Locomotion

Fall Recovery

Fall recovery is the behavior by which a legged robot returns to a nominal standing posture after falling, typically by sequencing contacts with its limbs and torso to right itself. Classical approaches scripted keyframe getup motions, while modern quadrupeds and humanoids increasingly use reinforcement learning policies trained in simulation to produce robust, contact-rich recovery from arbitrary fallen configurations.

Why it matters for physical AI

Falls are inevitable for legged robots in the real world, and a machine that must be manually reset cannot be deployed at scale; reliable self-righting directly determines operational uptime and safety.