SIMPLE: Simulation-Based Policy Learning and Evaluation for Humanoid Loco-manipulation
cs.RO
Submitted: 2026-06-06
Updated: 2026-10-12
Code: https://github.com/LeCAR-Lab/HumanoidVerse
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
The gist: Humanoid foundation models are advancing faster than we can evaluate them.
Terminology
Abstract
Humanoid foundation models are advancing faster than we can evaluate them. While real-world testing is expensive and difficult to reproduce, existing simulation benchmarks focus primarily on table-top or wheeled robots. A scalable and reproducible benchmark for whole-body humanoid loco-manipulation remains an open problem. To this end, we present SIMPLE, a unified simulation testbed for humanoid policy learning and evaluation. SIMPLE couples the accurate contact-rich dynamics of MuJoCo with the photorealistic rendering of IsaacSim. It provides a large-scale environment comprising 16 diverse whole-body tasks, 50 indoor scenes, and over 1,000 object assets. To facilitate scalable data collection, the framework integrates two data generation pipelines: automated trajectory generation via motion planning and a low-latency VR teleoperation interface. We further integrate and benchmark mainstream humanoid policies at scale in SIMPLE, including lightweight imitation networks, large vision-language-action (VLA) models, and recent world action models (WAMs). Our experiments reveal a strong correlation between policy performance in simulation and the real world. Furthermore, we demonstrate that policies trained on data collected in SIMPLE can be transferred zero-shot to physical humanoid robots under similar settings, providing a robust and reproducible foundation for humanoid robotics research.
Sources
- $\Psi_0$: An Open Foundation Model Towards Universal Humanoid Loco-Manipulation
- $\pi_{0.5}$: a Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Generalization
- World Action Models are Zero-shot Policies
- GR00T N1: An Open Foundation Model for Generalist Humanoid Robots
- RoboTwin 2.0: A Scalable Data Generator and Benchmark with Strong Domain Randomization for Robust Bimanual Robotic Manipulation
- RoboVerse: Towards a Unified Platform, Dataset and Benchmark for Scalable and Generalizable Robot Learning
- AutoEval: Autonomous Evaluation of Generalist Robot Manipulation Policies in the Real World
- Evaluating Real-World Robot Manipulation Policies in Simulation
- BODex: Scalable and Efficient Robotic Dexterous Grasp Synthesis Using Bilevel Optimization
- SONIC: Supersizing Motion Tracking for Natural Humanoid Whole-Body Control
- EgoVLA: Learning Vision-Language-Action Models from Egocentric Human Videos
- GraspVLA: a Grasping Foundation Model Pre-trained on Billion-scale Synthetic Action Data
- Uni-NaVid: A Video-based Vision-Language-Action Model for Unifying Embodied Navigation Tasks
- RoboChallenge: Large-scale Real-robot Evaluation of Embodied Policies
- RoboEval: Where Robotic Manipulation Meets Structured and Scalable Evaluation
- ManiSkill-HAB: A Benchmark for Low-Level Manipulation in Home Rearrangement Tasks
- Isaac Lab: A GPU-Accelerated Simulation Framework for Multi-Modal Robot Learning
- Isaac Gym: High Performance GPU-Based Physics Simulation For Robot Learning
- OpenAI Gym
- LeRobot: An Open-Source Library for End-to-End Robot Learning
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