Generalized Animal Imitator: Agile Locomotion with Versatile Motion Prior

Ruihan Yang, Zhuoqun Chen, Jianhan Ma, Chongyi Zheng, Yiyu Chen, Quan Nguyen, Xiaolong Wang
Proceedings of The 8th Conference on Robot Learning, PMLR 270:4631-4650, 2025.

Abstract

The agility of animals, particularly in complex activities such as running, turning, jumping, and backflipping, stands as an exemplar for robotic system design. Transferring this suite of behaviors to legged robotic systems introduces essential inquiries: How can a robot be trained to learn multiple locomotion behaviors simultaneously? How can the robot execute these tasks with a smooth transition? How to integrate these skills for wide-range applications? This paper introduces the Versatile Instructable Motion prior (VIM) – a Reinforcement Learning framework designed to incorporate a range of agile locomotion tasks suitable for advanced robotic applications. Our framework enables legged robots to learn diverse agile low-level skills by imitating animal motions and manually designed motions. Our Functionality reward guides the robot’s ability to adopt varied skills, and our Stylization reward ensures that robot motions align with reference motions. Our evaluations of the VIM framework span both simulation environments and real-world deployment. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that allows a robot to concurrently learn diverse agile locomotion skills using a single learning-based controller in the real world.

Cite this Paper

BibTeX
@InProceedings{pmlr-v270-yang25b, title = {Generalized Animal Imitator: Agile Locomotion with Versatile Motion Prior}, author = {Yang, Ruihan and Chen, Zhuoqun and Ma, Jianhan and Zheng, Chongyi and Chen, Yiyu and Nguyen, Quan and Wang, Xiaolong}, booktitle = {Proceedings of The 8th Conference on Robot Learning}, pages = {4631--4650}, year = {2025}, editor = {Agrawal, Pulkit and Kroemer, Oliver and Burgard, Wolfram}, volume = {270}, series = {Proceedings of Machine Learning Research}, month = {06--09 Nov}, publisher = {PMLR}, pdf = {https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mlresearch/v270/main/assets/yang25b/yang25b.pdf}, url = {https://proceedings.mlr.press/v270/yang25b.html}, abstract = {The agility of animals, particularly in complex activities such as running, turning, jumping, and backflipping, stands as an exemplar for robotic system design. Transferring this suite of behaviors to legged robotic systems introduces essential inquiries: How can a robot be trained to learn multiple locomotion behaviors simultaneously? How can the robot execute these tasks with a smooth transition? How to integrate these skills for wide-range applications? This paper introduces the Versatile Instructable Motion prior (VIM) – a Reinforcement Learning framework designed to incorporate a range of agile locomotion tasks suitable for advanced robotic applications. Our framework enables legged robots to learn diverse agile low-level skills by imitating animal motions and manually designed motions. Our Functionality reward guides the robot’s ability to adopt varied skills, and our Stylization reward ensures that robot motions align with reference motions. Our evaluations of the VIM framework span both simulation environments and real-world deployment. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that allows a robot to concurrently learn diverse agile locomotion skills using a single learning-based controller in the real world.} }
Endnote
%0 Conference Paper %T Generalized Animal Imitator: Agile Locomotion with Versatile Motion Prior %A Ruihan Yang %A Zhuoqun Chen %A Jianhan Ma %A Chongyi Zheng %A Yiyu Chen %A Quan Nguyen %A Xiaolong Wang %B Proceedings of The 8th Conference on Robot Learning %C Proceedings of Machine Learning Research %D 2025 %E Pulkit Agrawal %E Oliver Kroemer %E Wolfram Burgard %F pmlr-v270-yang25b %I PMLR %P 4631--4650 %U https://proceedings.mlr.press/v270/yang25b.html %V 270 %X The agility of animals, particularly in complex activities such as running, turning, jumping, and backflipping, stands as an exemplar for robotic system design. Transferring this suite of behaviors to legged robotic systems introduces essential inquiries: How can a robot be trained to learn multiple locomotion behaviors simultaneously? How can the robot execute these tasks with a smooth transition? How to integrate these skills for wide-range applications? This paper introduces the Versatile Instructable Motion prior (VIM) – a Reinforcement Learning framework designed to incorporate a range of agile locomotion tasks suitable for advanced robotic applications. Our framework enables legged robots to learn diverse agile low-level skills by imitating animal motions and manually designed motions. Our Functionality reward guides the robot’s ability to adopt varied skills, and our Stylization reward ensures that robot motions align with reference motions. Our evaluations of the VIM framework span both simulation environments and real-world deployment. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that allows a robot to concurrently learn diverse agile locomotion skills using a single learning-based controller in the real world.
APA
Yang, R., Chen, Z., Ma, J., Zheng, C., Chen, Y., Nguyen, Q. & Wang, X.. (2025). Generalized Animal Imitator: Agile Locomotion with Versatile Motion Prior. Proceedings of The 8th Conference on Robot Learning, in Proceedings of Machine Learning Research 270:4631-4650 Available from https://proceedings.mlr.press/v270/yang25b.html.

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