From Rolling Over to Walking: Enabling Humanoid Robots to Develop Complex Motor Skills

Abstract: This paper presents an innovative method for humanoid robots to acquire a comprehensive set of motor skills through reinforcement learning. The approach utilizes an achievement-triggered multi-path reward function rooted in developmental robotics principles, facilitating the robot to learn gross motor skills typically mastered by human infants within a single training phase. The proposed method outperforms standard reinforcement learning techniques in success rates and learning speed within a simulation environment. By leveraging the principles of self-discovery and exploration integral to infant learning, this method holds the potential to significantly advance humanoid robot motor skill acquisition.