mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardware

arXiv 2304.13705 ↗First posted 23 Apr 2023cs.RO cs.LGcited by 1,490

On the map: Offline RL and imitation learning from data → Robot manipulation imitation learning

Abstract (arXiv)

Fine manipulation tasks, such as threading cable ties or slotting a battery, are notoriously difficult for robots because they require precision, careful coordination of contact forces, and closed-loop visual feedback. Performing these tasks typically requires high-end robots, accurate sensors, or careful calibration, which can be expensive and difficult to set up. Can learning enable low-cost and imprecise hardware to perform these fine manipulation tasks? We present a low-cost system that performs end-to-end imitation learning directly from real demonstrations, collected with a custom teleoperation interface. Imitation learning, however, presents its own challenges, particularly in high-precision domains: errors in the policy can compound over time, and human demonstrations can be non-stationary. To address these challenges, we develop a simple yet novel algorithm, Action Chunking with Transformers (ACT), which learns a generative model over action sequences. ACT allows the robot to learn 6 difficult tasks in the real world, such as opening a translucent condiment cup and slotting a battery with 80-90% success, with only 10 minutes worth of demonstrations. Project website: https://tonyzhaozh.github.io/aloha/

Key facts. Cited by 1,490 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Robot manipulation imitation learning, one of 13 directions in Offline RL and imitation learning from data. Builds on 47 of its 74 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 23 Apr 2023.

Builds on

47 of 74 references.

Closest ancestors · 12

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023NeRF in the Palm of Your Hand: Corrective Augmentation for Robotics via Novel-View Synthesis18 Jan
  2. 2022A System for Imitation Learning of Contact-Rich Bimanual Manipulation Policies1 Aug
  3. 2022Behavior Transformers: Cloning k modes with one stone22 Jun
  4. 2022From One Hand to Multiple Hands: Imitation Learning for Dexterous Manipulation from Single-Camera Teleoperation26 Apr
  5. 2022Goal-conditioned dual-action imitation learning for dexterous dual-arm robot manipulation18 Mar
  6. 2022BC-Z: Zero-Shot Task Generalization with Robotic Imitation Learning4 Feb
  7. 2021The Surprising Effectiveness of Representation Learning for Visual Imitation2 Dec
  8. 2021Coarse-to-Fine Imitation Learning: Robot Manipulation from a Single Demonstration13 May
  9. 2020Grasping with Chopsticks: Combating Covariate Shift in Model-free Imitation Learning for Fine Manipulation13 Nov
  10. 2020Deep Imitation Learning for Bimanual Robotic Manipulation11 Oct
  11. 2019Self-Supervised Correspondence in Visuomotor Policy Learning16 Sep
  12. 2018Task-Embedded Control Networks for Few-Shot Imitation Learning8 Oct

