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Achieving robust humanoid hiking in complex, unstructured environments requires transitioning from reactive proprioception to proactive perception. However, integrating exteroception remains a significant challenge: mapping-based methods suffer from state estimation drift. For instance, LiDAR-based methods do not handle torso jitter well. Existing end-to-end approaches often struggle with scalability and training complexity. Specifically, some previous works using virtual obstacles are implemented case-by-case. In this work, we present Hiking in the Wild, a scalable, end-to-end perceptive parkour framework designed for robust humanoid hiking. To ensure safety and training stability, we introduce two key mechanisms: a foothold safety mechanism combining scalable Terrain Edge Detection with Foot Volume Points to prevent catastrophic slippage on edges, and a Flat Patch Sampling strategy that eliminates reward hacking by generating feasible navigation targets. Our approach utilizes a single-stage reinforcement learning scheme, mapping raw depth inputs and proprioception directly to joint actions, without relying on external state estimation. Extensive field experiments on a full-size humanoid demonstrate that our policy enables robust traversal of complex terrains at speeds up to 2.5 m/s. The training and deployment code is open-sourced to facilitate reproducible research and deployment on real robots with minimal hardware modifications.
@article{zhu2026hiking,
title={Hiking in the Wild: A Scalable Perceptive Parkour Framework for Humanoids},
author={Zhu, Shaoting and Zhuang, Ziwen and Zhao, Mengjie and Lee, Kun-Ying and Zhao, Hang},
journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.07718},
year={2026}
}