JHU makes a Unitree G1 crawl like a spider with temperature-aware training, code open-sourced

_krishna_murthy · x · 2026-11-07

For Halloween, a Johns Hopkins team got their Unitree G1 humanoid to crawl like a spider — and open-sourced the full code on GitHub.

Key details:

• The 29-DoF G1 walks, gets down on all fours, crawls, and stands back up; forearms act as front legs with 3D-printed wrist braces extending into rounded feet
• Policies were trained in mjlab (MuJoCo-Warp + RSL-RL PPO) against a model of motor heating, so the robot can hold and crawl without tripping the motors' thermal cut-off — hence "temperature aware"
• The repo includes training, deployment, real-world implementation, hardware mounts, and real-robot crawl footage

The lab is doubling down on whole-body locomanipulation research at JHU and is recruiting.

Original post →

More from Embodied

• Home robot picks up any clothing with 97% success on unseen garments — chris_j_paxton · 2026-11-07
• Zurich team shows tactile + mocap glove is all you need for robot retargeting — arnie_hacker · 2026-11-07
• Musk: SpaceX to attempt first-ever Starship upper stage tower catch with Ship 42 in about a week — XFreeze · 2026-11-07
• Wheeled factory humanoid AIR unveiled in Munich, just 9 months from research start — xmercury_one · 2026-11-07
• Musk: 20-30M humanoid robots could match entire US output; Tesla may rent Optimus instead of selling — XFreeze · 2026-11-07
• 11,398 real-world robot evals across 124 sites confirm GPT-6 Astra is seriously strong — DJiafei · 2026-11-07

Embodied channel →