Robotics and embodied AI

Manipulation, locomotion, sim-to-real transfer and autonomous driving: learning systems that have to survive physics.

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arXiv AI
Jun 16

Direction-Conditioned Policies via Compositional Subgoal Scoring for Online Goal-Conditioned Reinforcement Learning

arXiv:2606. 16515v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman theory implies that the optimal goal-conditioned action depends on the goal only through the gradient of the goal-reaching distance at the current state, yet standard online GCRL still conditions the actor on the raw goal -- a signal that is geometrically uninformative when the goal is far from the data distribution.

By Swaminathan S K, Damiya Gondha, Theyanesh Eswaramoorthy Rajahkrishnan, Aritra Hazra
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 16

Hierarchical Advantage Weighting for Online RL Fine-Tuning of VLAs from Sparse Episode Outcomes

arXiv:2606. 17043v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: When pretrained VLA policies are fine-tuned through online RL, each rollout episode produces only a single binary outcome (success or failure), yet the actor update requires per-transition supervision.

By Tongyan Fang, Siyuan Huang, Naiyu Fang, Ganlong Zhao, Zhongjin Luo, Jianbo Liu, Xiaogang Wang, Ying Dong, Hongsheng Li
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 16

Geometric Action Model for Robot Policy Learning

arXiv:2606. 17046v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Generalist robot policies must follow user instructions while reasoning about how objects, cameras, and robot actions interact in the 3D physical world.

By Jisang Han, Seonghu Jeon, Jaewoo Jung, Ren\'e Zurbr\"ugg, Honggyu An, Tifanny Portela, Marco Hutter, Marc Pollefeys, Seungryong Kim, Sunghwan Hong
arXiv AI
Jun 16

From Noise to Intent: Anchoring Generative VLA Policies with Residual Bridges

arXiv:2604. 21391v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Bridging high-level semantic understanding with low-level physical control remains a persistent challenge in embodied intelligence, stemming from the fundamental spatiotemporal scale mismatch between cognition and action.

By Yiming Zhong, Yaoyu He, Zemin Yang, Pengfei Tian, Yifan Huang, Qingqiu Huang, Xinge Zhu, Yuexin Ma
arXiv AI
Jun 16

Learned Image Compression for Vision-Language-Action Models

arXiv:2606. 16253v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Vision-language-action (VLA) models increasingly rely on high-frequency multi-camera observations, making visual communication a major bottleneck for real-time robotic control in bandwidth-constrained or distributed deployment settings.

By Hyeonjun Kim, Jegwang Ryu, Sangbeom Ha, Junhyeok Lee, Jun-Hyuk Kim, Hyemin Ahn, Jaeho Lee
arXiv AI
Jun 16

Lect\=uraAgents: A Multi-Agent Framework for Adaptive Personalized AI-Assisted Learning and Embodied Teaching

arXiv:2606. 16428v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Effective personalized AI-assisted learning demands systems that can not only generate accurate learner-specific educational materials, but also dynamically adapt their instruction to diverse learners.

By Jaward Sesay, Yue Yu, Siwei Dong, Yemin Shi, Guangyao Chen, B\"orje F. Karlsson
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 16

LoComposition: Terrain-Adaptive Energy-Efficient Quadruped Locomotion without Gait Priors

arXiv:2606. 15896v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Learning-based quadrupedal locomotion typically relies on complex reward formulations that entangle task specification, operational limits, gait preference, and terrain adaptation within a single optimization objective.

By Loukas Kordos, Leonard T. Franz, Simon Rappenecker, Oliver Hausdoerfer, Angela P. Schoellig, Pavel Kolev, Georg Martius