Robot Skill Learning

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Robot skill learning asks how machines can acquire reusable behaviors—such as grasping, insertion, locomotion, and tool use—and apply them in new situations. Common approaches include imitation learning from robot or human demonstrations, reinforcement learning in simulation and on hardware, and learned motion primitives or diffusion and vision-language-action policies. Researchers organize behaviors into skill libraries, hierarchies, or programs so robots can compose them for longer tasks, while using tactile feedback, language, and human corrections to adapt execution. A central challenge is making skills transfer reliably across objects, scenes, and robot bodies without losing earlier abilities; success on individual skills still does not guarantee robust long-horizon composition.

Latest papers

323 papers48 papers in the last four weeks, up 92% on the four weeks before. 0.3% of all new papers.

GazeVLA: Learning Human Intention for Robotic Manipulation
Apr 24, 2026Chengyang Li, Kaiyi Xiong, Yuan Xu +3Long-Horizon Robotic Manipulation Robot Skill Learning
Shanghai Jiao Tong University · Peking University · ShanghaiTech University +1
An LLM-Driven Closed-Loop Autonomous Learning Framework for Robots Facing Uncovered Tasks in Open Environments
Apr 24, 2026Hong SuContinual Robot Learning Robot Skill Learning
School of Computer Science, Chengdu University of Information Technology, Chengdu, China.
Hi-WM: Human-in-the-World-Model for Scalable Robot Post-Training
Apr 23, 2026Yaxuan Li, Zhongyi Zhou, Yefei Chen +5Robot Policy Learning Robot Policy Adaptation
Current Robotics · Tsinghua University · Peking University +1
MOMO: A framework for seamless physical, verbal, and graphical robot skill learning and adaptation
Apr 22, 2026Markus Knauer, Edoardo Fiorini, Maximilian Mühlbauer +10Robot Skill Learning Robot Imitation Learning
German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics (RMC), Münchener Str. 20, 82234 Weßling, Germany · School of Computation, Information and Technology (CIT), Technical University of Munich (TUM), Arcisstr. 21, 80333 Munich, Germany
JoyAI-RA 0.1: A Foundation Model for Robotic Autonomy
Apr 22, 2026Tianle Zhang, Zhihao Yuan, Dafeng Chi +59Robot Skill Learning Robot Foundation Models
COFFAIL: A Dataset of Successful and Anomalous Robot Skill Executions in the Context of Coffee Preparation
Apr 20, 2026Alex Mitrevski, Ayush SalunkeRobot Skill Learning Robotic Data Collection
Division of Systems and Control, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden · Autonomous Systems Group, Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, Sankt Augustin, Germany
$π_{0.7}$ : a Steerable Generalist Robotic Foundation Model with Emergent Capabilities
Apr 16, 2026Physical Intelligence, Bo Ai, Ali Amin +85Robot Policy Learning Robot Skill Learning
One-Shot Cross-Geometry Skill Transfer through Part Decomposition
Apr 16, 2026Skye Thompson, Ondrej Biza, George KonidarisRobot Skill Learning Generalization in Robotic Manipulation
Brown University · Northeastern University
Tree Learning: A Multi-Skill Continual Learning Framework for Humanoid Robots
Apr 14, 2026Yifei Yan, Linqi YeContinual Robot Learning Robot Skill Learning
School of Future Technology, Shanghai University, No. 99 Shangda Road, Baoshan District, Shanghai, 200444, Shanghai, China
A Unified Multi-Layer Framework for Skill Acquisition from Imperfect Human Demonstrations
Apr 9, 2026Zi-Qi Yang, Mehrdad R. KermaniCompliant Robot Control Robot Skill Learning
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Western University, London, ON N6A 5B9, Canada.
EgoVerse: An Egocentric Human Dataset for Robot Learning from Around the World
Apr 8, 2026Ryan Punamiya, Simar Kareer, Zeyi Liu +37Cross-Embodiment Robot Learning Robot Learning
Georgia Institute of Technology · Stanford University · University of California San Diego +5
Learning-Based Strategy for Composite Robot Assembly Skill Adaptation
Apr 8, 2026Khalil Abuibaid, Aleksandr Sidorenko, Achim Wagner +1Robot Skill Learning Robotic Assembly
Chair of Machine Tools and Control System, RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany · Innovative Factory Systems, German Institute of Artificial Intelligence, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany · Chair of Machine Tools and Control Systems, RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany
OpenGo: An OpenClaw-Based Robotic Dog with Real-Time Skill Switching
Apr 2, 2026Hanbing Li, Xuewei Cao, Zhiwen Zeng +3Robot Skill Learning Robot Policy Adaptation
University of Science and Technology of China
DreamControl-v2: Simpler and Scalable Autonomous Humanoid Skills via Trainable Guided Diffusion Priors
Mar 31, 2026Sudarshan Harithas, Sangkyung Kwak, Pushkal Katara +6Robot Skill Learning Humanoid Robot Control
General Robotics, USA · Brown University, USA · University of California, Berkeley, USA
Generalizable Dense Reward for Long-Horizon Robotic Tasks
