# ROSER: Few-Shot Robotic Sequence Retrieval for Scalable Robot Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.01474 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.01474/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 2 Mar 2026.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Robota-Embed: Unified VLA Embeddings for Robot In-Context Learning and Evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.19495/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

A critical bottleneck in robot learning is the scarcity of task-labeled, segmented training data, despite the abundance of large-scale robotic datasets recorded as long, continuous interaction logs. Existing datasets contain vast amounts of diverse behaviors, yet remain structurally incompatible with modern learning frameworks that require cleanly segmented, task-specific trajectories. We address this data utilization crisis by formalizing robotic sequence retrieval: the task of extracting reusable, task-centric segments from unlabeled logs using only a few reference examples. We introduce ROSER, a lightweight few-shot retrieval framework that learns task-agnostic metric spaces over temporal windows, enabling accurate retrieval with as few as 3-5 demonstrations, without any task-specific training required. To validate our approach, we establish comprehensive evaluation protocols and benchmark ROSER against classical alignment methods, learned embeddings, and language model baselines across three large-scale datasets (e.g., LIBERO, DROID, and nuScenes). Our experiments demonstrate that ROSER consistently outperforms all prior methods in both accuracy and efficiency, achieving sub-millisecond per-match inference while maintaining superior distributional alignment. By reframing data curation as few-shot retrieval, ROSER provides a practical pathway to unlock underutilized robotic datasets, fundamentally improving data availability for robot learning.
