- Mon 09 November 2020
- Publication
- Zhongyu Li, Xuxin Cheng, Xue Bin Peng, Pieter Abbeel, Sergey Levine, Glen Berseth, Koushil Sreenath
- IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2021)
- #ReinforcementLearning, #Robotics, #Sim2Real
Developing robust walking controllers for bipedal robots is a challenging endeavor. Traditional model-based loco-motion controllers require simplifying assumptions and careful modelling; any small errors can result in unstable control. To address these challenges for bipedal locomotion, we presenta model-free reinforcement learning framework for training robust locomotion policies in simulation, which can then be transferred to a real bipedal Cassie robot. To facilitate sim-to-real transfer, domain randomization is used to encourage the policies to learn behaviors that are robust across variations in system dynamics. The learned policies enable Cassie to performa set of diverse and dynamic behaviors, while also being more robust than traditional controllers and prior learning-based methods that use residual control. We demonstrate this on versatile walking behaviors such as tracking a target walking velocity, walking height, and turning yaw.