Ostrich让物理模拟在大步长下稳定求解接触问题,加速优化训练。
Ostrich: Taking Large Strides Through Stiff Contact in Differentiable Dynamics

- 用非光滑牛顿法在大时间步(~0.1秒)下精确求解刚体接触与摩擦
- 梯度计算仅需常数内存,相比基线提升29倍并行优化吞吐量
- 适合需要高精度接触建模的机器人轨迹优化场景
决定可微分模拟器能否通过接触驱动梯度优化的三个关键因素是:模拟精度、梯度可靠性与每步开销。基于胶带的引擎如MJX和Newton Semi-Implicit需极小时间步以保证接触数值可处理,其反向传播内存随时间步数T线性增长。替代模型通过近似接触来限制内存,但损失了优化依赖的几何信息。我们提出Ostrich,一种基于GPU加速的刚体模拟器,能在大时间步(h ~ 0.1 s)下通过非光滑牛顿迭代解决硬接触与摩擦,并利用隐函数定理对收敛残差求导,复用前向舒尔补进行伴随计算,实现每步仅需O(1)内存。在包含托盘障碍物的真实机器人轨迹上,Ostrich在50倍于基准的时间步下仍保持MuJoCo的仿真到现实精度。其梯度从随机初始化即可快速收敛,而MJX缓慢下降,Semi-Implicit停滞;一次预热迭代速度比MJX快211倍,比Semi-Implicit快4.7倍。在同一场景中,单张24 GB GPU可并行处理8,192个世界,优化吞吐量达检查点版本的29倍;未启用检查点时,两个基线在更少世界数下即耗尽内存。最后展示了一个在三角网格地形上跨10秒时间窗的梯度优化轨迹规划,此前引擎或仅限于简单几何,或受限于收敛与内存瓶颈。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Three properties determine whether a differentiable simulator can drive gradient-based optimization through contact: simulation accuracy, gradient reliability, and per-iteration cost. Tape-based engines such as MJX and Newton Semi-Implicit require timesteps small enough to keep contacts numerically tractable, and their backpropagation memory grows linearly with the number of timesteps T. Surrogate models bound memory by approximating contact away, but the resulting gradients lose the geometry the optimization depends on. We present Ostrich, a GPU-accelerated rigid-body simulator that resolves hard contacts and friction with non-smooth Newton iteration at large timesteps (h ~ 0.1 s), and differentiates the converged residual via the implicit function theorem, reusing the forward Schur complement to compute the adjoint at O(1) memory per timestep. On real-robot trajectories over a pallet obstacle, Ostrich holds MuJoCo's sim-to-real accuracy up to a 50x larger timestep. Its gradients converge from random initializations where MJX descends slowly and Newton Semi-Implicit stalls; a warm iteration runs 211x faster than MJX's and 4.7x faster than Semi-Implicit's. On the same scene Ostrich differentiates 8,192 parallel worlds on a single 24 GB GPU, sustaining 29x checkpointed MJX's optimization throughput; without checkpointing both baselines exhaust memory at far fewer worlds. We close with a gradient-based trajectory optimization demonstration over triangle-mesh terrain across a 10 s horizon, a setting where prior engines either restrict to primitive geometry or face the convergence and memory limits shown above.
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