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Oier Mees

@oier_mees • 5,293 subscribers

Robot Learning & Foundation Models @microsoft & External Lecturer @ETH. Prev. postdoc at @berkeley_ai. PhD @UniFreiburg. Prev. intern @NVIDIAAI.

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𝗗𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗲-𝘁𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗼𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹𝘀. 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗱, 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗰𝘆 Modern VLAs and world-action models can perform impressive manipulation skills, but adapting them reliably to new robots and tasks remains challenging. A natural solution is DAgger-style online imitation learning: deploy the robot, collect human corrections, and update the policy. Yet foundation models are fragile in the low-data regime, fine-tuning on a handful of interventions can improve one behavior while degrading others. Online post-training or reinforcement learning can require costly data collection and exploration, making real-world learning expensive and potentially unsafe. In our new paper, 𝗙𝗹𝗼𝘄𝗗𝗔𝗴𝗴𝗲𝗿, we take a different approach: 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹, 𝘄𝗲 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝘁 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀. The key idea is 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻: we map human corrective actions back into the latent noise space of the frozen generative policy. These latent targets train a lightweight controller that adapts the robot while preserving the original model's capabilities. Across simulation and real robots, FlowDAgger: 📈 Learns from only 5–20 human intervention episodes 🏆 Outperforms supervised fine-tuning and latent-space reinforcement learning 🤖 Works across VLAs, diffusion policies, and world-action models ✔️ Provides reliable improvements without modifying the pretrained policy We believe this offers a practical path toward making robot foundation models improve during deployment, learning from the way humans naturally teach: through corrections. 📄 Paper: 🌐 Project: 💻 Code: This project was led by my amazing colleague Michael Murray with help from Daphne Chen, Simran Bagaria, Dean Fortier, Tess Hellebrekers, Harshavardhan Reddy Gajarla, Galen Mullins and Andrey Kolobov at Microsoft Research and Maya Cakmak at University of Washington

𝗗𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗲-𝘁𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗼𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹𝘀. 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗱, 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗰𝘆 Modern VLAs and world-action models can perform impressive manipulation skills, but adapting them reliably to new robots and tasks remains challenging. A natural solution is DAgger-style online imitation learning: deploy the robot, collect human corrections, and update the policy. Yet foundation models are fragile in the low-data regime, fine-tuning on a handful of interventions can improve one behavior while degrading others. Online post-training or reinforcement learning can require costly data collection and exploration, making real-world learning expensive and potentially unsafe. In our new paper, 𝗙𝗹𝗼𝘄𝗗𝗔𝗴𝗴𝗲𝗿, we take a different approach: 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹, 𝘄𝗲 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝘁 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀. The key idea is 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻: we map human corrective actions back into the latent noise space of the frozen generative policy. These latent targets train a lightweight controller that adapts the robot while preserving the original model's capabilities. Across simulation and real robots, FlowDAgger: 📈 Learns from only 5–20 human intervention episodes 🏆 Outperforms supervised fine-tuning and latent-space reinforcement learning 🤖 Works across VLAs, diffusion policies, and world-action models ✔️ Provides reliable improvements without modifying the pretrained policy We believe this offers a practical path toward making robot foundation models improve during deployment, learning from the way humans naturally teach: through corrections. 📄 Paper: 🌐 Project: 💻 Code: This project was led by my amazing colleague Michael Murray with help from Daphne Chen, Simran Bagaria, Dean Fortier, Tess Hellebrekers, Harshavardhan Reddy Gajarla, Galen Mullins and Andrey Kolobov at Microsoft Research and Maya Cakmak at University of Washington

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𝗥𝗼𝗯𝗼𝘁𝘀 𝗱𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀. 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗳𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘂𝗿𝗲 — 𝗮𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘄𝗮𝘁𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘀. Most robot learning systems assume failure is the end of learning. In our new work, we study whether robots can improve after deployment by learning from their own failures, without any human intervention, teleoperation, or corrective labels. The key idea is simple: human videos contain structure about how the world works. We use them to learn cross-embodiment representations of action, dynamics, and value, enabling a shared predictive space between human behavior and robot experience. This allows a new learning loop: 👉 pretrain on human videos 👉 deploy robot policy 👉 observe failures 👉 reinterpret failures using human priors 👉 improve autonomously We evaluate this across 7 real-world manipulation tasks, showing: 📈 40% → 81% success rate 🏆 Strong improvements over π0.6 RECAP and RISE ✔️ Zero human intervention during post-deployment improvement 🧬 Generalizes across robot embodiments and policy backbones A key finding is that explicit failure repair significantly outperforms failure reweighting, yielding substantially larger gains under identical data conditions (+25 pts vs +5 pts on the same π0.5 base policy). Overall, the results suggest a shift in how we think about robot learning: Human videos are not only for pretraining policies. They can provide the structure needed for continual self-improvement after deployment. 📄 Paper: 🌐 Project: I am grateful for working with the fantastic leads Hanzhi Chen and Anran Zhang, and our collaborators Simon Schaefer, Kejia Chen, Shi Chen, Daniel Cremers. Special thanks to Stefan Leutenegger for co-advising this project with me. ETH Zürich TU München Microsoft Check out Hanzhi's 🧵 for more details

𝗥𝗼𝗯𝗼𝘁𝘀 𝗱𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀. 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗳𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘂𝗿𝗲 — 𝗮𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘄𝗮𝘁𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘀. Most robot learning systems assume failure is the end of learning. In our new work, we study whether robots can improve after deployment by learning from their own failures, without any human intervention, teleoperation, or corrective labels. The key idea is simple: human videos contain structure about how the world works. We use them to learn cross-embodiment representations of action, dynamics, and value, enabling a shared predictive space between human behavior and robot experience. This allows a new learning loop: 👉 pretrain on human videos 👉 deploy robot policy 👉 observe failures 👉 reinterpret failures using human priors 👉 improve autonomously We evaluate this across 7 real-world manipulation tasks, showing: 📈 40% → 81% success rate 🏆 Strong improvements over π0.6 RECAP and RISE ✔️ Zero human intervention during post-deployment improvement 🧬 Generalizes across robot embodiments and policy backbones A key finding is that explicit failure repair significantly outperforms failure reweighting, yielding substantially larger gains under identical data conditions (+25 pts vs +5 pts on the same π0.5 base policy). Overall, the results suggest a shift in how we think about robot learning: Human videos are not only for pretraining policies. They can provide the structure needed for continual self-improvement after deployment. 📄 Paper: 🌐 Project: I am grateful for working with the fantastic leads Hanzhi Chen and Anran Zhang, and our collaborators Simon Schaefer, Kejia Chen, Shi Chen, Daniel Cremers. Special thanks to Stefan Leutenegger for co-advising this project with me. ETH Zürich TU München Microsoft Check out Hanzhi's 🧵 for more details

12,379 views

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Excited to introduce mimic-video, a new class of Video-Action Model that achieves 10x better data efficiency 📉and trains ⏩ 2x faster than standard VLAs!

Excited to introduce mimic-video, a new class of Video-Action Model that achieves 10x better data efficiency 📉and trains ⏩ 2x faster than standard VLAs!

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