# Proleptic Temporal Ensemble for Improving the Speed of Robot Tasks Generated by Imitation Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.16981 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.16981/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 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 8 of its 14 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Oct 2024.

## 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, 8 of 8)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardware](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13705/) (2023)
- [Universal Manipulation Interface: In-The-Wild Robot Teaching Without In-The-Wild Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10329/) (2024)
- [Mobile ALOHA: Learning Bimanual Mobile Manipulation with Low-Cost Whole-Body Teleoperation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02117/) (2024)
- [DexCap: Scalable and Portable Mocap Data Collection System for Dexterous Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07788/) (2024)
- [A Survey of Imitation Learning: Algorithms, Recent Developments, and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.02473/) (2023)
- [ALOHA Unleashed: A Simple Recipe for Robot Dexterity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13126/) (2024)
- [ACE: A Cross-Platform Visual-Exoskeletons System for Low-Cost Dexterous Teleoperation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.11805/) (2024)

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

- [SpeedAug: Policy Acceleration via Tempo-Enriched Policy and RL Fine-Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.00062/) (2025)
- [Speedup Patch: Learning a Plug-and-Play Policy to Accelerate Embodied Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.20658/) (2026)
- [TempoVLA: Learning Speed-Controllable Vision-Language-Action Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.06491/) (2026)
- [Tri-Manual Visuomotor Imitation Learning of Robot Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.25731/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Imitation learning, which enables robots to learn behaviors from demonstrations by human, has emerged as a promising solution for generating robot motions in such environments. The imitation learning-based robot motion generation method, however, has the drawback of depending on the demonstrator's task execution speed. This paper presents a novel temporal ensemble approach applied to imitation learning algorithms, allowing for execution of future actions. The proposed method leverages existing demonstration data and pre-trained policies, offering the advantages of requiring no additional computation and being easy to implement. The algorithms performance was validated through real-world experiments involving robotic block color sorting, demonstrating up to 3x increase in task execution speed while maintaining a high success rate compared to the action chunking with transformer method. This study highlights the potential for significantly improving the performance of imitation learning-based policies, which were previously limited by the demonstrator's speed. It is expected to contribute substantially to future advancements in autonomous object manipulation technologies aimed at enhancing productivity.