Other references · 35

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
  2. 2015Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognitioncited by 51,809
  3. 2018BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understandingcited by 40,204
  4. 2020End-to-End Object Detection with Transformerscited by 7,384
  5. 2022RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scalecited by 2,007
  6. 2015Deep Learning and the Information Bottleneck Principlecited by 793
  7. 2021What Matters in Learning from Offline Human Demonstrations for Robot Manipulationcited by 699
  8. 2021CLIPort: What and Where Pathways for Robotic Manipulationcited by 617
  9. 2022Perceiver-Actor: A Multi-Task Transformer for Robotic Manipulationcited by 545
  10. 2021Implicit Behavioral Cloningcited by 442
  11. 2020Transporter Networks: Rearranging the Visual World for Robotic Manipulationcited by 342
  12. 2017Deep Imitation Learning for Complex Manipulation Tasks from Virtual Reality Teleoperationcited by 286
23 more
  1. 2019Causal Confusion in Imitation Learningcited by 286
  2. 2021Bridge Data: Boosting Generalization of Robotic Skills with Cross-Domain Datasetscited by 248
  3. 2018HG-DAgger: Interactive Imitation Learning with Human Expertscited by 245
  4. 2017One-Shot Imitation Learningcited by 232
  5. 2017DART: Noise Injection for Robust Imitation Learningcited by 187
  6. 2022Towards Human-Level Bimanual Dexterous Manipulation with Reinforcement Learningcited by 113
  7. 2019DexPilot: Vision Based Teleoperation of Dexterous Robotic Hand-Arm Systemcited by 105
  8. 2017Vision-Based Multi-Task Manipulation for Inexpensive Robots Using End-To-End Learning from Demonstrationcited by 100
  9. 2021ThriftyDAgger: Budget-Aware Novelty and Risk Gating for Interactive Imitation Learningcited by 98
  10. 2018EnsembleDAgger: A Bayesian Approach to Safe Imitation Learningcited by 96
  11. 2021FlingBot: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Dynamic Manipulation for Cloth Unfoldingcited by 80
  12. 2022Robotic Telekinesis: Learning a Robotic Hand Imitator by Watching Humans on Youtubecited by 79
  13. 2020Transformers for One-Shot Visual Imitationcited by 77
  14. 2022Holo-Dex: Teaching Dexterity with Immersive Mixed Realitycited by 52
  15. 2019Efficient Bimanual Manipulation Using Learned Task Schemascited by 44
  16. 2021On the Sample Complexity of Stability Constrained Imitation Learningcited by 38
  17. 2022Causal Imitation Learning under Temporally Correlated Noisecited by 28
  18. 2020Untangling Dense Knots by Learning Task-Relevant Keypointscited by 21
  19. 2021Gaze-based dual resolution deep imitation learning for high-precision dexterous robot manipulationcited by 16
  20. 2020Intermittent Visual Servoing: Efficiently Learning Policies Robust to Instrument Changes for High-precision Surgical Manipulationcited by 13
  21. 2021Untangling Dense Non-Planar Knots by Learning Manipulation Features and Recovery Policiescited by 11
  22. 2022SGTM 2.0: Autonomously Untangling Long Cables using Interactive Perceptioncited by 5
  23. 2019Cascaded Gaussian Processes for Data-efficient Robot Dynamics Learningcited by 3

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 35; 2024: 221; 2025: 474; 2026: 760.

1,490 papers.

