# DexCompose: Reusing Dexterous Policies for Multi-Task Manipulation with a Single Hand

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.28323 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.28323/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 38 of its 41 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Jun 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 38)

- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04137/) (2023)
- [Solving Rubik's Cube with a Robot Hand](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.07113/) (2019)
- [Learning Complex Dexterous Manipulation with Deep Reinforcement Learning and Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.10087/) (2017)
- [Learning Dexterous In-Hand Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.00177/) (2018)
- [Residual Reinforcement Learning for Robot Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03201/) (2018)
- [Accelerating Reinforcement Learning with Learned Skill Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11944/) (2020)
- [DexMV: Imitation Learning for Dexterous Manipulation from Human Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.05877/) (2021)
- [Residual Policy Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.06298/) (2018)
- [Parrot: Data-Driven Behavioral Priors for Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.10024/) (2020)
- [DexGraspNet: A Large-Scale Robotic Dexterous Grasp Dataset for General Objects Based on Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02697/) (2022)
- [UniDexGrasp: Universal Robotic Dexterous Grasping via Learning Diverse Proposal Generation and Goal-Conditioned Policy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.00938/) (2023)
- [DexMimicGen: Automated Data Generation for Bimanual Dexterous Manipulation via Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.24185/) (2024)
- [UniDexGrasp++: Improving Dexterous Grasping Policy Learning via Geometry-aware Curriculum and Iterative Generalist-Specialist Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.00464/) (2023)
- [From Imitation to Refinement -- Residual RL for Precise Assembly](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.16677/) (2024)
- [DexVIP: Learning Dexterous Grasping with Human Hand Pose Priors from Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.00164/) (2022)
- [Augmenting Reinforcement Learning with Behavior Primitives for Diverse Manipulation Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.03655/) (2021)
- [Dexterous Imitation Made Easy: A Learning-Based Framework for Efficient Dexterous Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13251/) (2022)
- [Learning and Retrieval from Prior Data for Skill-based Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.11435/) (2022)
- [DexArt: Benchmarking Generalizable Dexterous Manipulation with Articulated Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.05706/) (2023)
- [ManipTrans: Efficient Dexterous Bimanual Manipulation Transfer via Residual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.21860/) (2025)
- [Data-efficient Deep Reinforcement Learning for Dexterous Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.03073/) (2017)
- [Sequential Dexterity: Chaining Dexterous Policies for Long-Horizon Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.00987/) (2023)
- [DexGraspNet 2.0: Learning Generative Dexterous Grasping in Large-scale Synthetic Cluttered Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.23004/) (2024)
- [Iterative Residual Policy: for Goal-Conditioned Dynamic Manipulation of Deformable Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00663/) (2022)
- [Residual Reinforcement Learning from Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.08050/) (2021)
- [Residual Policy Learning for Shared Autonomy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.05097/) (2020)
- [Residual Skill Policies: Learning an Adaptable Skill-based Action Space for Reinforcement Learning for Robotics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.02231/) (2022)
- [Grasp Multiple Objects with One Hand](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.15599/) (2023)
- [DexHandDiff: Interaction-aware Diffusion Planning for Adaptive Dexterous Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18562/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Dexterous manipulation policies can solve individual skills, but composing them to perform multiple tasks with a single hand remains challenging. Adding a new task on top of an existing manipulation skill often imposes conflicting demands on overlapping fingers and contact modes, causing destructive interference between preserving an existing manipulation outcome and executing a new one. We propose DexCompose, a role-aware residual composition framework that reuses pretrained dexterous policies for multi-task manipulation through explicit finger-level action ownership. Given two pretrained full-hand policies, DexCompose first collects successful post-task states from the first skill and performs release tests over candidate finger masks to identify which fingers are necessary for maintaining the established skill state. It then trains two asymmetric residual modules: a bounded residual stabilizer for task preservation, and a context-aware residual that adapts the frozen downstream policy only within the action subspace assigned to the new task. We evaluate the framework on 16 composite dexterous manipulation tasks spanning four object-retention skills and four downstream interactions. DexCompose achieves a 77.4% average composite success rate, demonstrating that structural action ownership with dual residuals offers a promising direction for composing dexterous skills beyond conventional policy chaining.