Jointly Learning Predicates and Actions Enables Zero-Shot Skill Composition
On the map: Offline RL and imitation learning from data → Robot manipulation imitation learning
Abstract (arXiv)
Learning from Demonstration (LfD) enables robots to learn complex behaviors from expert examples, yet existing approaches often fail to generalize to new compositions of known skills without retraining. Modern generative policies model distributions over action trajectories alone, thus are unable to reason about the symbolic outcomes required for robust composition. We propose that skills should jointly model action trajectories and the symbolic outcomes they induce. To address this gap, we introduce Predicate Action Skills (PACTS), a class of closed-loop visuomotor policies that model skills as a joint generative process over action and predicate belief trajectories, producing coherent action-outcome rollouts within a single model. Jointly generating actions and predicates enables PACTS to learn internal representations that improve both action generation and predicate classification. Furthermore, we demonstrate zero-shot composition of learned skills via planning by leveraging online predicate predictions from PACTS as a symbolic interface for sequencing and monitoring execution. Project website: https://planpacts.github.io/
Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Robot manipulation imitation learning, one of 13 directions in Offline RL and imitation learning from data. Builds on 20 of its 30 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 20 May 2026.
Builds on
20 of 30 references.
Closest ancestors · 2
Same direction, newest first
- 2024Learning Robotic Manipulation Policies from Point Clouds with Conditional Flow Matching11 Sep
- 2023MimicGen: A Data Generation System for Scalable Robot Learning using Human Demonstrations26 Oct
Other references · 18
- 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
- 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,426
- 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusioncited by 2,730
- 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,297
- 2022Planning with Diffusion for Flexible Behavior Synthesiscited by 1,023
- 2023Improving and generalizing flow-based generative models with minibatch optimal transportcited by 835
- 2023Vision-Language Models for Vision Tasks: A Surveycited by 834
- 2021What Matters in Learning from Offline Human Demonstrations for Robot Manipulationcited by 699
- 2018Behavioral Cloning from Observationcited by 482
- 2020Integrated Task and Motion Planningcited by 281
- 2017Behavior Trees in Robotics and AI: An Introductioncited by 105
- 2024Equivariant Diffusion Policycited by 61
6 more
- 2021SORNet: Spatial Object-Centric Representations for Sequential Manipulationcited by 48
- 2024Verifiably Following Complex Robot Instructions with Foundation Modelscited by 15
- 2022Symbolic State Estimation with Predicates for Contact-Rich Manipulation Taskscited by 8
- 2021PlanSys2: A Planning System Framework for ROS2cited by 5
- 2023SkiROS2: A skill-based Robot Control Platform for ROScited by 4
- 2024Bootstrapping Object-level Planning with Large Language Modelscited by 3
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.
1 paper.
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026Flow Policies as Actions of Skill-Level World Models: Learned and Symbolic Abstractions for Long-Horizon Planning
- 2024VisualPredicator: Learning Abstract World Models with Neuro-Symbolic Predicates for Robot Planning
- 2026RoboTALES: Learning Reasoning-Guided Robot Policies via Task-Aligned Simulated Futures
- 2025Learning Compositional Behaviors from Demonstration and Language
- 2026Learning Diffusion Policy from Primitive Skills for Robot Manipulation
- 2026From Local Corrections to Generalized Skills: Improving Neuro-Symbolic Policies with MEMO
- 2026Learning to Move Before Learning to Do: Task-Agnostic pretraining for VLAs
- 2026Build on Priors: Vision--Language--Guided Neuro-Symbolic Imitation Learning for Data-Efficient Real-World Robot Manipulation