# Generative Flow on Symbolic Abstractions for Embodiment Capability Discovery

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.17174 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.17174/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 54 of its 60 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Oct 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 54)

- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [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)
- [RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06817/) (2022)
- [Domain Randomization for Transferring Deep Neural Networks from Simulation to the Real World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06907/) (2017)
- [Mastering Atari, Go, Chess and Shogi by Planning with a Learned Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.08265/) (2019)
- [Code as Policies: Language Model Programs for Embodied Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.07753/) (2022)
- [Inner Monologue: Embodied Reasoning through Planning with Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.05608/) (2022)
- [Exploration by Random Network Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.12894/) (2018)
- [Fine-Tuning Vision-Language-Action Models: Optimizing Speed and Success](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.19645/) (2025)
- [Diversity is All You Need: Learning Skills without a Reward Function](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.06070/) (2018)
- [Solving Rubik's Cube with a Robot Hand](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.07113/) (2019)
- [Sim-to-Real Transfer of Robotic Control with Dynamics Randomization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.06537/) (2017)
- [Eureka: Human-Level Reward Design via Coding Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.12931/) (2023)
- [RMA: Rapid Motor Adaptation for Legged Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.04034/) (2021)
- [Learning agile and dynamic motor skills for legged robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.08652/) (2019)
- [Texygen: A Benchmarking Platform for Text Generation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.01886/) (2018)
- [Data-Efficient Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.08296/) (2018)
- [The Option-Critic Architecture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.05140/) (2016)
- [Relay Policy Learning: Solving Long-Horizon Tasks via Imitation and Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.11956/) (2019)
- [Sim-to-Real: Learning Agile Locomotion For Quadruped Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.10332/) (2018)
- [Integrated Task and Motion Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.01083/) (2020)
- [GFlowNet Foundations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09266/) (2021)
- [Emergent Complexity and Zero-shot Transfer via Unsupervised Environment Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02096/) (2020)
- [Automatic Goal Generation for Reinforcement Learning Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.06366/) (2017)
- [Trajectory balance: Improved credit assignment in GFlowNets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.13259/) (2022)
- [Accelerating Reinforcement Learning with Learned Skill Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11944/) (2020)
- [RoboGen: Towards Unleashing Infinite Data for Automated Robot Learning via Generative Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.01455/) (2023)
- [Prioritized Level Replay](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.03934/) (2020)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Achieving complex, long-horizon robot behavior remains challenging because successful execution depends on skills grounded in a robot's physical affordances. Existing training-task distributions are often handcrafted or sampled from large language models (LLMs), relying on semantic plausibility rather than embodiment-specific feasibility. This mismatch can produce curricula that are too difficult, redundant, or blind to non-obvious but learnable behaviors. We propose Generative Flow on Symbolic Abstractions (FOSA), a framework for discovering embodiment-specific capabilities by learning a grounded task generator. FOSA parameterizes an abstract policy as a Generative Flow Network that constructs symbolic task skeletons. Each skeleton is compiled into a simulation environment, where low-level policy-learning performance provides the reward signal for the abstract policy. Across heterogeneous robot platforms, FOSA discovers diverse and executable tasks near the robot's empirical capability frontier. After distilling the discovered task policies into a single language-conditioned policy, FOSA improves performance on unseen complex and long-horizon tasks. The code and demonstration videos are available at https://www.youwei-yu.com/fosa.