Sim-to-Real Transfer Reading List

Curated by Mouhssine Rifaki | Stanford Electrical Engineering | Last updated August 2026

Bridging the gap between simulated training and real-world deployment for learned policies.

Sim-to-Real Transfer: 10 key papers

1. Domain Randomization for Transferring Deep Neural Networks from Simulation to the Real World
   Tobin et al. arXiv 2017.
2. Sim-to-Real Transfer of Robotic Control with Dynamics Randomization
   Peng et al. arXiv 2017.
3. Learning Dexterous In-Hand Manipulation
   Andrychowicz et al. arXiv 2018.
4. Solving Rubik's Cube with a Robot Hand
   Akkaya et al. arXiv 2019.
5. Sim-to-Real: Learning Agile Locomotion For Quadruped Robots
   Tan et al. arXiv 2018.
6. Closing the Sim-to-Real Loop: Adapting Simulation Randomization with Real World Experience
   Chebotar et al. arXiv 2018.
7. Active Domain Randomization
   Mehta et al. arXiv 2019.
8. Learning Quadrupedal Locomotion over Challenging Terrain
   Lee et al. arXiv 2020.
9. Sim-to-Real Transfer in Deep Reinforcement Learning for Robotics: a Survey
   Zhao et al. arXiv 2020.
10. RL-CycleGAN: Reinforcement Learning Aware Simulation-To-Real
    Rao et al. arXiv 2020.

Related reading lists

• Domain Adaptation & Domain Generalization
• Autonomous Driving with RL
• World Models and Model-Based RL
• Behavioral Cloning & Offline Imitation
• Generalisation in RL
• Multi-Task & Transfer Reinforcement Learning
• Active Learning & Adaptive Sampling
• Meta-Reinforcement Learning