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Related papers: A Monte Carlo Approach to Closing the Reality Gap

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A significant challenge for robot learning research is our ability to accurately measure and compare the performance of robot policies. Benchmarking in robotics is historically challenging due to the stochasticity, reproducibility, and…

Simulation-to-real is the task of training and developing machine learning models and deploying them in real settings with minimal additional training. This approach is becoming increasingly popular in fields such as robotics. However,…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-07-18 Yizhou Zhao , Yuanhong Zeng , Qian Long , Ying Nian Wu , Song-Chun Zhu

In this paper, we introduce the notion of neural simulation gap functions, which formally quantifies the gap between the mathematical model and the model in the high-fidelity simulator, which closely resembles reality. Many times, a…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-06-24 P Sangeerth , Pushpak Jagtap

The motion of robots and objects in our world is often highly dependent upon contact. When contact is expected but does not occur or when contact is not expected but does occur, robot behavior diverges from plan, often disastrously. This…

Robotics · Computer Science 2016-08-05 Samuel Zapolsky , Evan Drumwright

Current vision-based robotics simulation benchmarks have significantly advanced robotic manipulation research. However, robotics is fundamentally a real-world problem, and evaluation for real-world applications has lagged behind in…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-08-18 Xuning Yang , Clemens Eppner , Jonathan Tremblay , Dieter Fox , Stan Birchfield , Fabio Ramos

With the goal to provide absolute lower bounds for the best possible running times that can be achieved by $(1+\lambda)$-type search heuristics on common benchmark problems, we recently suggested a dynamic programming approach that computes…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2021-02-24 Kirill Antonov , Maxim Buzdalov , Arina Buzdalova , Carola Doerr

The sim-to-real gap remains a critical challenge in robotics, hindering the deployment of algorithms trained in simulation to real-world systems. This paper introduces a novel Real-Sim-Real (RSR) loop framework leveraging differentiable…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-03-19 Lu Shi , Yuxuan Xu , Shiyu Wang , Jinhao Huang , Wenhao Zhao , Yufei Jia , Zike Yan , Weibin Gu , Guyue Zhou

One fundamental difficulty in robotic learning is the sim-real gap problem. In this work, we propose to use segmentation as the interface between perception and control, as a domain-invariant state representation. We identify two sources of…

Robotics · Computer Science 2020-05-19 Mengyuan Yan , Qingyun Sun , Iuri Frosio , Stephen Tyree , Jan Kautz

Recently, deep reinforcement learning (RL) has shown some impressive successes in robotic manipulation applications. However, training robots in the real world is nontrivial owing to sample efficiency and safety concerns. Sim-to-real…

We use Monte Carlo techniques to simulate an organized prediction competition between a group of a scientific experts acting under the influence of a ``self-governing'' prediction reward algorithm. Our aim is to illustrate the advantages of…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2023-05-09 J. O. Gonzalez-Hernandez , Jonathan Marino , Ted Rogers , Brandon Velasco

Robots can learn to do complex tasks in simulation, but often, learned behaviors fail to transfer well to the real world due to simulator imperfections (the reality gap). Some existing solutions to this sim-to-real problem, such as Grounded…

Robotics · Computer Science 2020-08-05 Haresh Karnan , Siddharth Desai , Josiah P. Hanna , Garrett Warnell , Peter Stone

Reliable simulation evaluation of robot manipulation policies serves as a high-fidelity proxy for real-world performance. Although existing benchmarks cover a wide range of task categories, they lack visual realism, creating a large domain…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-05-08 Yixin Zhu , Zixiong Wang , Jian Yang , Jin Xie , Jingyi Yu , Jiayuan Gu , Beibei Wang

This paper introduces the notion of stochastic simulation-gap function, which formally quantifies the gap between an approximate mathematical model and a high-fidelity stochastic simulator. Since controllers designed for the mathematical…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-03-24 P Sangeerth , Abolfazl Lavaei , Pushpak Jagtap

Metropolis Monte Carlo simulation is a powerful tool for studying the equilibrium properties of matter. In complex condensed-phase systems, however, it is difficult to design Monte Carlo moves with high acceptance probabilities that also…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2014-05-27 Jerome P. Nilmeier , Gavin E. Crooks , David D. L. Minh , John D. Chodera

In sim-to-real Reinforcement Learning (RL), a policy is trained in a simulated environment and then deployed on the physical system. The main challenge of sim-to-real RL is to overcome the reality gap - the discrepancies between the real…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-06-13 Nghia Vuong , Quang-Cuong Pham

Policies trained in simulation often fail when transferred to the real world due to the `reality gap' where the simulator is unable to accurately capture the dynamics and visual properties of the real world. Current approaches to tackle…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-05-21 Yuqing Du , Olivia Watkins , Trevor Darrell , Pieter Abbeel , Deepak Pathak

We propose a novel iterative approach for crossing the reality gap that utilises live robot rollouts and differentiable physics. Our method, RealityGrad, demonstrates for the first time, an efficient sim2real transfer in combination with a…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-09-13 Jack Collins , Ross Brown , Jürgen Leitner , David Howard

In order to optimize the costs and time of design of the new products while improving their quality, concurrent engineering is based on the digital model of these products, the numerical model. However, in order to be able to avoid…

Robotics · Computer Science 2007-07-19 Damien Chablat

We describe collective-move Monte Carlo algorithms designed to approximate the overdamped dynamics of self-assembling nanoscale components equipped with strong, short-ranged and anisotropic interactions. Conventional Monte Carlo simulations…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2012-04-16 Stephen Whitelam

Developing robot controllers in a simulated environment is advantageous but transferring the controllers to the target environment presents challenges, often referred to as the "sim-to-real gap". We present a method for continuous…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-11-24 Sirui Chen , Keenon Werling , Albert Wu , C. Karen Liu