Creative tool use is a fundamental human capability and an important step toward general-purpose embodied intelligence. It requires agents to reason about object affordances, physical constraints, and manipulation strategies, especially when standard tools are unavailable. However, progress in this area is limited by the lack of real-world datasets that capture human tool-use behavior with sufficient scale, fidelity, and diversity. Existing benchmarks are often simulation-based, focus on simplified interactions, or lack detailed observations and annotations. We introduce ToolDex, a large-scale egocentric-exocentric (ego-exo) human demonstration dataset for creative physical tool use. ToolDex captures scenarios in which humans select, adapt, and repurpose available objects as tools. Using synchronized egocentric cameras and eight exocentric cameras, the dataset provides high-fidelity multi-view observations and rich annotations for hands, tools, target objects, and their deformable interactions. Beyond data collection, we establish a benchmark suite characterizing three core capabilities: physical tool-use reasoning, sparse-view 3D and 4D reconstruction, and robot policy learning. ToolDex provides a foundation for studying human tool-use behavior and developing embodied agents that can adaptively use tools in complex real-world environments. Dataset visualizations and benchmarking results are available at https://tooluse-dataset.github.io/.
Figures & tables
Figure 1: ToolDex Overview. The dataset captures creative physical tool-use behaviors in everyday tabletop scenarios, where humans repurpose available objects as tools for manipulation (left). It explicitly models full hand–tool–target-object interactions, including for challenging deformable targets (middle). Using synchronized ego-exo multi-view capture, ToolDex provides rich annotations across views, including hand pose, tool, and target-object segmentation (right).
Dataset
#Tools
#Target Obj.
#Actions
#Frames
#Trials
Ego/Exo
Channels
Hand Pose
Obj. Pose
Seg. Mask
TACO Liu et al. (2024)
20
–
15
5.2M
2.5K
1 / 12
RGB (Ego RGB-D)
✓
✓
✓
OakInk2 Zhan et al. (2024)
75
–
60 primitives
4.01M
2.8K
1 / 3
RGB
✓
✓
✓
HOT3D Banerjee et al. (2025)
33
–
–
3.7M
2.8K
2–3 / 0
RGB + mono
✓
✓
✓
GigaHands Fu et al. (2025)
417
–
1467
183M
13.9K
0 / 51
RGB
✓
✓
✓
TOOLDEX
45
23
16
58.3M
10.8K
1 / 8
RGB-D
✓
✓
✓
Table 1: Comparison of ToolDex with recent hand–object-interaction datasets. Only ToolDex explicitly separates tool and target object roles (Section 3.1 ). For prior datasets the dash in #Target Obj. indicates a single combined object inventory rather than the absence of targets.
Figure 2: Combinatorial coverage of ToolDex . Binary heatmaps of the (tool, action, target) combinations in the dataset, with each axis sorted from most to least frequent.
Figure 3: Data collection setup. Left: The diverse tool objects in ToolDex . Middle: The multi-camera rig, consisting of eight Intel RealSense RGB-D cameras and an Apple Vision Pro headset with a mounted ZED Mini stereo camera. Right: Three sampled camera views, including two exocentric and one egocentric view.
Figure 4: 3DGS and 4DGS prediction for camera view withheld during training and prediction of novel views using InstantSplat + Difix3D. Additional visualizations are available on our website.
Static (3DGS)
Dynamic (4DGS)
SplatFormer
IS
IS+Difix3D
IS-4D
IS-4D+Difix3D+GSFix3D
PSNR ↑
13.09
19.97
20.45
19.60
15.97
MUSIQ ↑
33.11
50.66
55.11
51.00
69.92
Table 2: Novel-view synthesis results for data captured by 8 sparse cameras, for both static (3DGS) and dynamic (4DGS) settings. PSNR is computed against a held-out camera view (cam 6 ); MUSIQ scores are computed after training with all 8 cameras (no ground truth required). Methods: SplatFormer ( Chen et al., 2025 ) , InstantSplat (IS) ( Fan et al., 2024 ) , Difix3D ( Wu et al., 2025 ) , GSFix3D ( Yin et al., 2026 ) ; MUSIQ ( Ke et al., 2021 ) .
