mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

FlowBot3D: Learning 3D Articulation Flow to Manipulate Articulated Objects

arXiv 2205.04382 ↗First posted 9 May 2022cs.RO cs.AI cs.CVcited by 91

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Abstract (arXiv)

We explore a novel method to perceive and manipulate 3D articulated objects that generalizes to enable a robot to articulate unseen classes of objects. We propose a vision-based system that learns to predict the potential motions of the parts of a variety of articulated objects to guide downstream motion planning of the system to articulate the objects. To predict the object motions, we train a neural network to output a dense vector field representing the point-wise motion direction of the points in the point cloud under articulation. We then deploy an analytical motion planner based on this vector field to achieve a policy that yields maximum articulation. We train the vision system entirely in simulation, and we demonstrate the capability of our system to generalize to unseen object instances and novel categories in both simulation and the real world, deploying our policy on a Sawyer robot with no finetuning. Results show that our system achieves state-of-the-art performance in both simulated and real-world experiments.

Key facts. Cited by 91 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 26 of its 54 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 9 May 2022.

Builds on

26 of 54 references.

References · 26

  1. 2016PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentationcited by 5,248
  2. 2020RAFT: Recurrent All-Pairs Field Transforms for Optical Flowcited by 2,415
  3. 2015FlowNet: Learning Optical Flow with Convolutional Networkscited by 1,059
  4. 2016FlowNet 2.0: Evolution of Optical Flow Estimation with Deep Networkscited by 784
  5. 2018Open3D: A Modern Library for 3D Data Processingcited by 721
  6. 2020SAPIEN: A SimulAted Part-based Interactive ENvironmentcited by 595
  7. 2018PartNet: A Large-scale Benchmark for Fine-grained and Hierarchical Part-level 3D Object Understandingcited by 526
  8. 2021Where2Act: From Pixels to Actions for Articulated 3D Objectscited by 182
  9. 2019Category-Level Articulated Object Pose Estimationcited by 159
  10. 2019Shape2Motion: Joint Analysis of Motion Parts and Attributes from 3D Shapescited by 119
  11. 2014Reducing the Barrier to Entry of Complex Robotic Software: a MoveIt! Case Studycited by 89
  12. 2020ScrewNet: Category-Independent Articulation Model Estimation From Depth Images Using Screw Theorycited by 70
14 more
  1. 2018Deep Part Induction from Articulated Object Pairscited by 66
  2. 2021UMPNet: Universal Manipulation Policy Network for Articulated Objectscited by 65
  3. 2021FabricFlowNet: Bimanual Cloth Manipulation with a Flow-based Policycited by 54
  4. 2021Tactile-RL for Insertion: Generalization to Objects of Unknown Geometrycited by 48
  5. 2019Personalization of End-to-end Speech Recognition On Mobile Devices For Named Entitiescited by 41
  6. 2021Planar Robot Casting with Real2Sim2Real Self-Supervised Learningcited by 39
  7. 2020Visual Identification of Articulated Object Partscited by 37
  8. 2020RPM-Net: Recurrent Prediction of Motion and Parts from Point Cloudcited by 26
  9. 2020Robots of the Lost Arc: Self-Supervised Learning to Dynamically Manipulate Fixed-Endpoint Cablescited by 21
  10. 2015Learning Articulated Motions From Visual Demonstrationcited by 17
  11. 2021Orienting Novel 3D Objects Using Self-Supervised Learning of Rotation Transformscited by 17
  12. 2017Dex-Net 3.0: Computing Robust Robot Vacuum Suction Grasp Targets in Point Clouds using a New Analytic Model and Deep Learningcited by 15
  13. 2019Motion Perception in Reinforcement Learning with Dynamic Objectscited by 13
  14. 20206-DoF Grasp Planning using Fast 3D Reconstruction and Grasp Quality CNNcited by 13

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2022: 5; 2023: 17; 2024: 30; 2025: 24; 2026: 15.

91 papers.