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  1. 2024OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 2,777
  2. 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,297
  3. 2024Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policycited by 1,427
  4. 2025GR00T N1: An Open Foundation Model for Generalist Humanoid Robotscited by 1,167
  5. 2025Fine-Tuning Vision-Language-Action Models: Optimizing Speed and Successcited by 844
  6. 2024RDT-1B: a Diffusion Foundation Model for Bimanual Manipulationcited by 670
  7. 2025FAST: Efficient Action Tokenization for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 643
  8. 2023BridgeData V2: A Dataset for Robot Learning at Scalecited by 634
  9. 2025SmolVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model for Affordable and Efficient Roboticscited by 507
  10. 2025CoT-VLA: Visual Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 440
  11. 2024CogACT: A Foundational Vision-Language-Action Model for Synergizing Cognition and Action in Robotic Manipulationcited by 411
  12. 2025AgiBot World Colosseo: A Large-scale Manipulation Platform for Scalable and Intelligent Embodied Systemscited by 390
38 more
  1. 2025UniVLA: Learning to Act Anywhere with Task-centric Latent Actionscited by 386
  2. 2024Mobile ALOHA: Learning Bimanual Mobile Manipulation with Low-Cost Whole-Body Teleoperationcited by 377
  3. 2024DINO-WM: World Models on Pre-trained Visual Features enable Zero-shot Planningcited by 357
  4. 2025WorldVLA: Towards Autoregressive Action World Modelcited by 351
  5. 2024Robotic Control via Embodied Chain-of-Thought Reasoningcited by 340
  6. 2024GR-2: A Generative Video-Language-Action Model with Web-Scale Knowledge for Robot Manipulationcited by 290
  7. 2026Causal World Modeling for Robot Controlcited by 289
  8. 2025X-VLA: Soft-Prompted Transformer as Scalable Cross-Embodiment Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 285
  9. 2024A Survey on Vision-Language-Action Models for Embodied AIcited by 274
  10. 2026Cosmos Policy: Fine-Tuning Video Models for Visuomotor Control and Planningcited by 274
  11. 2024Diffusion Policy Policy Optimizationcited by 255
  12. 2025Motus: A Unified Latent Action World Modelcited by 231
  13. 2023RVT: Robotic View Transformer for 3D Object Manipulationcited by 224
  14. 2024NaVid: Video-based VLM Plans the Next Step for Vision-and-Language Navigationcited by 222
  15. 2025Unified World Models: Coupling Video and Action Diffusion for Pretraining on Large Robotic Datasetscited by 218
  16. 2024OGBench: Benchmarking Offline Goal-Conditioned RLcited by 216
  17. 2025Hi Robot: Open-Ended Instruction Following with Hierarchical Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 216
  18. 2025EmbodiedBench: Comprehensive Benchmarking Multi-modal Large Language Models for Vision-Driven Embodied Agentscited by 213
  19. 2025DreamVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model Dreamed with Comprehensive World Knowledgecited by 203
  20. 2025Real-Time Execution of Action Chunking Flow Policiescited by 199
  21. 2025Unified Video Action Modelcited by 195
  22. 2025MemoryVLA: Perceptual-Cognitive Memory in Vision-Language-Action Models for Robotic Manipulationcited by 183
  23. 2024Aligning Cyber Space with Physical World: A Comprehensive Survey on Embodied AIcited by 175
  24. 2023RH20T: A Comprehensive Robotic Dataset for Learning Diverse Skills in One-Shotcited by 173
  25. 2023RoboAgent: Generalization and Efficiency in Robot Manipulation via Semantic Augmentations and Action Chunkingcited by 167
  26. 2024RoboMIND: Benchmark on Multi-embodiment Intelligence Normative Data for Robot Manipulationcited by 166
  27. 2024HumanPlus: Humanoid Shadowing and Imitation from Humanscited by 164
  28. 2023Video Language Planningcited by 160
  29. 2024EgoMimic: Scaling Imitation Learning via Egocentric Videocited by 160
  30. 2024Behavior Generation with Latent Actionscited by 159
  31. 2024The pitfalls of next-token predictioncited by 156
  32. 2024DexCap: Scalable and Portable Mocap Data Collection System for Dexterous Manipulationcited by 149
  33. 2025Steering Your Diffusion Policy with Latent Space Reinforcement Learningcited by 149
  34. 2025Ctrl-World: A Controllable Generative World Model for Robot Manipulationcited by 149
  35. 2024Scaling Proprioceptive-Visual Learning with Heterogeneous Pre-trained Transformerscited by 145
  36. 2024Data Scaling Laws in Imitation Learning for Robotic Manipulationcited by 144
  37. 2025Knowledge Insulating Vision-Language-Action Models: Train Fast, Run Fast, Generalize Bettercited by 142
  38. 2025VLA-Adapter: An Effective Paradigm for Tiny-Scale Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 140

50 most cited of 1,490 All 1,490 (JSON)

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2022Dexterous Imitation Made Easy: A Learning-Based Framework for Efficient Dexterous Manipulation
  2. 2024VITAL: Interactive Few-Shot Imitation Learning via Visual Human-in-the-Loop Corrections
  3. 2026Human-to-Robot Interaction: Learning from Video Demonstration for Robot Imitation
  4. 2022Evaluating the Effectiveness of Corrective Demonstrations and a Low-Cost Sensor for Dexterous Manipulation
  5. 2020Visual Imitation Made Easy
  6. 2023Teach a Robot to FISH: Versatile Imitation from One Minute of Demonstrations
  7. 2023Learning Fine Pinch-Grasp Skills using Tactile Sensing from A Few Real-world Demonstrations
  8. 2025You Only Teach Once: Learn One-Shot Bimanual Robotic Manipulation from Video Demonstrations