{"ID":2851270,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.20706","arxiv_id":"2510.20706","title":"Real-Time Gait Adaptation for Quadrupeds using Model Predictive Control and Reinforcement Learning","abstract":"Model-free reinforcement learning (RL) has enabled adaptable and agile quadruped locomotion; however, policies often converge to a single gait, leading to suboptimal performance. Traditionally, Model Predictive Control (MPC) has been extensively used to obtain task-specific optimal policies but lacks the ability to adapt to varying environments. To address these limitations, we propose an optimization framework for real-time gait adaptation in a continuous gait space, combining the Model Predictive Path Integral (MPPI) algorithm with a Dreamer module to produce adaptive and optimal policies for quadruped locomotion. At each time step, MPPI jointly optimizes the actions and gait variables using a learned Dreamer reward that promotes velocity tracking, energy efficiency, stability, and smooth transitions, while penalizing abrupt gait changes. A learned value function is incorporated as terminal reward, extending the formulation to an infinite-horizon planner. We evaluate our framework in simulation on the Unitree Go1, demonstrating an average reduction of up to 36.48 % in energy consumption across varying target speeds, while maintaining accurate tracking and adaptive, task-appropriate gaits.","short_abstract":"Model-free reinforcement learning (RL) has enabled adaptable and agile quadruped locomotion; however, policies often converge to a single gait, leading to suboptimal performance. Traditionally, Model Predictive Control (MPC) has been extensively used to obtain task-specific optimal policies but lacks the ability to ada...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.20706","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.20706v2","authors":"[\"Prakrut Kotecha\",\"Ganga Nair B\",\"Shishir Kolathaya\"]","published":"2025-10-23T16:17:45Z","proceeding":"cs.RO","tasks":"[\"cs.RO\",\"cs.AI\"]","methods":"[\"Reinforcement Learning\"]","has_code":false}