Learning to Act Through Contact: A Unified View of Multi-Task Robot Learning

Shafeef Omar, Majid Khadiv
Proceedings of The 8th Annual Learning for Dynamics and Control Conference, PMLR 331:1199-1211, 2026.

Abstract

We present a unified framework for multi-task locomotion and manipulation policy learning grounded in a contact-explicit representation. Instead of designing different policies for different tasks, our approach unifies the definition of a task through a sequence of contact goals–desired contact positions, timings, and active end-effectors. This enables leveraging the shared structure across diverse contact-rich tasks, leading to a single policy that can perform a wide range of tasks. In particular, we train a goal-conditioned reinforcement learning (RL) policy to realise given contact plans. We validate our framework on multiple robotic embodiments and tasks: a quadruped performing multiple gaits, a humanoid performing multiple biped and quadrupedal gaits, and a humanoid executing different bimanual object manipulation tasks. Each of these scenarios is controlled by a single policy trained to execute different tasks grounded in contacts, demonstrating versatile and robust behaviours across morphologically distinct systems. Our results show that explicit contact reasoning significantly improves generalisation to unseen scenarios, positioning contact-explicit policy learning as a promising foundation for scalable loco-manipulation. Video available at: https://youtu.be/L1vjmQqvc4M

Cite this Paper

BibTeX
@InProceedings{pmlr-v331-omar26a, title = {Learning to Act Through Contact: A Unified View of Multi-Task Robot Learning}, author = {Omar, Shafeef and Khadiv, Majid}, booktitle = {Proceedings of The 8th Annual Learning for Dynamics and Control Conference}, pages = {1199--1211}, year = {2026}, editor = {Sukhatme, Gaurav and Lindemann, Lars and Tu, Stephen and Wierman, Adam and Atanasov, Nikolay}, volume = {331}, series = {Proceedings of Machine Learning Research}, month = {17--19 Jun}, publisher = {PMLR}, pdf = {https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mlresearch/v331/main/assets/omar26a/omar26a.pdf}, url = {https://proceedings.mlr.press/v331/omar26a.html}, abstract = {We present a unified framework for multi-task locomotion and manipulation policy learning grounded in a contact-explicit representation. Instead of designing different policies for different tasks, our approach unifies the definition of a task through a sequence of contact goals–desired contact positions, timings, and active end-effectors. This enables leveraging the shared structure across diverse contact-rich tasks, leading to a single policy that can perform a wide range of tasks. In particular, we train a goal-conditioned reinforcement learning (RL) policy to realise given contact plans. We validate our framework on multiple robotic embodiments and tasks: a quadruped performing multiple gaits, a humanoid performing multiple biped and quadrupedal gaits, and a humanoid executing different bimanual object manipulation tasks. Each of these scenarios is controlled by a single policy trained to execute different tasks grounded in contacts, demonstrating versatile and robust behaviours across morphologically distinct systems. Our results show that explicit contact reasoning significantly improves generalisation to unseen scenarios, positioning contact-explicit policy learning as a promising foundation for scalable loco-manipulation. Video available at: https://youtu.be/L1vjmQqvc4M} }
Endnote
%0 Conference Paper %T Learning to Act Through Contact: A Unified View of Multi-Task Robot Learning %A Shafeef Omar %A Majid Khadiv %B Proceedings of The 8th Annual Learning for Dynamics and Control Conference %C Proceedings of Machine Learning Research %D 2026 %E Gaurav Sukhatme %E Lars Lindemann %E Stephen Tu %E Adam Wierman %E Nikolay Atanasov %F pmlr-v331-omar26a %I PMLR %P 1199--1211 %U https://proceedings.mlr.press/v331/omar26a.html %V 331 %X We present a unified framework for multi-task locomotion and manipulation policy learning grounded in a contact-explicit representation. Instead of designing different policies for different tasks, our approach unifies the definition of a task through a sequence of contact goals–desired contact positions, timings, and active end-effectors. This enables leveraging the shared structure across diverse contact-rich tasks, leading to a single policy that can perform a wide range of tasks. In particular, we train a goal-conditioned reinforcement learning (RL) policy to realise given contact plans. We validate our framework on multiple robotic embodiments and tasks: a quadruped performing multiple gaits, a humanoid performing multiple biped and quadrupedal gaits, and a humanoid executing different bimanual object manipulation tasks. Each of these scenarios is controlled by a single policy trained to execute different tasks grounded in contacts, demonstrating versatile and robust behaviours across morphologically distinct systems. Our results show that explicit contact reasoning significantly improves generalisation to unseen scenarios, positioning contact-explicit policy learning as a promising foundation for scalable loco-manipulation. Video available at: https://youtu.be/L1vjmQqvc4M
APA
Omar, S. & Khadiv, M.. (2026). Learning to Act Through Contact: A Unified View of Multi-Task Robot Learning. Proceedings of The 8th Annual Learning for Dynamics and Control Conference, in Proceedings of Machine Learning Research 331:1199-1211 Available from https://proceedings.mlr.press/v331/omar26a.html.

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