arXiv Machine Learning

Reinforcement Learning Enables Scaling Generalist Robot Policy Improvement

arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 23

What Does It Take For A Generalist Robot Policy To Adapt Using Minimal Data?

The paper introduces a minimal‑data adaptation regime where a pretrained robot policy learns a new task from a single demonstration followed by autonomous online interaction. It shows that while zero‑shot performance is poor, one demonstration can guide the policy toward coarse task‑following, and identifies key design principles—pretrained VLA representations for sample‑efficient value learning, residual policy learning for corrective behavior, and data‑balancing to avoid exploration collapse. The proposed MiDAS method, combining few‑demonstration behavior cloning with value‑based residual learning over frozen VLA representations, significantly boosts task success on LIBERO, RoboCasa, and a bimanual YAM platform after only a few hours of online interaction.

By Shreyas Kowshik, Sreyas Venkataraman, Leo Wang, Niharika Pant, Max Simchowitz, Aviral Kumar
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 21

From Pretraining to Proficiency: Real-World Subtask RL for Long-Horizon Manipulation with Minimal Human Intervention

The paper introduces PARTS, a real‑world subtask reinforcement learning framework that fine‑tunes a pretrained robot policy by focusing on critical bottleneck subtasks while keeping the base policy frozen. It uses agent‑generated selectors and success verifiers to provide local rewards, enabling learning even when full‑task successes are rare. Experiments on bimanual YAM and single‑arm Franka robots show that PARTS raises complete‑task success from 32% to 61% and from 50% to 95%, respectively, with only tens of minutes of real‑world RL rollouts and minimal human intervention.

By Sichang Su, Benjamin Yang, Zhiyun Deng, Boyuan Liang, Yip Fun Yeung, Zelin Wang, Lingfeng Sun
arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 7

Generalizable Dense Reward for Long-Horizon Robotic Tasks

arXiv:2604.00055v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Existing robotic foundation policies are trained primarily via large-scale imitation learning. While such models demonstrate strong capabilit...

By Silong Yong, Stephen Sheng, Carl Qi, Xiaojie Wang, Evan Sheehan, Anurag Shivaprasad, Yaqi Xie, Katia Sycara, Yesh Dattatreya
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 11

RynnValue: Scaling Robotic Value Foundation Models with Temporal Distance

arXiv:2608. 09853v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: General-purpose reward models are increasingly the bottleneck for scaling robot learning, yet the recipe for learning value-related capabilities from large-scale heterogeneous corpora remains underexplored.

By Dongchi Huang, Hongyin Zhang, Bohan Hou, Siteng Huang, Zhian Su, Hang Guo, Tong Lu, Zhaofeng Xu, Jiahao Tang, Jianfei Yang, Donglin Wang, Peixi Peng, Mingxiu Chen, Deli Zhao, Xin Li
arXiv AI
Aug 18

RoboLab: A High-Fidelity Simulation Benchmark for Analysis of Task Generalist Policies

arXiv:2604. 09860v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: The pursuit of general-purpose robotics has yielded impressive foundation models, yet simulation-based benchmarking remains a bottleneck due to rapid performance saturation and a lack of true generalization testing.

By Jenai Xuning Yang, Rishit Dagli, Alex Zook, Hugo Hadfield, Ankit Goyal, Stan Birchfield, Fabio Ramos, Jonathan Tremblay
arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 15

Efficient Test-Time Adaptation For Robot Policies

arXiv:2610.20318v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Reinforcement-learning policies for robot locomotion can fail at deployment when operating conditions shift (e.g., rough or slippery terrain, payload...

By Motasem Alfarra, Pietro Mazzaglia, Markus Peschl, Daniel Dijkman, Christos Louizos