# NIFT: Neural Interaction Field and Template for Object Manipulation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.10992 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.10992/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 18 of its 42 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Oct 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [ShapeNet: An Information-Rich 3D Model Repository](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03012/) (2015)
- [DeepSDF: Learning Continuous Signed Distance Functions for Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05103/) (2019)
- [Learning Implicit Fields for Generative Shape Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.02822/) (2018)
- [Convolutional Occupancy Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.04618/) (2020)
- [Vector Neurons: A General Framework for SO(3)-Equivariant Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.12229/) (2021)
- [Neural Descriptor Fields: SE(3)-Equivariant Object Representations for Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05124/) (2021)
- [Dense Object Nets: Learning Dense Visual Object Descriptors By and For Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.08756/) (2018)
- [Grasping in the Wild:Learning 6DoF Closed-Loop Grasping from Low-Cost Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04344/) (2019)
- [Efficient Learning on Point Clouds with Basis Point Sets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.09186/) (2019)
- [Learning Rope Manipulation Policies Using Dense Object Descriptors Trained on Synthetic Depth Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.01835/) (2020)
- [kPAM-SC: Generalizable Manipulation Planning using KeyPoint Affordance and Shape Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.06980/) (2019)
- [Learning High-DOF Reaching-and-Grasping via Dynamic Representation of Gripper-Object Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.13998/) (2022)
- [Self-supervised Learning for Precise Pick-and-place without Object Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.08373/) (2020)
- [Deep Medial Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.03804/) (2021)
- [Pick and Place Without Geometric Object Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.05615/) (2017)
- [Understanding and Exploiting Object Interaction Landscapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.08685/) (2016)
- [Transferring Category-based Functional Grasping Skills by Latent Space Non-Rigid Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.05390/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Fourier Transporter: Bi-Equivariant Robotic Manipulation in 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.12046/) (2024)
- [Bi-KVIL: Keypoints-based Visual Imitation Learning of Bimanual Manipulation Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03270/) (2024)
- [Visual Imitation Learning of Task-Oriented Object Grasping and Rearrangement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14000/) (2024)
- [Spatial and Surface Correspondence Field for Interaction Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.03221/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce NIFT, Neural Interaction Field and Template, a descriptive and robust interaction representation of object manipulations to facilitate imitation learning. Given a few object manipulation demos, NIFT guides the generation of the interaction imitation for a new object instance by matching the Neural Interaction Template (NIT) extracted from the demos in the target Neural Interaction Field (NIF) defined for the new object. Specifically, the NIF is a neural field that encodes the relationship between each spatial point and a given object, where the relative position is defined by a spherical distance function rather than occupancies or signed distances, which are commonly adopted by conventional neural fields but less informative. For a given demo interaction, the corresponding NIT is defined by a set of spatial points sampled in the demo NIF with associated neural features. To better capture the interaction, the points are sampled on the Interaction Bisector Surface (IBS), which consists of points that are equidistant to the two interacting objects and has been used extensively for interaction representation. With both point selection and pointwise features defined for better interaction encoding, NIT effectively guides the feature matching in the NIFs of the new object instances such that the relative poses are optimized to realize the manipulation while imitating the demo interactions. Experiments show that our NIFT solution outperforms state-of-the-art imitation learning methods for object manipulation and generalizes better to objects from new categories.