Table 4: Behavioral-planning results across all 160 trajectories for GPT-6-Astra ( OpenAI, 2026 ) , Gemma 4 31B ( Google DeepMind, 2026 ) , Gemini Robotics ER ( Gemini Robotics Team, 2025 ) , Claude Fable 5 ( Anthropic, 2026 ) , and Qwen 3.6 27B ( Qwen Team, 2026 ) . All distance metrics are reported in pixels and computed over successfully evaluated outputs.
Figure 5: Left: Predicted tool names and their corresponding bounding boxes generated by GPT 6 Astra, Claude Sonnet 4.6, Gemini 3.1 Pro, and Qwen3.6-27B. Right: Ground-truth task trajectories together with trajectories predicted by Gemini Robotics ER 1.6.
Action
Tool
Kinematic Retarget
BC (Retarget)
ManipTrans (RL)
Dex-X (RL)
Stir coffee
spatula
7.0
1.6
52.2 ± 2.2
72.7 ± 0.8
Scoop nuts
ladle
22.2
9.1
62.9 ± 0.4
66.8 ± 1.3
Crush banana
mallet
10.2
2.6
53.0 ± 1.9
55.8 ± 0.2
Scoop nuts
scooper
31.0
9.8
45.3 ± 2.0
31.3 ± 0.6
Crush nuts
pestle
7.0
1.9
16.8 ± 0.2
46.7 ± 2.4
Collect sand
squeegee
6.9
2.6
12.6 ± 0.7
57.5 ± 1.9
Table 5: Task success rates (%) on the benchmark. Higher is better.
Appendix figures & tables12 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
Figure 6: Training of 3DGS using 8 cameras and reconstruction of a known camera view
Figure 7: Training of 3DGS using 8 cameras and reconstruction of a novel camera view
Full-reference
No-reference appeal composite
Method
PSNR ↑
SSIM ↑
LPIPS ↓
MUSIQ ↑
MANIQA ↑
TOPIQ ↑
BRISQUE ↓
NIQE ↓
PIQE ↓
SplatFormer
13.09
0.492
0.694
33.11
0.255
0.370
58.38
5.72
44.95
Sparfels
13.72
0.534
0.642
61.16
0.331
0.436
59.39
6.27
67.68
SparseGS
14.64
0.630
0.645
37.61
0.189
0.254
45.85
5.57
70.99
InstantSplat
19.97
0.769
0.428
50.66
0.244
0.403
38.34
4.56
49.93
IS + Difix3D
20.45
0.779
0.364
55.11
0.324
0.456
21.15
4.81
25.13
Appendix
Table 6: 3DGS novel-view synthesis with 8 sparse cameras, benchmarked on three tabletop tool-use scenes ( pestle_crush_nuts , ladle_scoop_nuts , knife_slice_banana ). Each entry is the mean over the three scenes. Methods: SplatFormer ( Chen et al., 2025 ) , Sparfels ( Jena et al., 2025 ) , SparseGS ( Xiong et al., 2023 ) , InstantSplat ( Fan et al., 2024 ) .
Figure 8: Training of 4DGS using 8 cameras and reconstruction of a known camera view
Figure 9: Training of 4DGS using 8 cameras and reconstruction of a novel camera view
Full-reference (held-out cam 6 )
No-reference appeal composite (novel-view tour)
Pipeline stage
PSNR ↑
SSIM ↑
LPIPS ↓
MUSIQ ↑
MANIQA ↑
TOPIQ ↑
BRISQUE ↓
NIQE ↓
PIQE ↓
InstantSplat-4D
19.60
0.715
0.372
51.00
0.22
0.37
39.22
4.87
48.05
IS-4D + Difix3D
19.63
0.728
0.313
62.34
0.32
0.44
30.39
4.84
48.13
IS-4D + Difix3D + GSFix3D
15.97
0.631
0.352
69.92
0.39
0.54
29.55
4.35
53.33
Appendix
Table 7: 4DGS Novel-view synthesis with Sparse 8 cameras benchmarked on three dynamic tabletop tool-use scenes ( mallet_push_toy , spatula_flip_naan , spoon_lift_place_egg ). Full-reference metrics score the held-out cam 6 render of the cam 6 -dropped run against its captured ground truth at 10 sampled timesteps per scene; no-reference metrics score rendered novel-view tour of the 8-cam run.
