Imitation Learning

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Overview

Imitation learning teaches an agent to act by using examples of how a person or expert system behaves, often when specifying a reward is difficult. Behavior cloning directly maps observations to actions, while DAgger adds expert corrections on states the learner encounters, and inverse or adversarial imitation learning infers what behavior to match. Current methods also use diffusion policies, retrieval, world models, and visual, language, or tactile data for tasks such as robot manipulation, autonomous driving, and multi-agent coordination, with benchmarks including LIBERO, RoboMimic, and CARLA. A central challenge is that small errors can lead agents into states missing from demonstrations; improving recovery and safety while learning efficiently from limited, noisy, or conflicting examples remains an open tension.

Latest papers

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261 papers37 papers in the last four weeks, up 32% on the four weeks before. 0.2% of all new papers.

  1. Text Is the Bottleneck: A Small-Scale Replication of LLM Game Playing in Riichi Mahjong

    Oct 26, 2026Mingge XuGame-Playing AgentsImitation Learning

    Department of Bioengineering, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo.

  2. ElevateHead: Decide Once, Then Commit: When the Action Head Matters for Multimodal Imitation

    Oct 25, 2026Tsung-Lung YangRobot Policy LearningImitation Learning

    National University

  3. From Freehand Demonstrations to Autonomous Robotic Ultrasound: An Anatomy-Anchored Learning Framework

    Oct 23, 2026Yuan Bi, Fangxu Han, Ye Su +3Robotic UltrasoundImitation Learning

    Chair for Computer Aided Medical Procedures (CAMP), Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany · Munich Center for Machine Learning (MCML), Munich, Germany · Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

  4. Externalise the Memory: A Pre-Registered Study of Where an Embodied Agent's Experience Should Live

    Oct 21, 2026Cheng-Yin TuMemory-Augmented AgentsVisuomotor Policy Learning

    Nikon Research Corporation of America

  5. DriveMLP: When Training Strategy Outperforms Model Complexity in Autonomous Driving

    Oct 21, 2026Alessandro Canevaro, Julian Schmidt, Hang Yu +4Autonomous Driving PlanningImitation Learning

    Mercedes-Benz AG, Research & Development, Sindelfingen, Germany · University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany · Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, ITIV, Karlsruhe, Germany +2

  6. Learn the Task, Not the Schedule: Reducing Spurious Cross-Arm Coupling in Bimanual Imitation Learning

    Oct 19, 2026Shuyuan Hu, Deng-Ke Wu, Yifan Jin +4Robot Imitation LearningBimanual Robotic Manipulation

    School of AI, Shanghai Jiao Tong University · Central South University · South China Normal University +1

  7. NIOCIS: Typed-Decision Next-Hop Routing with Node-Conditioned Option Spaces for Tool-Use Agents

    Oct 19, 2026Jin Han, Mingfeng Xin, Feng Liang +1LLM Agent RoutingLLM Agent Efficiency

    Independent Researcher

  8. DefFlow: Goal-Conditioned Deformable Object Manipulation using 3D Point Flows

    Oct 16, 2026Gaurav Singh, Sergio Orozco, Ryan Duong +3Scene Flow EstimationDeformable Object Manipulation

    Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

  9. Diffeomorphic Hidden-State Steering: Improving Imitation Learning Policy Robustness through Expert Hidden-State Geometry

    Oct 15, 2026KwangBin LeeImitation LearningRobot Imitation Learning

  10. X-Fly: Learning to Reach and Stop in Full-Chunk Aerial Vision-Language Navigation

    Oct 15, 2026Ruibin Ju, Ruifeng Cai, Min Xu +1Aerial VLNImitation Learning

    ARIDGE, XPENG

  11. Learning Navigation from Multimodal Demonstrations with Geometric Candidate Modes

    Oct 14, 2026Chengyang Peng, Zhihao Zhang, Upama Pant +3Robot NavigationRobot Imitation Learning

    Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA. · Electrical and Computer Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA.

  12. Investigating Behavior Cloning from Few Demonstrations for Autonomous Driving based on Bird's-Eye View in Simulated Cities

    Oct 14, 2026Eric Aislan Antonelo, Gustavo Claudio Karl Couto, Christian Möller +1Instance ReweightingAutonomous Driving

    Automation and Systems Engineering Department, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil · Faculty of Science and Engineering, Information Technology Åbo Akademi University, Finland

  13. Imagining Goals with Geometric Horizon Models for Policy Generalization

    Oct 13, 2026Daniel Lawson, Dhruv Sreenivas, Adriana Hugessen +2Robot Policy GeneralizationGeneralization in RL

    Mila · Université de Montréal · Google DeepMind

  14. What Matters in Quality-Aware VLA Pretraining: A Benchmark and Empirical Study

    Oct 13, 2026Mingxuan Yan, Litian Gong, Dihong Huang +19VLA Model TrainingVision-Language-Action Models

