# Latent Action Diffusion for Cross-Embodiment Manipulation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14608 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.14608/

## Key facts

- Cited by 20 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 17 Jun 2025.

## Built on by (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [A Systematic Study of Data Modalities and Strategies for Co-training Large Behavior Models for Robot Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.01067/) (2026)
- [Align-Then-stEer: Adapting the Vision-Language Action Models through Unified Latent Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.02055/) (2025)
- [Show-Harness: Just a VLM Agent Can Play Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.10522/) (2026)
- [XR-1: Towards Versatile Vision-Language-Action Models via Learning Unified Vision-Motion Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.02776/) (2025)
- [Learning to Act Robustly with View-Invariant Latent Actions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.02994/) (2026)
- [Cross-Hand Latent Representation for Vision-Language-Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.10158/) (2026)
- [Cloak: Zero-Shot Cross-Embodiment Manipulation by Masking the End-Effector from the VLA](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.22836/) (2026)
- [CRAFT: Video Diffusion for Bimanual Robot Data Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.03552/) (2026)
- [Ambient Diffusion Policy: Imitation Learning from Suboptimal Data in Robotics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.12365/) (2026)
- [Inference-stage Adaptation-projection Strategy Adapts Diffusion Policy to Cross-manipulators Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.11621/) (2025)
- [SCAR: Self-Supervised Continuous Action Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.16412/) (2026)
- [KITE: Decoupling Kinematics and Interaction for Zero-Shot Cross-Embodiment Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.22113/) (2026)
- [The Embodiment Gap in Robot Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.18433/) (2026)
- [V-MORALS: Visual Morse Graph-Aided Estimation of Regions of Attraction in a Learned Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.23524/) (2026)
- [UniDexTok: A Unified Dexterous Hand Tokenizer from Real Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.10683/) (2026)
- [PoLAR: Factorizing Extent and Mode in Latent Actions for Robot Policy Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.21139/) (2026)
- [Gripper-aware Vision Language Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.24603/) (2026)
- [ZETA: A Controlled Study of Zero-Shot Cross-Embodiment VLA Transfer for Tabletop Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.02546/) (2026)
- [GALA: Geometry-Aware Latent Action Modeling for Vision-Language-Action Model Pretraining across Embodiments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.21948/) (2026)
- [SkelWAM: A Skeleton-Guided World-Action Model for Zero-Shot Cross-Embodiment Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.21983/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

End-to-end learning is emerging as a powerful paradigm for robotic manipulation, but its effectiveness is limited by data scarcity and the heterogeneity of action spaces across robot embodiments. In particular, diverse action spaces across different end-effectors create barriers for cross-embodiment learning and skill transfer. We address this challenge through diffusion policies learned in a latent action space that unifies diverse end-effector actions. We first show that we can learn a semantically aligned latent action space for anthropomorphic robotic hands, a human hand, and a parallel jaw gripper using encoders trained with a contrastive loss. Second, we show that by using our proposed latent action space for co-training on manipulation data from different end-effectors, we can utilize a single policy for multi-robot control and obtain up to 25.3% improved manipulation success rates, indicating successful skill transfer despite a significant embodiment gap. Our approach using latent cross-embodiment policies presents a new method to unify different action spaces across embodiments, enabling efficient multi-robot control and data sharing across robot setups. This unified representation significantly reduces the need for extensive data collection for each new robot morphology, accelerates generalization across embodiments, and ultimately facilitates more scalable and efficient robotic learning.