Full-reference (8 observed views)
No-reference appeal composite (novel-view tour)
Pipeline stage
PSNR ↑
SSIM ↑
LPIPS ↓
MUSIQ ↑
MANIQA ↑
TOPIQ ↑
BRISQUE ↓
NIQE ↓
PIQE ↓
InstantSplat-4D
36.97
0.975
0.044
48.79
0.209
0.354
42.13
5.10
50.61
+ Difix3D
31.87
0.931
0.095
61.93
0.311
0.444
39.25
5.23
55.66
+ Difix3D + GSFix3D
21.11
0.758
0.186
64.69
0.388
0.528
37.78
4.71
49.88
Appendix
Table 8: 4DGS evaluation with all 8 cameras observed, averaged over 20 dynamic tool-use scenes. Full-reference metrics compare each of the 8 training views with its captured ground truth at up to 10 sampled timesteps; no-reference metrics score the rendered novel-view tour.
⬇ System Prompt : You are a robot tool - use reasoning assistant . Select which visible tools could realistically complete the task . Do not default to the most typical tool . User Prompt : Given the scene with multiple laid - out tools , identify which of them could be used to complete the task : "< TASK >". Only select tools that are both visible and plausible for completing the task . Unconventional tools are allowed , but do not include tools that clearly would not work . # only added for Spatial Grounding Tasks Return one bounding box for each tool in the same order as the tools list . Use pixel coordinates [ x1 , y1 , x2 , y2 ] around the visible tool , with x2 and y2 as the bottom - right exclusive coordinates . Return only the canonical base tool name . Do NOT include adjectives , materials , colors , or sizes . Return ONLY the requested JSON object using this schema : { " tools ": ["< exact_tool_name >", "..."],’ # only added for Spatial Grounding Tasks " bboxes ": [[0, 0, 0, 0]] }
Appendix
Table 9: Prompt used for evaluating tool selection and localization capabilities of VLMs.
⬇ System Prompt : You are a robot trajectory planning assistant . Reply with JSON only . User Prompt : Plan a 2 D image - space trajectory for this manipulation task : "< TASK >" Place point 0 on the < TOOL_NAME >. Then return < NUM_POINTS > additional points that describe a plausible trajectory for using the tool to complete the task . Use normalized image coordinates in [ y , x ] format , where each coordinate is an integer in the range 0-1000. Return ONLY a JSON array in the following format : [ {" point ": [ y , x ], " label ": "0"}, {" point ": [ y , x ], " label ": "1"} ] Requirements : - Labels must be strings from "0" through "< NUM_POINTS >". - Include exactly one point for each label . - Do not include code fences or explanatory text .
Appendix
Table 10: Prompt used for behavioral planning and trajectory prediction.
Figure 10: Qualitative trajectory generation results. Bounding boxes are color-coded by model: brown for GPT-6-Astra, teal for Claude Sonnet 4.5, purple for Gemini 3.1 Pro, and pink for Qwen3.6-27B.
Figure 11: Qualitative trajectory generation results from Gemini Robotics ER across six manipulation scenarios. Red trajectories denote the predicted trajectories generated by Gemini Robotics ER, blue trajectories correspond to the projected tool-center ground-truth trajectories, and green trajectories correspond to the interaction-point transported trajectories. Predicted trajectories generally capture the high-level interaction geometry and intended tool-use behavior, particularly for short-horizon manipulation tasks.
