X-Imitator: Spatial-Aware Imitation Learning via Bidirectional Action-Pose Interaction
On the map: Offline RL and imitation learning from data → Robot manipulation imitation learning
Abstract (arXiv)
Effectively handling the interplay between spatial perception and action generation remains a critical bottleneck in robotic manipulation. Existing methods typically treat spatial perception and action execution as decoupled or strictly unidirectional processes, fundamentally restricting a robot's ability to master complex manipulation tasks. To address this, we propose X-Imitator, a versatile dual-path framework that models spatial perception and action execution as a tightly coupled bidirectional loop. By reciprocally conditioning current pose predictions on past actions and vice versa, this framework enables continuous mutual refinement between spatial reasoning and action generation. This joint modeling exactly mimics human internal forward models. Designed as a modular architecture, the system can be seamlessly integrated into various visuomotor policies. Extensive experiments across 24 simulated and 3 real-world tasks demonstrate that our framework significantly outperforms both vanilla policies and prior methods utilizing explicit pose guidance. The code will be open sourced.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (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 30 of its 79 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 12 May 2026.
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30 of 79 references.
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Same direction, newest first
- 20243D Diffusion Policy: Generalizable Visuomotor Policy Learning via Simple 3D Representations6 Mar
- 2023Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardware23 Apr
Other references · 28
- 2024SAM 2: Segment Anything in Images and Videoscited by 2,863
- 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,407
- 2022RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scalecited by 2,061
- 2025GR00T N1: An Open Foundation Model for Generalist Humanoid Robotscited by 1,225
- 2017Learning Complex Dexterous Manipulation with Deep Reinforcement Learning and Demonstrationscited by 715
- 2025SpatialVLA: Exploring Spatial Representations for Visual-Language-Action Modelcited by 519
- 2025RoboTwin 2.0: A Scalable Data Generator and Benchmark with Strong Domain Randomization for Robust Bimanual Robotic Manipulationcited by 518
- 2024TraceVLA: Visual Trace Prompting Enhances Spatial-Temporal Awareness for Generalist Robotic Policiescited by 304
- 2024RoboPoint: A Vision-Language Model for Spatial Affordance Prediction for Roboticscited by 251
- 2023Act3D: 3D Feature Field Transformers for Multi-Task Robotic Manipulationcited by 138
- 2024Flow as the Cross-Domain Manipulation Interfacecited by 132
- 2025PointVLA: Injecting the 3D World into Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 105
16 more
- 2025InternVLA-M1: A Spatially Guided Vision-Language-Action Framework for Generalist Robot Policycited by 84
- 2025GeoVLA: Empowering 3D Representations in Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 70
- 2025Evo-0: Vision-Language-Action Model with Implicit Spatial Understandingcited by 58
- 2025FlowVLA: Visual Chain of Thought-based Motion Reasoning for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 50
- 2025Dual-Stream Diffusion for World-Model Augmented Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 36
- 2025From Spatial to Actions: Grounding Vision-Language-Action Model in Spatial Foundation Priorscited by 28
- 2025Dream2Flow: Bridging Video Generation and Open-World Manipulation with 3D Object Flowcited by 25
- 2025GraphCoT-VLA: A 3D Spatial-Aware Reasoning Vision-Language-Action Model for Robotic Manipulation with Ambiguous Instructionscited by 19
- 2025CordViP: Correspondence-based Visuomotor Policy for Dexterous Manipulation in Real-Worldcited by 18
- 2025Gripper Keypose and Object Pointflow as Interfaces for Bimanual Robotic Manipulationcited by 16
- 2025GLaD: Geometric Latent Distillation for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 11
- 2025AimBot: A Simple Auxiliary Visual Cue to Enhance Spatial Awareness of Visuomotor Policiescited by 10
- 2025Spatial Policy: Guiding Visuomotor Robotic Manipulation with Spatial-Aware Modeling and Reasoningcited by 10
- 20253D Flow Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Generating Flow in 3D Spacecited by 9
- 2025SpatialActor: Exploring Disentangled Spatial Representations for Robust Robotic Manipulationcited by 5
- 2025Dual-Stream Decoupled Learning for Temporal Consistency and Speaker Interaction in AVSDcited by 2
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- 2026XEWorld: Can Action-Conditioned World Models Generalize to Unseen Robot Embodiments?
- 2026UMR: Universal Manipulation Representation ↗
- 2026iMaC: Translating Actions into Motion and Contact Images for Embodied World Models
- 2025X-Sim: Cross-Embodiment Learning via Real-to-Sim-to-Real
- 2025ImitDiff: Transferring Foundation-Model Priors for Distraction Robust Visuomotor Policy
- 2026World Models for Robotic Manipulation: A Survey
- 2021Generalization Through Hand-Eye Coordination: An Action Space for Learning Spatially-Invariant Visuomotor Control
- 2025Toward Embodiment Equivariant Vision-Language-Action Policy