    Georgia Institute of Technology · University of California, Riverside · Axis Robotics +6

  15. Where Small Mistakes Matter: Quantifying State Criticality for Imitation Learning

    Oct 13, 2026Yusuf Umut Ciftci, Joonwon Kang, Ajay Suresha Sathya +1Imitation LearningRobot Imitation Learning

    University of Southern California · Stanford University · Georgia Institute of Technology +1

  16. Improving Policy Learning from Delayed Interventions

    Oct 12, 2026Xiru Zhu, David Meger, Gregory DudekImitation LearningRobot Imitation Learning

    McGill University, Computer Science

  17. Imitation Learning of Avoidance Modes for Efficient Multimodal Model Predictive Control

    Oct 12, 2026Changyu Lee, Byung-Kwan Lee, Kanghoon YoonModel Predictive ControlDynamic Obstacle Avoidance

    Kongju National University · KAIST

  18. One-Shot Learning for Double-Shot Latte Art: Adapting Cobot Pouring Skills with Dynamic Movement Primitives

    Oct 12, 2026Zain Khan, Victor Hernandez Moreno, Dinh Tung LeRobot Skill LearningLearning from Demonstration

    UTS Robotics Institute, School of Electrical, Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering, University of Technology Sydney, Australia

  19. Imitation Holds a Key to Evolution: Localized Repair and Verified Skill Acquisition for Adaptive Agents

    Oct 12, 2026Kai Hu, Hua HuangImitation LearningAgent Skill Learning

    Beijing International Studies University · Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications

  20. Contact-Aware Imitation Learning Through Contact Factorization

    Oct 7, 2026Jiho Hong, Daeun Song, Sanghyun Kim +1Contact-Rich Robotic ManipulationImitation Learning

    Kyung Hee University · Ewha Womans University · University of Central Florida

  21. Teaching a Robot Dog New Tricks: Diverse Quadruped Skills via Combined Reinforcement and Imitation Learning with Adversarial Task Selection

    Oct 6, 2026Lemon Foxmere, Anthony Furman, Yizheng Du +3Robot Skill LearningMulti-Task RL

    HARE Lab, University of California at Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 USA · AIEA Lab, University of California at Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 USA

  22. Attacca: Goal-Directed Control under State Continuity for Long-Horizon Embodied Agents

    Oct 6, 2026Gyusik Seo, Jaehong YoonLong-Horizon Agent TasksGoal-Conditioned RL

    Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

  23. Task-Space Imitation Guidance for Efficient Reinforcement Learning

    Oct 5, 2026Salar Asayesh, Hossein Darani, Todd Cao +2Reward ShapingImitation Learning

    Sanctuary AI, Canada

  24. Interleaved Projected Gradient Descent for Safe Imitation Learning

    Oct 5, 2026Shengfan Cao, Francesco BorrelliGradient DescentImitation Learning

    University of California, Berkeley

  25. Talk Like You: Imitating How You Speak in Real-Time Talking Head Generation

    Oct 5, 2026Baiqin Wang, Zhixing Ding, Jijie Li +3Talking Head GenerationAudio-Driven Facial Animation

    MAIS, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences · School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences · CAIR, HKISI, Chinese Academy of Sciences +1

  26. Conditional Trajectory Peaks: Single-Pass Multimodal Policies over Action Chunks

    Oct 5, 2026Di Wu, Rongtian Shen, Ping Liu +4Efficient Multimodal InferenceRobot Policy Learning

    Magiclab Robotics Technology Co., Ltd., China · Southeast University, Nanjing, China

  27. Behavioral Cloning Mystery

    Oct 5, 2026Seohong Park, Sergey LevineBehavior CloningImitation Learning

    University of California, Berkeley

  28. Bilinear Flow Policy: Distributional Extrapolation for Goal-Conditioned Visuomotor Imitation

    Oct 5, 2026Wonsuhk Jung, Sundhar Vinodh Sangeetha, Chen Xu +4OOD GeneralizationVisuomotor Policy Learning

    Georgia Institute of Technology · Toyota Research Institute · University of Washington

  29. DreamFormer: Dream Imitation with a Transformer World Model for Language-Conditioned Robotic Manipulation

    Oct 3, 2026Mostafa Kotb, Cornelius Weber, Muhammad Burhan Hafez +1Language-Conditioned Robot ManipulationRobot Imitation Learning

    Knowledge Technology Group, Department of Informatics, University of Hamburg, 20146 Hamburg, Germany · Mathematics Department, Faculty of Science, Aswan University, 81528 Aswan, Egypt · School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK

  30. Faynt: Scaling and Optimizing Policies for Competitive Melee

    Oct 1, 2026Ali Janati, Nikita Kuzmin, Rohit Swamy +1Reinforcement LearningSelf-Play RL

    Frisson Labs