# Decoupling Skill Learning from Robotic Control for Generalizable Object Manipulation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.04016 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04016/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Robot manipulation imitation learning, one of 13 directions in Offline RL and imitation learning from data.
- Builds on 26 of its 33 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Mar 2023.

## Placed in

- Offline RL and imitation learning from data / [Robot manipulation imitation learning](https://mlsanity.com/offlinerl/robot-manipulation-imitation-learning/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [Soft Actor-Critic: Off-Policy Maximum Entropy Deep Reinforcement Learning with a Stochastic Actor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01290/) (2018)
- [QT-Opt: Scalable Deep Reinforcement Learning for Vision-Based Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.10293/) (2018)
- [SAPIEN: A SimulAted Part-based Interactive ENvironment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08515/) (2020)
- [robosuite: A Modular Simulation Framework and Benchmark for Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.12293/) (2020)
- [Habitat 2.0: Training Home Assistants to Rearrange their Habitat](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.14405/) (2021)
- [Deep Reinforcement Learning for Robotic Manipulation with Asynchronous Off-Policy Updates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.00633/) (2016)
- [ThreeDWorld: A Platform for Interactive Multi-Modal Physical Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.04954/) (2020)
- [Accelerating Reinforcement Learning with Learned Skill Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11944/) (2020)
- [Supersizing Self-supervision: Learning to Grasp from 50K Tries and 700 Robot Hours](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1509.06825/) (2015)
- [ManiSkill: Generalizable Manipulation Skill Benchmark with Large-Scale Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.14483/) (2021)
- [Where2Act: From Pixels to Actions for Articulated 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.02692/) (2021)
- [A Review of Robot Learning for Manipulation: Challenges, Representations, and Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.03146/) (2019)
- [Learning Synergies between Pushing and Grasping with Self-supervised Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.09956/) (2018)
- [ManipulaTHOR: A Framework for Visual Object Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.11213/) (2021)
- [FlowBot3D: Learning 3D Articulation Flow to Manipulate Articulated Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.04382/) (2022)
- [Interactive Gibson Benchmark (iGibson 0.5): A Benchmark for Interactive Navigation in Cluttered Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.14442/) (2019)
- [VAT-Mart: Learning Visual Action Trajectory Proposals for Manipulating 3D ARTiculated Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.14440/) (2021)
- [Variable Impedance Control in End-Effector Space: An Action Space for Reinforcement Learning in Contact-Rich Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.08880/) (2019)
- [UMPNet: Universal Manipulation Policy Network for Articulated Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.05668/) (2021)
- [Accelerating Robotic Reinforcement Learning via Parameterized Action Primitives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.15360/) (2021)
- [Articulated Object Interaction in Unknown Scenes with Whole-Body Mobile Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10534/) (2021)
- [Motion Planner Augmented Reinforcement Learning for Robot Manipulation in Obstructed Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11940/) (2020)
- [Learning Category-Level Generalizable Object Manipulation Policy via Generative Adversarial Self-Imitation Learning from Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02107/) (2022)
- [Distilling Motion Planner Augmented Policies into Visual Control Policies for Robot Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06383/) (2021)
- [OSCAR: Data-Driven Operational Space Control for Adaptive and Robust Robot Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.00704/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Robotic Imitation of Human Actions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.08381/) (2024)
- [FLEX: A Framework for Learning Robot-Agnostic Force-based Skills Involving Sustained Contact Object Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13418/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent works in robotic manipulation through reinforcement learning (RL) or imitation learning (IL) have shown potential for tackling a range of tasks e.g., opening a drawer or a cupboard. However, these techniques generalize poorly to unseen objects. We conjecture that this is due to the high-dimensional action space for joint control. In this paper, we take an alternative approach and separate the task of learning 'what to do' from 'how to do it' i.e., whole-body control. We pose the RL problem as one of determining the skill dynamics for a disembodied virtual manipulator interacting with articulated objects. The whole-body robotic kinematic control is optimized to execute the high-dimensional joint motion to reach the goals in the workspace. It does so by solving a quadratic programming (QP) model with robotic singularity and kinematic constraints. Our experiments on manipulating complex articulated objects show that the proposed approach is more generalizable to unseen objects with large intra-class variations, outperforming previous approaches. The evaluation results indicate that our approach generates more compliant robotic motion and outperforms the pure RL and IL baselines in task success rates. Additional information and videos are available at https://kl-research.github.io/decoupskill