Neuroevolution of Humanoids that Walk Further and Faster with Robust Gaits

Bipedal locomotion requires precise rhythm and balance. Here we demonstrate two fitness-function enhancements applied to OpenAI?s 3D Humanoid-v1 walking task using a replica of Salimans et al.?s evolution strategy (Salimans et al., 2017). The first enhancement reduces control cost, following a start-up period, and the second enhancement penalises poor balance. Individually, each enhancement results in improved gaits and doubles both median speed and median distance walked. Combining the two enhancements results in little further improvement in the absence of noise but is shown to produce gaits that are much more robust to noise in their actions, with median speed, distance and time two to five times those of the default and individual-enhancement gaits at an intermediate noise level