Abstract:Recent advances in reinforcement learning (RL) have enabled impressive humanoid behaviors in simulation, yet transferring these results to new robots remains challenging. In many real deployments, the primary bottleneck is no longer simulation throughput or algorithm design, but the absence of systematic infrastructure that links environment verification, training, evaluation, and deployment in a coherent loop. To address this gap, we present AGILE, an end-to-end workflow for humanoid RL that standardizes the policy-development lifecycle to mitigate common sim-to-real failure modes. AGILE comprises four stages: (1) interactive environment verification, (2) reproducible training, (3) unified evaluation, and (4) descriptor-driven deployment via robot/task configuration descriptors. For evaluation stage, AGILE supports both scenario-based tests and randomized rollouts under a shared suite of motion-quality diagnostics, enabling automated regression testing and principled robustness assessment. AGILE also incorporates a set of training stabilizations and algorithmic enhancements in training stage to improve optimization stability and sim-to-real transfer. With this pipeline in place, we validate AGILE across five representative humanoid skills spanning locomotion, recovery, motion imitation, and loco-manipulation on two hardware platforms (Unitree G1 and Booster T1), achieving consistent sim-to-real transfer. Overall, AGILE shows that a standardized, end-to-end workflow can substantially improve the reliability and reproducibility of humanoid RL development.
Abstract:Unsupervised Skill Discovery (USD) allows agents to autonomously learn diverse behaviors without task-specific rewards. While recent USD methods have shown promise, their application to real-world robotics remains underexplored. In this paper, we propose a modular USD framework to address the challenges in the safety, interpretability, and deployability of the learned skills. Our approach employs user-defined factorization of the state space to learn disentangled skill representations. It assigns different skill discovery algorithms to each factor based on the desired intrinsic reward function. To encourage structured morphology-aware skills, we introduce symmetry-based inductive biases tailored to individual factors. We also incorporate a style factor and regularization penalties to promote safe and robust behaviors. We evaluate our framework in simulation using a quadrupedal robot and demonstrate zero-shot transfer of the learned skills to real hardware. Our results show that factorization and symmetry lead to the discovery of structured human-interpretable behaviors, while the style factor and penalties enhance safety and diversity. Additionally, we show that the learned skills can be used for downstream tasks and perform on par with oracle policies trained with hand-crafted rewards.




Abstract:In challenging terrains, constructing structures such as antennas and cable-car masts often requires the use of helicopters to transport loads via ropes. The swinging of the load, exacerbated by wind, impairs positioning accuracy, therefore necessitating precise manual placement by ground crews. This increases costs and risk of injuries. Challenging this paradigm, we present Geranos: a specialized multirotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) designed to enhance aerial transportation and assembly. Geranos demonstrates exceptional prowess in accurately positioning vertical poles, achieving this through an innovative integration of load transport and precision. Its unique ring design mitigates the impact of high pole inertia, while a lightweight two-part grasping mechanism ensures secure load attachment without active force. With four primary propellers countering gravity and four auxiliary ones enhancing lateral precision, Geranos achieves comprehensive position and attitude control around hovering. Our experimental demonstration mimicking antenna/cable-car mast installations showcases Geranos ability in stacking poles (3 kg, 2 m long) with remarkable sub-5 cm placement accuracy, without the need of human manual intervention.