arXiv Machine Learning

Shape-Aware Neural Time Fields for Rigid-Body Motion and Manipulation Planning

Shape-Aware Neural Time Fields is a physics‑informed neural motion planning framework that learns a reusable travel‑time (cost‑to‑go) representation for rigid‑body motion, explicitly accounting for distinct geometric restrictions on translation and rotation. The learned field captures local motion difficulty and is combined with a sampling‑based planner that balances progress toward the goal with the cost of reaching nearby poses. Experiments on 2D and 3D planning tasks and non‑prehensile manipulation show substantial improvements in planning success and inference efficiency over neural baselines, while remaining competitive with classical planners at lower planning times, and closed‑loop pushing tests demonstrate fast replanning for reactive execution.

arXiv Computer Vision
Sep 25

Representation World Model: Learning States, Transition and Executable Plans in Representation

The Representation World Model (RWM) learns states, transitions, and executable plans directly within a representation space, bypassing traditional explicit dynamics models and action-space search. It uses inverse-dynamics supervision along latent paths to shape the representation geometry, enabling direct planning by constructing a latent path between current and goal states and recovering actions via inverse dynamics. Experiments on continuous-control benchmarks and robotic manipulation tasks demonstrate RWM’s effectiveness and potential for complex embodied control.

By Yijun Yuan, Weicheng Zheng, Weibang Wang, Minghui Qin, Chang Sun, Junhao Huang, Kenan Li, Anmin Liu, Yicheng Yao, Hang Zhao
arXiv Computer Vision
Sep 21

ULTRA: Unified Multimodal Control for Autonomous Humanoid Whole-Body Loco-Manipulation

ULTRA is a unified framework for autonomous humanoid whole-body locomotion and manipulation that overcomes limitations of prior methods by combining a physics-driven neural retargeting algorithm with a multimodal controller. The retargeting algorithm translates large-scale motion capture data into physically plausible humanoid motions, while the controller learns to handle both dense motion references and sparse task specifications using a range of sensory inputs, from accurate motion-capture states to noisy egocentric vision. In simulation and on a real Unitree G1 humanoid, ULTRA demonstrates improved generalization and robustness, enabling coordinated whole-body behavior from sparse intent without relying on test-time reference motions.

By Xialin He, Sirui Xu, Xinyao Li, Runpei Dong, Liuyu Bian, Yu-Xiong Wang, Liang-Yan Gui
arXiv Computer Vision
Oct 9

3D Point World Models: Point Completion Enables More Accurate Dynamics Learning

The paper introduces 3D Point World Models (3DPWM), a task‑agnostic world model that completes partial point clouds before learning action‑conditioned dynamics in 3D space. By operating on fully reconstructed geometry, 3DPWM achieves reliable long‑horizon rollouts (100–300+ steps) and accurate cost evaluation for model‑based planning. Experiments on various robotic embodiments and tabletop manipulation tasks show that 3DPWM supports both open‑loop and closed‑loop planning and enables successful sim‑to‑real transfer.

By Skand Peri, Hung Nguyen, Chanho Kim, Li Fuxin, Stefan Lee
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jul 6

Simple-to-Complex Structured Demonstrations for Vision-Language-Action Learning

Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models have demonstrated strong capabilities in robotic manipulation by integrating visual perception, language understanding, and robot action generation. Existing research has primarily focused on improving model architectures, training strategies, and dataset scale, while little attention has been paid to how demonstrations are collected and organized.

arXiv AI
Oct 16

Whole-Body Dexterity

Whole-Body Dexterity (WBD) is a framework that enables robots to use their entire body and appendages as contact surfaces for grasping and manipulating objects. The approach generates a dataset of feasible whole-body grasps, trains reinforcement‑learning experts on a repositioning objective, and distills them into a single policy that relies on proprioception and object geometry. The distilled policy achieves zero‑shot transfer to a real Unitree G1 robot, successfully completing complex tasks such as stowing a box under one arm and moving it from a shelf to a table, with a 90% success rate in real‑world trials.

By Conor Mc Gartoll, An Dang, Pranay Thangeda, Arjun Gupta, Carolina Higuera, Nima Fazeli, Mustafa Mukadam, Manikantan Nambi