# Robot manipulation imitation learning Area: [Offline RL and imitation learning from data](https://mlsanity.com/offlinerl/index.md). HTML: https://mlsanity.com/offlinerl/robot-manipulation-imitation-learning/ ## Key facts - Robot manipulation imitation learning: 737 papers on arXiv since 2018 (data through 7 Oct 2026). - 140 of its 737 mapped papers (19%) cite “Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardware” (2023, arXiv 2304.13705). - 45 of its 737 mapped papers (6%) cite “BC-Z: Zero-Shot Task Generalization with Robotic Imitation Learning” (2022, arXiv 2202.02005). - 28 new papers 17 Sep–7 Oct. ## Most cited here - [Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardware](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13705/) (2023), cited by 140 papers here - [BC-Z: Zero-Shot Task Generalization with Robotic Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.02005/) (2022), cited by 45 papers here - [Mobile ALOHA: Learning Bimanual Mobile Manipulation with Low-Cost Whole-Body Teleoperation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02117/) (2024), cited by 37 papers here - [MimicGen: A Data Generation System for Scalable Robot Learning using Human Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.17596/) (2023), cited by 35 papers here - [Behavior Transformers: Cloning k modes with one stone](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.11251/) (2022), cited by 33 papers here - [Visual Imitation Made Easy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.04899/) (2020), cited by 30 papers here - [VIOLA: Imitation Learning for Vision-Based Manipulation with Object Proposal Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.11339/) (2022), cited by 28 papers here - [MimicPlay: Long-Horizon Imitation Learning by Watching Human Play](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.12422/) (2023), cited by 25 papers here - [GELLO: A General, Low-Cost, and Intuitive Teleoperation Framework for Robot Manipulators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13037/) (2023), cited by 25 papers here - [RoboTurk: A Crowdsourcing Platform for Robotic Skill Learning through Imitation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.02790/) (2018), cited by 24 papers here ## New (17 Sep–7 Oct) - [RoboPrompt: Intuitive Robot Policy Steering with Sparse Human Input](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.10534/) (2026-10-07) - [Targeted Modality Dropout for Real-Robot Manipulation Robust to Intermittent Vision Loss](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.09566/) (2026-10-07) - [Contact-Aware Imitation Learning Through Contact Factorization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.09533/) (2026-10-07) - [Fast Non-Parametric Heteroscedastic Imitation Learning With Geometric Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.08650/) (2026-10-06) - [BiGym 2.0: Benchmarking Learned and Agent-Developed Policies for Humanoid Household Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.07594/) (2026-10-06) - [Behavioral Cloning Mystery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.07056/) (2026-10-05) - [Conditional Trajectory Peaks: Single-Pass Multimodal Policies over Action Chunks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.06104/) (2026-10-05) - [Adaptive Mean Flow for Responsive Closed-Loop Robot Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.06089/) (2026-10-05) - [Mulligan: Performance-Guided Data Collection for Efficient On-Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.05882/) (2026-10-05) - [Bilinear Flow Policy: Distributional Extrapolation for Goal-Conditioned Visuomotor Imitation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.05765/) (2026-10-05) - [Learning Coordinated Visuomotor Box-Pushing from Solo Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.05677/) (2026-10-05) - [Equivariant Visual-Tactile Diffusion Policy for Contact-Rich Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.03333/) (2026-10-02) - [AdaTempo: Learning Shared Relative Tempo from Demonstrations for Faster Robot Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.02706/) (2026-10-02) - [Memorize, Adapt, Ignore: Diagnosing Robot Learning Mechanisms under Training Data Variation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.38401/) (2026-09-29) - [BlenDAgger: Blended Shared Control for Interactive Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.37599/) (2026-09-29) - [Wrench-ACT: Enhancing Robot Policies for Contact Rich Behavior Using Direct Wrench Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.37552/) (2026-09-29) - [Beyond State-as-Action: Exploiting Command-State Discrepancy for Robot Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.33145/) (2026-09-29) - [From Pixel to Poses: Object-centric Tool Manipulation Learning from Human Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.35375/) (2026-09-28) - [HOI-Retarget: Contact-Centric Retargeting for Human-Object Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.34674/) (2026-09-28) - [An Empirical Study on What Matters for Viewpoint-Generalizable Policies in Visual Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.32762/) (2026-09-26) - [Enabling a Unified Cross-Domain Representation for Two-Finger Gripper Manipulation via Interaction-Centric Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.31207/) (2026-09-25) - [POIL: Point-based One-Shot Imitation Learning with Stable Dynamical Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.30404/) (2026-09-24) - [Res-HIL: Human-Guided Residual Reinforcement Learning for Sample-Efficient Dexterous Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.30023/) (2026-09-24) - [Self-Supervised Anchoring of Fingertip Sensing to Proprioception and Proactive Actions for Robot Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.29822/) (2026-09-24) - [EgoSpeedUp: Transferring Human Manipulation Tempo to Robot Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.29310/) (2026-09-24) - [Learning from Mixed-Quality Deployment Experience for Robot Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.29000/) (2026-09-24) - [The Gaussian Is Enough: Flow-Matching Priors Do Not Help When Fine-Tuning Large Behavior Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.27070/) (2026-09-22) - [BEACON: Belief-Enabled Adaptive CONtrol for Imitation Learning under Uncertainty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.22730/) (2026-09-19)