# Dexterous Functional Pre-Grasp Manipulation with Diffusion Policy

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.12421 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12421/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Diffusion and flow policies for robotics, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 43 of its 52 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Mar 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Diffusion and flow policies for robotics](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/diffusion-and-flow-policies-for-robotics/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 43)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [PointNet++: Deep Hierarchical Feature Learning on Point Sets in a Metric Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02413/) (2017)
- [Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04137/) (2023)
- [Isaac Gym: High Performance GPU-Based Physics Simulation For Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10470/) (2021)
- [Learning Complex Dexterous Manipulation with Deep Reinforcement Learning and Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.10087/) (2017)
- [Solving Inverse Problems in Medical Imaging with Score-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.08005/) (2021)
- [Learning Gradient Fields for Shape Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.06520/) (2020)
- [Diffusion-based Generation, Optimization, and Planning in 3D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.06015/) (2023)
- [DexMV: Imitation Learning for Dexterous Manipulation from Human Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.05877/) (2021)
- [A System for General In-Hand Object Re-Orientation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.03043/) (2021)
- [DexCap: Scalable and Portable Mocap Data Collection System for Dexterous Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07788/) (2024)
- [Scaling Up and Distilling Down: Language-Guided Robot Skill Acquisition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.14535/) (2023)
- [HUMANISE: Language-conditioned Human Motion Generation in 3D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09729/) (2022)
- [DexGraspNet: A Large-Scale Robotic Dexterous Grasp Dataset for General Objects Based on Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02697/) (2022)
- [OakInk: A Large-scale Knowledge Repository for Understanding Hand-Object Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.15709/) (2022)
- [UniDexGrasp: Universal Robotic Dexterous Grasping via Learning Diverse Proposal Generation and Goal-Conditioned Policy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.00938/) (2023)
- [Towards Human-Level Bimanual Dexterous Manipulation with Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.08686/) (2022)
- [3D Diffusion Policy: Generalizable Visuomotor Policy Learning via Simple 3D Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03954/) (2024)
- [UniDexGrasp++: Improving Dexterous Grasping Policy Learning via Geometry-aware Curriculum and Iterative Generalist-Specialist Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.00464/) (2023)
- [Visual Dexterity: In-Hand Reorientation of Novel and Complex Object Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.11744/) (2022)
- [DexVIP: Learning Dexterous Grasping with Human Hand Pose Priors from Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.00164/) (2022)
- [Learning Dexterous Grasping with Object-Centric Visual Affordances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.01439/) (2020)
- [DexPoint: Generalizable Point Cloud Reinforcement Learning for Sim-to-Real Dexterous Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09423/) (2022)
- [Rotating without Seeing: Towards In-hand Dexterity through Touch](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.10880/) (2023)
- [EPro-PnP: Generalized End-to-End Probabilistic Perspective-n-Points for Monocular Object Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12787/) (2023)
- [DexArt: Benchmarking Generalizable Dexterous Manipulation with Articulated Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.05706/) (2023)
- [GFPose: Learning 3D Human Pose Prior with Gradient Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08641/) (2022)
- [Sequential Dexterity: Chaining Dexterous Policies for Long-Horizon Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.00987/) (2023)

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

- [Universal Dexterous Functional Grasping via Demonstration-Editing Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.13380/) (2025)
- [DexCanvas: Bridging Human Demonstrations and Robot Learning for Dexterous Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.15786/) (2025)
- [GenDexHand: Generative Simulation for Dexterous Hands](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.01791/) (2025)
- [A Survey on End-to-End Autonomous Driving Training from the Perspectives of Data, Strategy, and Platform](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.00926/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In real-world scenarios, objects often require repositioning and reorientation before they can be grasped, a process known as pre-grasp manipulation. Learning universal dexterous functional pre-grasp manipulation requires precise control over the relative position, orientation, and contact between the hand and object while generalizing to diverse dynamic scenarios with varying objects and goal poses. To address this challenge, we propose a teacher-student learning approach that utilizes a novel mutual reward, incentivizing agents to optimize three key criteria jointly. Additionally, we introduce a pipeline that employs a mixture-of-experts strategy to learn diverse manipulation policies, followed by a diffusion policy to capture complex action distributions from these experts. Our method achieves a success rate of 72.6% across more than 30 object categories by leveraging extrinsic dexterity and adjusting from feedback.