Around the World: Unified Learned Locomotion on a 270 g Continuous-Rotation Quadruped

Abstract:Closed-loop learned locomotion is established on commercial quadrupeds but remains uncommon at the sub-kilogram scale. Continuous-rotation legs give MiNI-Q, a 270 g quadruped, access to supporting configurations on either side of the body. We exploit this range with a single posture-conditioned reinforcement-learning policy that runs entirely onboard. A continuous joint-space reference on the torus $T^8$ and its gravity-conditioned transformation connect upright walking, inverted walking, and landing recovery without state machines or phase switching. Coordinated posture and release curricula train this behavior family; identified actuation, cross-engine validation, and embedded execution support hardware transfer. The same sub-100k-parameter network tracks forward velocity with RMSE of 0.037 m/s upright and 0.050 m/s inverted, resumes walking in 24 of 30 release trials, and operates with four interchangeable foot geometries across four indoor surfaces. Hardware experiments and simulation ablations connect these capabilities to the representation, conditioning, and training choices that exploit the platform's motion range. Demonstration videos and supplementary material are available on the project website: this https URL.

13 pages, including appendices. Project website: this https URL

Robotics (cs.RO)

arXiv:2610.02728 [cs.RO]

(or arXiv:2610.02728v1 [cs.RO] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.02728 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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