Learning Reactive Dexterous Grasping via Hierarchical Task-Space RL Planning and Joint-Space QP Control

arXiv cs.RO / 5/6/2026

📰 NewsDeveloper Stack & InfrastructureModels & Research

Key Points

  • The paper presents a hierarchical reactive dexterous grasping framework that separates high-level task-space intent from low-level joint execution for safer, more controllable behavior.
  • It uses a multi-agent reinforcement learning setup (separate arm and hand agents) to generate desired task-space velocity commands, which are then converted into feasible joint velocities via a GPU-parallelized quadratic programming (QP) controller.
  • The QP layer enforces kinematic limits and collision avoidance, aiming to both speed up training convergence and provide strict hardware safety guarantees.
  • The authors claim zero-shot steerability, enabling operators to adjust safety margins and react to dynamic obstacles without retraining the policy.
  • Simulation-to-reality validation, including real-world experiments on a 7-DoF arm with a 20-DoF anthropomorphic hand, shows robust zero-shot transfer to previously unseen objects and recovery from unexpected disturbances.

Abstract

In this work, we propose a hybrid hierarchical control framework for reactive dexterous grasping that explicitly decouples high-level spatial intent from low-level joint execution. We introduce a multi-agent reinforcement learning architecture, specialized into distinct arm and hand agents, that acts as a high-level planner by generating desired task-space velocity commands. These commands are then processed by a GPU-parallelized quadratic programming controller, which translates them into feasible joint velocities while strictly enforcing kinematic limits and collision avoidance. This structural isolation not only accelerates training convergence but also strictly enforces hardware safety. Furthermore, the architecture unlocks zero-shot steerability, allowing system operators to dynamically adjust safety margins and avoid dynamic obstacles without retraining the policy. We extensively validate the proposed framework through a rigorous simulation-to-reality pipeline. Real-world hardware experiments on a 7-DoF arm equipped with a 20-DoF anthropomorphic hand demonstrate highly robust zero-shot transferability for dexterous grasping to a diverse set of unseen objects, highlighting the system's ability to reactively recover from unexpected physical disturbances in unstructured environments.