Cartwheel Open-Sources Three Full-Body Humanoid Control Policies, G1 Can Do a Cartwheel
Robotics company Cartwheel has released Cartwheel Control, a hardware-agnostic training method for whole-body motion control: policies are trained on large-scale kinematic motion data, and given any reference trajectory, the policy drives joints at 50 Hz to execute everything from subtle center-of-mass shifts to highly dynamic movements in physical simulation, with cross-morphology tracking accuracy of 15–20 mm.
Confirmed
- Three motion-tracking policies were open-sourced the same day, covering platforms including Unitree G1 and Menlo's Azimut; the authors say they can be up and running in about 2 minutes.
- Demonstrated capabilities include a real Unitree G1 side flip, RP1 stably landing 360° backflips, plus delicate moves like footwork and weight shifts.
- Technical approach: layering generative kinematics on top of a 50 Hz tracking policy, so every advance in motion generation translates directly into robot execution.
Why it matters
- Cartwheel argues that generative kinematics alone has expressiveness and semantics but no physics, while motion control alone has balance but no idea what to do next—the two layered together are complementary.
- This approach eliminates thousands of hours of teleoperation data collection, lowering the barrier to whole-body humanoid control training; the open-sourced policies also let the community directly reproduce and verify the results.
2026-11-11 ~ 2026-11-11 · 5 related posts
Primary sources
- Cartwheel releases three open motion-tracking policies for humanoid robots on Hugging Face — andrew_n_carr ·
- Cartwheel details 15–20mm cross-body motion tracking via SuperMimic recipe — andrew_n_carr ·
- Cartwheel's thesis: generative kinematics atop a 50Hz tracking policy, no teleop grind — andrew_n_carr ·
- [source] Cartwheel releases three open motion-tracking policies for humanoid robots on Hugging Face — andrew_n_carr · 2026-11-11
- Cartwheel's open policies drive joints at 50Hz — G1 cartwheel, RP1 backflip — andrew_n_carr · 2026-11-11
- [source] Cartwheel details 15–20mm cross-body motion tracking via SuperMimic recipe — andrew_n_carr · 2026-11-11
- [source] Cartwheel's thesis: generative kinematics atop a 50Hz tracking policy, no teleop grind — andrew_n_carr · 2026-11-11
1 near-duplicate retellings: andrew_n_carr