Mar 31, 2026Silong Yong, Stephen Sheng, Carl Qi +6Reinforcement Learning Long-Horizon Robotic Manipulation
Carnegie Mellon University · Amazon Robotics · UT Austin
Adapt as You Say: Online Interactive Bimanual Skill Adaptation via Human Language Feedback
Mar 27, 2026Zhuo Li, Dianxi Li, Tao Teng +5Robot Skill Learning Bimanual Robotic Manipulation
Collaborative and Versatile Robots (CLOVER) Laboratory, T-Stone Robotics Institute, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong · Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, USA · Department of Advanced Robotics, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy
Large Reward Models: Generalizable Online Robot Reward Generation with Vision-Language Models
Mar 17, 2026Yanru Wu, Weiduo Yuan, Esteban Martinez Licon +4Long-Horizon Robotic Manipulation Robot Skill Learning
USC Physical Superintelligence Lab
ExpertGen: Scalable Sim-to-Real Expert Policy Learning from Imperfect Behavior Priors
Mar 16, 2026Zifan Xu, Ran Gong, Maria Vittoria Minniti +10Long-Horizon Robotic Manipulation Robot Skill Learning
Robotics and AI Institute · University of Texas at Austin · Sony AI
Zero-Shot Generalization from Motion Demonstrations to New Tasks
Mar 16, 2026Kilian Freitag, Alvin Combrink, Nadia FigueroaRobot Policy Generalization Robot Skill Learning
Department of Electrical Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden · GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania, PA 19104, USA
KiRAS: Keyframe Guided Self-Imitation for Robust and Adaptive Skill Learning in Quadruped Robots
Mar 16, 2026Xiaoyi Wei, Peng Zhai, Jiaxin Tu +5Robot Skill Learning Quadruped Locomotion
College of Intelligent Robotics and Advanced Manufacturing, Fudan University, China. · Power China Huadong Engineering Corporation Limited, China.
Autonomous Integration and Improvement of Robotic Assembly using Skill Graph Representations
Mar 13, 2026Peiqi Yu, Philip Huang, Chaitanya Chawla +3Robotic Assembly Robot Task Planning
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University · Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University
RoboStereo: Dual-Tower 4D Embodied World Models for Unified Policy Optimization
Mar 13, 2026Ruicheng Zhang, Guangyu Chen, Zunnan Xu +5Embodied World Models World Models
Tsinghua University · X Square Robot · HKUST
Ada3Drift: Adaptive Training-Time Drifting for One-Step 3D Visuomotor Robotic Manipulation
Mar 12, 2026Chongyang Xu, Yixian Zou, Tianyu Yang +4Robot Policy Learning Robot Skill Learning
College of Computer Science, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China · School of Information and Communication Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China
From Prior to Pro: Efficient Skill Mastery via Distribution Contractive RL Finetuning
Mar 10, 2026Zhanyi Sun, Shuran SongRL for Robotics Robot Policy Learning
1Stanford University.
See and Switch: Vision-Based Branching for Interactive Robot-Skill Programming
Mar 9, 2026Petr Vanc, Jan Kristof Behrens, Václav Hlaváč +1Robot Skill Learning Robotic Manipulation
imitrob.ciirc.cvut.cz/publications/seeandswitch
AtomicVLA: Unlocking the Potential of Atomic Skill Learning in Robots
Mar 8, 2026Likui Zhang, Tao Tang, Zhihao Zhan +9Robot Skill Learning VLMs for Robotics
Sun Yat-sen University · Yinwang Intelligent Technology Co. Ltd. · Peng Cheng Laboratory
Task Parameter Extrapolation via Learning Inverse Tasks from Forward Demonstrations
Mar 5, 2026Serdar Bahar, Fatih Dogangun, Matteo Saveriano +2Robot Skill Learning Generalization in Robotic Manipulation
Department of Computer Engineering, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Türkiye. · Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Trento, Trento, Italy. · IRCN, the University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
From Local Corrections to Generalized Skills: Improving Neuro-Symbolic Policies with MEMO
Mar 4, 2026Benjamin A. Christie, Yinlong Dai, Mohammad Bararjanianbahnamiri +2Robot Skill Learning Language-Conditioned Robot Manipulation
Collab, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, USA. · TEA Lab, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, USA.
IROSA: Interactive Robot Skill Adaptation using Natural Language
Mar 4, 2026Markus Knauer, Samuel Bustamante, Thomas Eiband +3Robot Policy Adaptation Robot Skill Learning
All authors are with the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics (RMC), Münchener Str. 20, 82234 Weßling, Germany. · Markus Knauer, Alin Albu-Schäffer and Samuel Bustamante are also with the School of Computation, Information and Technology (CIT), Technical University of Munich (TUM), Arcisstr. 21, 80333 Munich, Germany.
X-Loco: Towards Generalist Humanoid Locomotion Control via Synergetic Policy Distillation
Mar 4, 2026Dewei Wang, Xinmiao Wang, Chenyun Zhang +4Humanoid Robot Locomotion Robot Policy Learning
University of Science and Technology of China · Institute of Artificial Intelligence (TeleAI), China Telecom · Harbin Engineering University

