arXiv Machine Learning

Facet-0: A Robotic Foundation Model for Contact-Rich Precise Manipulation

arXiv AI
Aug 26

ForceFlow: Learning to Feel and Act via Contact-Driven Flow Matching

ForceFlow is a force-aware reactive framework that uses flow matching to improve contact-rich manipulation. It fuses force signals asymmetrically, treats force as a global regulator, and employs a joint prediction paradigm to couple force and motion. The approach splits tasks into a vision-dominant localization stage and a touch-dominant execution stage, using a Vision-to-Force handover to separate spatial generalization from contact regulation.

By Shuoheng Zhang, Yifu Yuan, Hongyao Tang, Yan Zheng, Qiaojun Yu, Pengyi Li, Guowei Huang, Helong Huang, Xingyue Quan, Jianye Hao
arXiv AI
Jun 9

GEAR-VLA: Learning Geometry-Aware Action Representations for Generalizable Robotic Manipulation

arXiv:2606. 08530v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models achieve strong benchmark performance but still struggle in real-world deployment with unseen objects, background shifts, and different robot embodiments.

By Yuan Zhang, Shiqi Zhang, Yedong Shen, Shuai Dong, Jiajun Deng, Xin Zhang, Yuxuan Gao, Jiajia Wu, Xin Nie, Zhiyuan Cheng, Jianmin Ji, Yanyong Zhang, Xingyi Zhang, Jia Pan
arXiv AI
Jul 7

HALO-WA: Hybrid-Attention Latent-Guided Online Reinforcement Learning for World-Action Models

arXiv:2607. 04265v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: World-action (WA) models can generate long-horizon action chunks for general-purpose robotic manipulation, but they remain vulnerable to calibration, perception, and contact-dynamics errors in real-world precision tasks, often failing in the final few millimeters of alignment or insertion.

By Angen Ye, Weijie Ke, Xiaofeng Wang, Xinze Chen, Chaojun Ni, Guosheng Zhao, Boyuan Wang, Zheng Zhu, Junjie Xie, Dapeng Zhang
arXiv AI
Jul 14

TACTIC: Tactile and Vision Conditioned Contact-Centric Control for Whole-Arm Manipulation

arXiv:2607. 09218v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Whole-arm manipulation involves direct contact with the environment while the robot completes a task by distributing contact across multiple links as contacts form, slide, and break.

By Rishabh Madan, Angchen Xie, Samantha Saak, Andres Blanco, Dohyeok Lee, Sarah Grace Brown, Yunting Yan, Mark Zolotas, Jose Barreiros, Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee
arXiv AI
Jul 7

Cortex: A Bidirectionally Aligned Embodied Agent Framework for Long-horizon Manipulation

arXiv:2607. 05377v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: While recent Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models show promise toward generalist manipulation policies, they struggle with long-horizon tasks due to their Markovian nature-relying solely on current observations.

By Jiaqi Peng, Xiqian Yu, Delin Feng, Yuqiang Yang, Wenzhe Cai, Jing Xiong, Ganlin Yang, Jinliang Zheng, Jiafei Cao, Xueyuan Wei, Jiangmiao Pang, Yuan Shen, Tai Wang