Physics-Guided Biomechanical Gait Adaptation for Humanoid Locomotion on Extreme Sloped Terrains

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2607.07830v1
• Date: Wed, 08 Jul 2026 18:12:18 GMT
• Title: Physics-Guided Biomechanical Gait Adaptation for Humanoid Locomotion on Extreme Sloped Terrains
• Abstract summary: We propose a novel two-stage physics-guided framework, dubbed HumoSlope, dedicated to robust humanoid locomotion on sloped terrains.<n>Our framework effectively mitigates posture degeneration and enables blind, continuoustraversal of outdoor grass slopes up to 62.7%.
• Score: 8.87337310412389
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Model-free reinforcement learning has enabled impressive humanoid locomotion; however, control on steep slopes remains largely unexplored. Unlike flat or discrete terrains, sloped terrains impose a persistent gravitational bias that demands simultaneous stability and posture control. Consequently, under generic reward formulations, policies can converge to slow, conservative low-center-of-mass (CoM) crouched gaits. In this work, we propose a novel two-stage physics-guided framework, dubbed HumoSlope, dedicated to robust humanoid locomotion on diverse sloped terrains. Specifically, Stage I establishes a terrain-consistent balance prior by introducing a slope-adaptive Zero Moment Point (ZMP) regularizer evaluated directly on the local inclined support plane rather than a world-horizontal reference. To prevent the resulting policy from defaulting to a crouched posture, Stage II introduces the Biomechanical Slope Gait Adapter (BSGA). Utilizing extracted macroscopic terrain descriptors as privileged, training-only signals, BSGA dynamically gates soft reward priors to modulate CoM height and lower-limb coordination based on the estimated slope geometry -- encouraging hip-dominant uphill propulsion and knee-oriented downhill braking. Crucially, the deployed actor remains entirely proprioceptive, requiring no online exteroceptive sensing. Extensive Sim-to-Real experiments demonstrate that our framework effectively mitigates posture degeneration and enables blind, continuous traversal of outdoor grass slopes up to 62.7% ($32.1^\circ$), validating a physics-guided approach to challenging slope terrain adaptation.

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