# Do You Know Where Your Camera Is? View-Invariant Policy Learning with Camera Conditioning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.02268 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.02268/

## Key facts

- Cited by 14 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 44 of its 57 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Oct 2025.

## 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, 30 of 44)

- [Sigmoid Loss for Language Image Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15343/) (2023)
- [RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15818/) (2023)
- [OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09246/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04137/) (2023)
- [π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.24164/) (2024)
- [RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06817/) (2022)
- [Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardware](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13705/) (2023)
- [VGGT: Visual Geometry Grounded Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11651/) (2025)
- [Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12213/) (2024)
- [DROID: A Large-Scale In-The-Wild Robot Manipulation Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12945/) (2024)
- [ORB-SLAM2: an Open-Source SLAM System for Monocular, Stereo and RGB-D Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.06475/) (2016)
- [R3M: A Universal Visual Representation for Robot Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.12601/) (2022)
- [BridgeData V2: A Dataset for Robot Learning at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12952/) (2023)
- [Perceiver-Actor: A Multi-Task Transformer for Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.05451/) (2022)
- [SmolVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model for Affordable and Efficient Robotics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.01844/) (2025)
- [CAT3D: Create Anything in 3D with Multi-View Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.10314/) (2024)
- [VINS-Mono: A Robust and Versatile Monocular Visual-Inertial State Estimator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.03852/) (2017)
- [Light Field Networks: Neural Scene Representations with Single-Evaluation Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.02634/) (2021)
- [Behavior Transformers: Cloning k modes with one stone](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.11251/) (2022)
- [3D Diffuser Actor: Policy Diffusion with 3D Scene Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10885/) (2024)
- [RoboNet: Large-Scale Multi-Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.11215/) (2019)
- [RVT: Robotic View Transformer for 3D Object Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.14896/) (2023)
- [RH20T: A Comprehensive Robotic Dataset for Learning Diverse Skills in One-Shot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.00595/) (2023)
- [ViPE: Video Pose Engine for 3D Geometric Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10934/) (2025)
- [Act3D: 3D Feature Field Transformers for Multi-Task Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.17817/) (2023)
- [RVT-2: Learning Precise Manipulation from Few Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.08545/) (2024)
- [Cameras as Rays: Pose Estimation via Ray Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14817/) (2024)
- [A Careful Examination of Large Behavior Models for Multitask Dexterous Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05331/) (2025)
- [XIRL: Cross-embodiment Inverse Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.03911/) (2021)
- [GNFactor: Multi-Task Real Robot Learning with Generalizable Neural Feature Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16891/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [VLANeXt: Recipes for Building Strong VLA Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.18532/) (2026)
- [Learning to Act Robustly with View-Invariant Latent Actions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.02994/) (2026)
- [From Fixed to Free Cameras: Calibration-Free View-Robust Vision-Language-Action Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.05396/) (2026)
- [Selective Cross-View Consistency for World Action Models: Held-Out Viewpoint Robustness Without Test-Time Camera Information](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.21402/) (2026)
- [See like a Robot: Robot-Centric Pointmaps for VLA Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.11498/) (2026)
- [Cross-View Action Consistency for Camera-Robust Vision-Language-Action Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.06965/) (2026)
- [AxisGuide: Grounding Robot Action Coordinate System in RGB Observations for Robust Visuomotor Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.06761/) (2026)
- [Can Single-View Mesh Reconstruction Generalize to Robot Camera Rotation?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.22987/) (2026)
- [The Moving Eye: Enhancing VLA Spatial Generalization via Hybrid Dynamic Data Collection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.02322/) (2026)
- [RayViT: Ray-Conditioned Visual Representations for Viewpoint-Robust Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.29622/) (2026)
- [AnyviewMeter: Adapting Robotic Reward Models with Camera Geometry and Multi-View Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.20106/) (2026)
- [InfiNoVA: Infinite Novel View Augmentation for Viewpoint Invariant Robot Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.27734/) (2026)
- [An Empirical Study on What Matters for Viewpoint-Generalizable Policies in Visual Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.32762/) (2026)
- [VersaCamVLA: Camera-Configurable VLA Policies for Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.12451/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We study view-invariant imitation learning by explicitly conditioning policies on camera extrinsics. Using Plucker embeddings of per-pixel rays, we show that conditioning on extrinsics significantly improves generalization across viewpoints for standard behavior cloning policies, including ACT, Diffusion Policy, and SmolVLA. To evaluate policy robustness under realistic viewpoint shifts, we introduce six manipulation tasks in RoboSuite and ManiSkill that pair "fixed" and "randomized" scene variants, decoupling background cues from camera pose. Our analysis reveals that policies without extrinsics often infer camera pose using visual cues from static backgrounds in fixed scenes; this shortcut collapses when workspace geometry or camera placement shifts. Conditioning on extrinsics restores performance and yields robust RGB-only control without depth. We release the tasks, demonstrations, and code at https://ripl.github.io/know_your_camera/ .