MorphoGuard: A Morphology-Based Whole-Body Interactive Motion Controller

arXiv cs.RO / 4/3/2026

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Key Points

  • The paper proposes MorphoGuard, a morphology-constrained whole-body control method designed to manage arbitrary multi-contact combinations along a single kinematic chain during interactive whole-body robotic tasks.
  • It addresses key challenges in representing complex contacts and mitigating joint configuration coupling for scenarios like using one body part to push while another grasps simultaneously.
  • MorphoGuard is trained using a self-built dual-arm physical-and-simulation platform, and includes model recommendation experiments that test backbone architecture, fusion strategy, and model scale.
  • For evaluation, the authors use a multi-object interaction benchmark where the robot must manipulate multiple objects to target positions at the same time.
  • Results show about 1 cm contact point management error, indicating improved effectiveness for whole-body interactive motion control.

Abstract

Whole-body control (WBC) has demonstrated significant advantages in complex interactive movements of high-dimensional robotic systems. However, when a robot is required to handle dynamic multi-contact combinations along a single kinematic chain-such as pushing open a door with its elbow while grasping an object-it faces major obstacles in terms of complex contact representation and joint configuration coupling. To address this, we propose a new control approach that explicitly manages arbitrary contact combinations, aiming to endow robots with whole-body interactive capabilities. We develop a morphology-constrained WBC network (MorphoGuard)-which is trained on a self-constructed dual-arm physical and simulation platform. A series of model recommendation experiments are designed to systematically investigate the impact of backbone architecture, fusion strategy, and model scale on network performance. To evaluate the control performance, we adopt a multi-object interaction task as the benchmark, requiring the model to simultaneously manipulate multiple target objects to specified positions. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves a contact point management error of approximately 1 cm, demonstrating its effectiveness in whole-body interactive control.