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arXiv · 2602.14473

Learning Transferability: A Two-Stage Reinforcement Learning Approach for Enhancing Quadruped Robots' Performance in U-Shaped Stair Climbing

Baixiao Huang·Baiyu Huang·Yu Hou
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Abstract

Quadruped robots are employed in various scenarios in building construction. However, autonomous stair climbing across different indoor staircases remains a major challenge for robot dogs to complete building construction tasks. In this project, we employed a two-stage end-to-end deep reinforcement learning (RL) approach to optimize a robot's performance on U-shaped stairs. The training robot-dog modality, Unitree Go2, was first trained to climb stairs on Isaac Lab's pyramid-stair terrain, and then to climb a U-shaped indoor staircase using the learned policies. This project explores end-to-end RL methods that enable robot dogs to autonomously climb stairs. The results showed (1) the successful goal reached for robot dogs climbing U-shaped stairs with a stall penalty, and (2) the transferability from the policy trained on U-shaped stairs to deployment on straight, L-shaped, and spiral stair terrains, and transferability from other stair models to deployment on U-shaped terrain.

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BibTeXRIS

Baixiao Huang, Baiyu Huang, Yu Hou. 2026-02-16. Learning Transferability: A Two-Stage Reinforcement Learning Approach for Enhancing Quadruped Robots' Performance in U-Shaped Stair Climbing. https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.14473

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