# SPRINT: Efficient Spectral Priors for Humanoid Athletic Sprints

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.28549 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.28549/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 20 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 May 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [FiLM: Visual Reasoning with a General Conditioning Layer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.07871/) (2017)
- [Human Motion Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14916/) (2022)
- [Isaac Gym: High Performance GPU-Based Physics Simulation For Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10470/) (2021)
- [TEMOS: Generating diverse human motions from textual descriptions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.14109/) (2022)
- [Action2Motion: Conditioned Generation of 3D Human Motions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.15240/) (2020)
- [Asymmetric Actor Critic for Image-Based Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.06542/) (2017)
- [Robust Motion In-betweening](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04942/) (2021)
- [Real-World Humanoid Locomotion with Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.03381/) (2023)
- [BeyondMimic: From Motion Tracking to Versatile Humanoid Control via Guided Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.08241/) (2025)
- [ASAP: Aligning Simulation and Real-World Physics for Learning Agile Humanoid Whole-Body Skills](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.01143/) (2025)
- [Reinforcement Learning for Versatile, Dynamic, and Robust Bipedal Locomotion Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.16889/) (2024)
- [GMT: General Motion Tracking for Humanoid Whole-Body Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.14770/) (2025)
- [Retargeting Matters: General Motion Retargeting for Humanoid Motion Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.02252/) (2025)
- [Humanoid-Gym: Reinforcement Learning for Humanoid Robot with Zero-Shot Sim2Real Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.05695/) (2024)
- [HumanMimic: Learning Natural Locomotion and Transitions for Humanoid Robot via Wasserstein Adversarial Imitation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.14225/) (2023)
- [Whole-body Humanoid Robot Locomotion with Human Reference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.18294/) (2024)
- [Natural Humanoid Robot Locomotion with Generative Motion Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09015/) (2025)
- [Optimizing Bipedal Locomotion for The 100m Dash With Comparison to Human Running](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.03070/) (2025)
- [RuN: Residual Policy for Natural Humanoid Locomotion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.20696/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The pursuit of humanoid athletic sprints is hindered by a scarcity of humanoid-viable kinematic reference data and the inability of existing frameworks to maintain stability during sprints. To overcome these limitations, we introduce SPRINT, a novel framework driven by efficient, frequency-adaptive spectral priors. By characterizing the fundamental periodicity of human locomotion in the frequency domain using a reference library of five discrete motion sequences, these priors generate kinematically feasible joint trajectories across a broad velocity spectrum, successfully extrapolating to speeds that exceed the reference distribution. Guided by these pretrained priors, the SPRINT policy achieves zero-shot sim-to-real transfer in field experiments on the Unitree G1 platform, reaching a peak sprinting velocity of 6 m/s and demonstrating seamless gait transitions while preserving biomimetic naturalness. Ultimately, this work establishes frequency-adaptive spectral priors as a highly data-efficient foundation for humanoid athletic sprints. The project page is available at https://anonymous.4open.science/w/SPRINT-138A/.