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  1. 2024RoboMIND: Benchmark on Multi-embodiment Intelligence Normative Data for Robot Manipulationcited by 175
  2. 2023ManipLLM: Embodied Multimodal Large Language Model for Object-Centric Robotic Manipulationcited by 162
  3. 2024Flow as the Cross-Domain Manipulation Interfacecited by 132
  4. 2024RoboMamba: Efficient Vision-Language-Action Model for Robotic Reasoning and Manipulationcited by 103
  5. 2024General Flow as Foundation Affordance for Scalable Robot Learningcited by 85
  6. 2026PointWorld: Scaling 3D World Models for In-The-Wild Robotic Manipulationcited by 82
  7. 2024SplatSim: Zero-Shot Sim2Real Transfer of RGB Manipulation Policies Using Gaussian Splattingcited by 69
  8. 2024RoboCodeX: Multimodal Code Generation for Robotic Behavior Synthesiscited by 58
  9. 2022End-to-End Affordance Learning for Robotic Manipulationcited by 57
  10. 2023PolarNet: 3D Point Clouds for Language-Guided Robotic Manipulationcited by 56
  11. 2025RoboGround: Robotic Manipulation with Grounded Vision-Language Priorscited by 51
  12. 2022TAX-Pose: Task-Specific Cross-Pose Estimation for Robot Manipulationcited by 47
38 more
  1. 2024Lift3D Foundation Policy: Lifting 2D Large-Scale Pretrained Models for Robust 3D Robotic Manipulationcited by 46
  2. 2025SoFar: Language-Grounded Orientation Bridges Spatial Reasoning and Object Manipulationcited by 46
  3. 2023PartManip: Learning Cross-Category Generalizable Part Manipulation Policy from Point Cloud Observationscited by 42
  4. 2025NovaFlow: Zero-Shot Manipulation via Actionable Flow from Generated Videoscited by 40
  5. 2023Where2Explore: Few-shot Affordance Learning for Unseen Novel Categories of Articulated Objectscited by 35
  6. 2024A3VLM: Actionable Articulation-Aware Vision Language Modelcited by 33
  7. 2022Frame Mining: a Free Lunch for Learning Robotic Manipulation from 3D Point Cloudscited by 32
  8. 2023NAP: Neural 3D Articulation Priorcited by 25
  9. 2024ManipVQA: Injecting Robotic Affordance and Physically Grounded Information into Multi-Modal Large Language Modelscited by 25
  10. 2025DreamArt: Generating Interactable Articulated Objects from a Single Imagecited by 25
  11. 2025Dream2Flow: Bridging Video Generation and Open-World Manipulation with 3D Object Flowcited by 25
  12. 2023DiffCLIP: Leveraging Stable Diffusion for Language Grounded 3D Classificationcited by 23
  13. 2023Learning Environment-Aware Affordance for 3D Articulated Object Manipulation under Occlusionscited by 23
  14. 2023Challenges for Monocular 6D Object Pose Estimation in Roboticscited by 21
  15. 2024A Self-Correcting Vision-Language-Action Model for Fast and Slow System Manipulationcited by 21
  16. 2025SKIL: Semantic Keypoint Imitation Learning for Generalizable Data-efficient Manipulationcited by 21
  17. 20233D Implicit Transporter for Temporally Consistent Keypoint Discoverycited by 20
  18. 2024AIC MLLM: Autonomous Interactive Correction MLLM for Robust Robotic Manipulationcited by 20
  19. 2024SAM-E: Leveraging Visual Foundation Model with Sequence Imitation for Embodied Manipulationcited by 18
  20. 2025CordViP: Correspondence-based Visuomotor Policy for Dexterous Manipulation in Real-Worldcited by 18
  21. 2025TraceGen: World Modeling in 3D Trace Space Enables Learning from Cross-Embodiment Videoscited by 15
  22. 2024Survey on Modeling of Human-made Articulated Objectscited by 14
  23. 2025AdaManip: Adaptive Articulated Object Manipulation Environments and Policy Learningcited by 12
  24. 2025GP3: A 3D Geometry-Aware Policy with Multi-View Images for Robotic Manipulationcited by 12
  25. 2023On the Efficacy of 3D Point Cloud Reinforcement Learningcited by 11
  26. 2024CAPT: Category-level Articulation Estimation from a Single Point Cloud Using Transformercited by 11
  27. 2025ArticuBot: Learning Universal Articulated Object Manipulation Policy via Large Scale Simulationcited by 11
  28. 2026Articulated 3D Scene Graphs for Open-World Mobile Manipulationcited by 11
  29. 2023APLA: Additional Perturbation for Latent Noise with Adversarial Training Enables Consistencycited by 9
  30. 2024Part-Guided 3D RL for Sim2Real Articulated Object Manipulationcited by 9
  31. 2025Latent Policy Steering with Embodiment-Agnostic Pretrained World Modelscited by 8
  32. 2023ImageManip: Image-based Robotic Manipulation with Affordance-guided Next View Selectioncited by 7
  33. 2025CrayonRobo: Object-Centric Prompt-Driven Vision-Language-Action Model for Robotic Manipulationcited by 6
  34. 2026Pandora: Articulated 3D Scene Graphs from Egocentric Visioncited by 6
  35. 2023Learning Part Motion of Articulated Objects Using Spatially Continuous Neural Implicit Representationscited by 5
  36. 2023SAGE: Bridging Semantic and Actionable Parts for GEneralizable Manipulation of Articulated Objectscited by 5
  37. 2024CHAMP: Conformalized 3D Human Multi-Hypothesis Pose Estimatorscited by 5
  38. 2024GAPartManip: A Large-scale Part-centric Dataset for Material-Agnostic Articulated Object Manipulationcited by 5

50 most cited of 91 All 91 (JSON)