Rapid Locomotion via Reinforcement Learning


Gabriel B Margolis (Massachusetts Institute of Technology),
Ge Yang (University of Chicago),
Kartik Paigwar (Arizona State University),
Tao Chen (Massachusetts Institute of Technology),
Pulkit Agrawal (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Paper Website
Paper #022
Session 4. Short talks


Abstract

Agile maneuvers such as sprinting and high-speed turning in the wild are challenging for legged robots. We present an end-to-end learned controller that achieves record agility for the MIT Mini Cheetah, sustaining speeds up to 3.9 m/s. This system runs and turns fast on natural terrains like grass, ice, and gravel and responds robustly to disturbances. Our controller is a neural network trained in simulation via reinforcement learning and transferred to the real world. The two key components are (i) an adaptive curriculum on velocity commands and (ii) an online system identification strategy for sim-to-real transfer leveraged from prior work. Videos of the robot’s behaviors are available at https://agility.csail.mit.edu/

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