Deep Whole-body Parkour

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Authors: Ziwen Zhuang, Shaoting Zhu, Mengjie Zhao, Hang Zhao
Cited by: 0

Abstract

Current approaches to humanoid control generally fall into two paradigms: perceptive locomotion, which handles terrain well but is limited to pedal gaits, and general motion tracking, which reproduces complex skills but ignores environmental capabilities. This work unites these paradigms to achieve perceptive general motion control. We present a framework where exteroceptive sensing is integrated into whole-body motion tracking, permitting a humanoid to perform highly dynamic, non-locomotion tasks on uneven terrain. By training a single policy to perform multiple distinct motions across varied terrestrial features, we demonstrate the non-trivial benefit of integrating perception into the control loop. Our results show that this framework enables robust, highly dynamic multi-contact motions, such as vaulting and dive-rolling, on unstructured terrain, significantly expanding the robot's traversability beyond simple walking or running. https://project-instinct.github.io/deep-whole-body-parkour

Fields of Study & Subjects

Robotic Locomotion and Control Reinforcement Learning in Robotics Human Motion and Animation

Publication details

Journal / source
arXiv (Cornell University)
Publication date
12 January 2026
Document type
Preprint