As robotic hardware and learning methods advance, humanoids need tools to perform tasks beyond their inherent physical limits. Successful tool use requires selecting a suitable tool and coordinating manipulation and, when needed, locomotion to complete the task. Existing benchmarks do not jointly evaluate these capabilities on a humanoid. We introduce HumanoidToolBench, an 18-task benchmark spanning three scenarios, three execution levels, and two tool-set modes, together with ToolBook, a dataset of 3.1k demonstrations collected in simulation and on a real Unitree G1. Evaluation of seven policies in simulation and three on the real robot reveals substantial gaps between selecting a suitable tool and completing the task. Focused GR00T N1.7 probes show reduced selection accuracy on unseen tools and continued task execution under unrelated instructions. Code and data are available at https://snu-pi.github.io/HumanoidToolBench/.
Kyochul Jang, Seohyeon Park, Ohchul Kwon +9
Seoul National University · University of Massachusetts Amherst · Google Research
Real-world embodied tasks, from everyday activities to professional procedures, require agents to act under physical constraints while tracking evolving object and task states. Tool use sits at the heart of such tasks, as many everyday and professional activities are tool-mediated. Understanding them requires reasoning about affordances, hand-tool-object geometry, procedural progress, and causal effects on target objects. Yet despite strong performance on perception-oriented video tasks such as captioning and general video QA, current multimodal video models remain limited in this form of tool-centric embodied reasoning. Progress in this direction has been limited by the lack of real-world egocentric data and diagnostic benchmarks. To address this gap, we introduce EgoTools, the first comprehensive suite for egocentric tool-use understanding. It consists of two complementary components: EgoTools-Data, a large-scale corpus of 100 hours of tool-centric egocentric recordings with synchronized audio, dense captions, reasoning-heavy narrations, and supplementary 3D information; and EgoTools-Bench, a diagnostic benchmark of 1,000 QA pairs across four tracks that cover tool-use understanding from perception and geometry to procedure and causal reasoning. Experimental results show that current models still struggle to ground tool use in visual evidence: Gemini-3.1-Pro achieves 66.9% overall accuracy but only 51.7% on Perception & Grounding. Beyond evaluation, we validate EgoTools-Data as a training resource. On the full 1,000-question benchmark, full supervised fine-tuning improves Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct from 50.0% to 60.9%, under strict source-video separation. Together, these results establish EgoTools as a unified resource for both training and diagnostic evaluation of real-world egocentric tool-use understanding.
Shulin Tian, Junsu Kim, Shuai Liu +17
S-Lab, Nanyang Technological University · A*STAR · KAIST +4
In the field of robot learning, large-scale and diverse demonstration trajectories provide the fundamental basis for enhancing robotic manipulation ability. We introduce RoboTacDex, a large, multi-modal, and diverse dataset of dexterous manipulation behaviors performed with a humanoid robot. Built on the publicly accessible humanoid robot Unitree G1, RoboTacDex consists of 6k trajectories covering 19 tasks, 23 skills, and interactions with 22 objects. RoboTacDex provides comprehensive records including multi-view RGB and depth information, tactile feedback, and detailed semantic annotations. Furthermore, the dataset features a variety of relatively challenging tasks that can only be completed by dual arms and dexterous hands, aiming to mimic human-like operational logic and simulate real-world manipulation complexity. To ensure data collection quality, we develop an improved multi-camera synchronization system to enable millisecond data synchronization and recording of modalities. In our experiments, we evaluate three representative imitation learning models on our dataset, analyzing their performance as well as their respective strengths and limitations across different task categories. Successful trial results and a moderate level of generalization capabilities across a suite of tasks indicate the effectiveness and diversity of the collected dataset. Our dataset will be open-sourced soon.
Xinyi Wang, Donghan Li, Zi'Ang Chen +5
Fudan University · ByteDance Intelligent Creation · Shanghai AI Laboratory