Walk Like This: Stylized Locomotion for Physics-Based Characters through Example-Driven Diffusion

Engineering notes

Engineering notes will be added by the Robot Papers editorial team.

Chinese explanation / 中文解读

中文解读待补充：本站会优先为 VLA、具身智能、人形机器人控制、机器人操作等高价值论文补充中文说明。

Original abstract

We present a real-time framework for expressive legged locomotion that enables independent control over velocity and style. Unlike existing data-driven controllers, which typically require explicit style labels for training, our method efficiently leverages large-scale unstructured motion data and generalizes to unseen styles. We disentangle style from functional locomotion through a tailored sampling strategy used to train a style encoder whose output conditions an autoregressive diffusion model. During inference, the user provides a style reference clip and a joystick velocity command. The diffusion model then generates a kinematic reference tracked by a reinforcement learning controller. To improve user controllability and stylization strength, we propose an attention biasing mechanism and a velocity command correction strategy. We demonstrate our method on a physics-based humanoid character in simulation and on a physical robot, showcasing robust real-time control and continuous style modulation. The results can be best seen in our supplemental video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roFnS6N7nJ4).

Links and sources

• Official / arXiv page
• PDF from original source

Comments