Cited by 128Reinforcement Learning in RoboticsRobot Manipulation and LearningDomain Adaptation and Few-Shot Learning

Robot Learning From Randomized Simulations: A Review

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Muratore, Fabio, Ramos, Fabio, Turk, Greg, Yu, Wenhao, Gienger, Michael, Peters, Jan·2022·Frontiers in Robotics and AI

Abstract

The rise of deep learning has caused a paradigm shift in robotics research, favoring methods that require large amounts of data. Unfortunately, it is prohibitively expensive to generate such data sets on a physical platform. Therefore, state-of-the-art approaches learn in simulation where data generation is fast as well as inexpensive and subsequently transfer the knowledge to the real robot (sim-to-real). Despite becoming increasingly realistic, all simulators are by construction based on models, hence inevitably imperfect. This raises the question of how simulators can be modified to facilitate learning robot control policies and overcome the mismatch between simulation and reality, often called the “reality gap.” We provide a comprehensive review of sim-to-real research for robotics, focusing on a technique named “domain randomization” which is a method for learning from randomized simulations.

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  • The substantial domain gap between synthetic and real-world data presents significant challenges in transferring models trained in simulated environments to real-world applications.

    “While simulation provides a means to generate extensive datasets, the substantial domain gap between synthetic and real-world data presents significant challenges in transferring models trained in simulated environments to real-world applications (Muratore et al., 2022).”

    From Cosmos-Transfer1: Conditional World Generation with Adaptive Multimodal Control (2025) · cites this paper as Muratore et al., 2022

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Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Muratore, F., Ramos, F., Turk, G., Yu, W., Gienger, M., & Peters, J.
Affiliations
  • Technische Universität Darmstadt (DE)
  • The University of Sydney (AU)
  • Georgia Institute of Technology (US)
  • Google (United States) (US)
  • Honda (Germany) (DE)
Corresponding author
Muratore, Fabio
Venue
Frontiers in Robotics and AI
Published
2022-04-11
Volume
9
Pages
799893-799893
ISSN
2296-9144 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W3212380917
Cited by
128
References
17
Citations by year
2026: 40 · 2025: 38 · 2024: 27 · 2023: 14 · 2022: 9
FWCI
1.53
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Frontiers in Robotics and AI (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Technischen Universität Darmstadt (acceptedVersion, cc-by)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
  • TUbilio (Technical University of Darmstadt) (submittedVersion)
  • Technischen Universität Darmstadt (cc-by)
Funders
  • National Science Foundation (1514258)
  • European Commission (HORIZON2020)
  • H2020 European Research Council (640554)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Reinforcement Learning in Robotics
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Control and Systems Engineering › Robot Manipulation and Learning
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Domain Adaptation and Few-Shot Learning
Keywords
sim-to-real transfer, domain randomization, robot learning, reality gap, data-efficient learning

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