HOMIE: Humanoid Loco-Manipulation with Isomorphic Exoskeleton Cockpit

TL;DR

HOMIE is an open-source, semi-autonomous teleoperation system that integrates novel control policies, an isomorphic exoskeleton, and motion-sensing gloves to enable efficient, precise, and versatile humanoid loco-manipulation.

Contribution

The paper introduces HOMIE, a novel teleoperation system combining reinforcement learning, an exoskeleton, and motion sensors for improved humanoid control.

Findings

HOMIE reduces task completion time by half compared to previous systems.

It offers an expanded working range for reaching high and low areas.

The system is affordable at just $500 and fully open-source.

Abstract

Generalizable humanoid loco-manipulation poses significant challenges, requiring coordinated whole-body control and precise, contact-rich object manipulation. To address this, this paper introduces HOMIE, a semi-autonomous teleoperation system that combines a reinforcement learning policy for body control mapped to a pedal, an isomorphic exoskeleton arm for arm control, and motion-sensing gloves for hand control, forming a unified cockpit to freely operate humanoids and establish a data flywheel. The policy incorporates novel designs, including an upper-body pose curriculum, a height-tracking reward, and symmetry utilization. These features enable the system to perform walking and squatting to specific heights while seamlessly adapting to arbitrary upper-body poses. The exoskeleton, by eliminating the reliance on inverse dynamics, delivers faster and more precise arm control. The gloves utilize Hall sensors instead of servos, allowing even compact devices to achieve 15 or more degrees of freedom and freely adapt to any model of dexterous hands. Compared to previous teleoperation systems, HOMIE stands out for its exceptional efficiency, completing tasks in half the time; its expanded working range, allowing users to freely reach high and low areas as well as interact with any objects; and its affordability, with a price of just $500. The system is fully open-source, demos and code can be found in our https://homietele.github.io/.