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IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine

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Cross-Embodiment Imitation: Learning a Unified Latent Space for Multirobot Control

April 17, 2026 by Yashuai Yan Dongheui Lee

Abstract:

We present a scalable framework for cross-embodiment humanoid robot control by learning a shared latent representation that unifies motion across humans and diverse humanoid platforms, including single-arm, dual-arm, and legged humanoid robots. Our method proceeds in two stages. First, we construct a decoupled latent space that captures localized motion patterns across different body parts using contrastive learning, enabling accurate and flexible motion retargeting even across robots with diverse morphologies. To enhance alignment among embodiments, we introduce tailored similarity metrics that combine joint rotation and end-effector (EE) positioning for critical segments, such as arms. Then, we train a goal-conditioned control policy directly within this latent space using only human data. Leveraging a conditional variational autoencoder (c-VAE), our policy learns to predict latent space displacements guided by intended goal directions. We show that the trained policy can be directly deployed on multiple robots without any adaptation. Furthermore, our method supports the efficient addition of new robots to the latent space by learning only a lightweight robot-specific embedding layer. The learned latent policies can also be directly applied to the new robots. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach enables robust, scalable, and embodiment-agnostic robot control across a wide range of humanoid platforms.

For more about this article see link below.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11397669

For the open access PDF link of this article please click here.

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: Aerospace electronics, Contrastive learning, Humanoid robots, Legged locomotion, Measurement, Motion segmentation, Robot control, Scalability

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As the flagship magazine of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine (RAM) covers the latest developments in robotics and automation. Its scope ranges from cutting-edge technological advances to emerging social, economic, ethical, and policy issues shaping the field.  Published quarterly (March, June, September, and December), RAM features both high-impact original research articles written in an engaging and accessible style, as well as reviews, columns and opinion pieces addressing a wide range of timely topics.

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IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine  publishes four issues per year: March, June, September and December.