StairMaster

Learning to Conquer Risky Hollow Stairs for Agile Quadrupedal Robots

StairMaster: Learning to Conquer Risky Hollow Stairs for Agile Quadrupedal Robots

Xincheng Tang, Youhan Xie, Zhengjie Shu, Wanyu Li, Lai Jiang, Wenkang Hu, Litong Li, Ruigang Yang
SJTU GIFT Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Corresponding Author
tangxincheng@sjtu.edu.cn, ryang2@sjtu.edu.cn

Introduction Video

Abstract

Climbing hollow stairs remains a challenging problem for quadruped robots due to the high risk of leg trapping, severe depth sparsity, and high-frequency depth-sensing noise. In this paper, we propose StairMaster, a novel three-stage reinforcement learning framework for stable locomotion on such extreme discontinuous terrains. Our architecture integrates a Cross-Attention mechanism to extract structural features from noisy depth data, alongside a Spatial-aware Recurrent Unit (SRU) that maintains robust spatio-temporal memory to mitigate perception blind spots. To bridge the sim-to-real gap in depth perception, we propose a high-fidelity sim-to-real depth sensor modeling pipeline that faithfully replicates real-world sensor artifacts. Additionally, we employ a 3D waypoint-guided active perception reward for proactive sensing, alongside hollow gap kinematic and stair edge penalties to ensure precise foothold placement. We successfully deployed StairMaster on a Unitree Go2 robot, demonstrating its ability to conquer hollow stairs with an unprecedented incline of up to 55° through zero-shot transfer. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first RL-based policy to achieve such steep hollow stair climbing in real-world environments.

Overview

Overview of StairMaster framework

Overview of StairMaster framework.

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