from a Single Human Demonstration
  5. 2026Emerging Extrinsic Dexterity in Cluttered Scenes via Dynamics-aware Policy Learning
  6. 2026A Minimalist Retargeting-Guided Reinforcement Learning Recipe for Dexterous Manipulation
  7. 2026Res-HIL: Human-Guided Residual Reinforcement Learning for Sample-Efficient Dexterous Manipulation
  8. 2026Coherent Off-Policy Improvement of Large Behavior Models with Learned Rewards