Interaction-Aware Whole-Body Control for Compliant Object Transport

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2603.03751v1
• Date: Wed, 04 Mar 2026 05:50:40 GMT
• Title: Interaction-Aware Whole-Body Control for Compliant Object Transport
• Authors: Hao Zhang, Yves Tseng, Ding Zhao, H. Eric Tseng,
• Abstract summary: This paper proposes an interaction-oriented whole-body control (IO-WBC) that functions as an artificial cerebellum.<n>IO-WBC translates upstream (skill-level) commands into stable, physically consistent whole-body behavior under contact.
• Score: 33.233203393813376
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Cooperative object transport in unstructured environments remains challenging for assistive humanoids because strong, time-varying interaction forces can make tracking-centric whole-body control unreliable, especially in close-contact support tasks. This paper proposes a bio-inspired, interaction-oriented whole-body control (IO-WBC) that functions as an artificial cerebellum - an adaptive motor agent that translates upstream (skill-level) commands into stable, physically consistent whole-body behavior under contact. This work structurally separates upper-body interaction execution from lower-body support control, enabling the robot to maintain balance while shaping force exchange in a tightly coupled robot-object system. A trajectory-optimized reference generator (RG) provides a kinematic prior, while a reinforcement learning (RL) policy governs body responses under heavy-load interactions and disturbances. The policy is trained in simulation with randomized payload mass/inertia and external perturbations, and deployed via asymmetric teacher-student distillation so that the student relies only on proprioceptive histories at runtime. Extensive experiments demonstrate that IO-WBC maintains stable whole-body behavior and physical interaction even when precise velocity tracking becomes infeasible, enabling compliant object transport across a wide range of scenarios.

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