Apr 24, 2026J/K move · Enter open · S save

GazeVLA: Learning Human Intention for Robotic Manipulation

Chengyang Li, Kaiyi Xiong, Yuan Xu, Lei Qian+2

Shanghai Jiao Tong University · Peking University · ShanghaiTech University+1

Long-Horizon Robotic Manipulation Robot Skill Learning Cross-Embodiment Robot Learning Robotic Manipulation Robot Imitation Learning

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Embodied foundation models have achieved significant breakthroughs in robotic manipulation, yet they still depend heavily on large-scale robot demonstrations. Although recent works have explored leveraging human data to alleviate this dependency, effectively extracting transferable knowledge remains a significant challenge due to the inherent embodiment gap between human and robot. We argue that the intention underlying human actions can serve as a powerful intermediate representation for bridging this gap. In this paper, we introduce a novel framework that explicitly learns and transfers human intention to facilitate robotic manipulation. Specifically, we model intention through gaze, as it naturally precedes physical actions and serves as an observable proxy for human intent. Our model is first pretrained on a large-scale egocentric human dataset to capture human intention and its synergy with action, followed by finetuning on a small set of robot and human data. During inference, the model adopts a Chain-of-Thought reasoning paradigm, sequentially predicting intention before executing the action. Extensive evaluations in simulation and real-world settings, across long-horizon and fine-grained tasks, and under few-shot and robustness benchmarks, show that our method consistently outperforms strong baselines, generalizes better, and achieves state-of-the-art performance. Project page: https://gazevla.github.io .