ROJun 16, 2022Code
Equivariant Descriptor Fields: SE(3)-Equivariant Energy-Based Models for End-to-End Visual Robotic Manipulation LearningHyunwoo Ryu, Hong-in Lee, Jeong-Hoon Lee et al.
End-to-end learning for visual robotic manipulation is known to suffer from sample inefficiency, requiring large numbers of demonstrations. The spatial roto-translation equivariance, or the SE(3)-equivariance can be exploited to improve the sample efficiency for learning robotic manipulation. In this paper, we present SE(3)-equivariant models for visual robotic manipulation from point clouds that can be trained fully end-to-end. By utilizing the representation theory of the Lie group, we construct novel SE(3)-equivariant energy-based models that allow highly sample efficient end-to-end learning. We show that our models can learn from scratch without prior knowledge and yet are highly sample efficient (5~10 demonstrations are enough). Furthermore, we show that our models can generalize to tasks with (i) previously unseen target object poses, (ii) previously unseen target object instances of the category, and (iii) previously unseen visual distractors. We experiment with 6-DoF robotic manipulation tasks to validate our models' sample efficiency and generalizability. Codes are available at: https://github.com/tomato1mule/edf
LGFeb 24Code
T1: One-to-One Channel-Head Binding for Multivariate Time-Series ImputationDongik Park, Hyunwoo Ryu, Suahn Bae et al.
Imputing missing values in multivariate time series remains challenging, especially under diverse missing patterns and heavy missingness. Existing methods suffer from suboptimal performance as corrupted temporal features hinder effective cross-variable information transfer, amplifying reconstruction errors. Robust imputation requires both extracting temporal patterns from sparse observations within each variable and selectively transferring information across variables--yet current approaches excel at one while compromising the other. We introduce T1 (Time series imputation with 1-to-1 channel-head binding), a CNN-Transformer hybrid architecture that achieves robust imputation through Channel-Head Binding--a mechanism creating one-to-one correspondence between CNN channels and attention heads. This design enables selective information transfer: when missingness corrupts certain temporal patterns, their corresponding attention pathways adaptively down-weight based on remaining observable patterns while preserving reliable cross-variable connections through unaffected channels. Experiments on 11 benchmark datasets demonstrate that T1 achieves state-of-the-art performance, reducing MSE by 46% on average compared to the second-best baseline, with particularly strong gains under extreme sparsity (70% missing ratio). The model generalizes to unseen missing patterns without retraining and uses a consistent hyperparameter configuration across all datasets. The code is available at https://github.com/Oppenheimerdinger/T1.
ROSep 6, 2023
Diffusion-EDFs: Bi-equivariant Denoising Generative Modeling on SE(3) for Visual Robotic ManipulationHyunwoo Ryu, Jiwoo Kim, Hyunseok An et al.
Diffusion generative modeling has become a promising approach for learning robotic manipulation tasks from stochastic human demonstrations. In this paper, we present Diffusion-EDFs, a novel SE(3)-equivariant diffusion-based approach for visual robotic manipulation tasks. We show that our proposed method achieves remarkable data efficiency, requiring only 5 to 10 human demonstrations for effective end-to-end training in less than an hour. Furthermore, our benchmark experiments demonstrate that our approach has superior generalizability and robustness compared to state-of-the-art methods. Lastly, we validate our methods with real hardware experiments. Project Website: https://sites.google.com/view/diffusion-edfs/home
ROOct 19, 2023
Denoising Heat-inspired Diffusion with Insulators for Collision Free Motion PlanningJunwoo Chang, Hyunwoo Ryu, Jiwoo Kim et al.
Diffusion models have risen as a powerful tool in robotics due to their flexibility and multi-modality. While some of these methods effectively address complex problems, they often depend heavily on inference-time obstacle detection and require additional equipment. Addressing these challenges, we present a method that, during inference time, simultaneously generates only reachable goals and plans motions that avoid obstacles, all from a single visual input. Central to our approach is the novel use of a collision-avoiding diffusion kernel for training. Through evaluations against behavior-cloning and classical diffusion models, our framework has proven its robustness. It is particularly effective in multi-modal environments, navigating toward goals and avoiding unreachable ones blocked by obstacles, while ensuring collision avoidance. Project Website: https://sites.google.com/view/denoising-heat-inspired
LGFeb 26
NNiT: Width-Agnostic Neural Network Generation with Structurally Aligned Weight SpacesJiwoo Kim, Swarajh Mehta, Hao-Lun Hsu et al.
Generative modeling of neural network parameters is often tied to architectures because standard parameter representations rely on known weight-matrix dimensions. Generation is further complicated by permutation symmetries that allow networks to model similar input-output functions while having widely different, unaligned parameterizations. In this work, we introduce Neural Network Diffusion Transformers (NNiTs), which generate weights in a width-agnostic manner by tokenizing weight matrices into patches and modeling them as locally structured fields. We establish that Graph HyperNetworks (GHNs) with a convolutional neural network (CNN) decoder structurally align the weight space, creating the local correlation necessary for patch-based processing. Focusing on MLPs, where permutation symmetry is especially apparent, NNiT generates fully functional networks across a range of architectures. Our approach jointly models discrete architecture tokens and continuous weight patches within a single sequence model. On ManiSkill3 robotics tasks, NNiT achieves >85% success on architecture topologies unseen during training, while baseline approaches fail to generalize.
CVFeb 24
Scaling View Synthesis TransformersEvan Kim, Hyunwoo Ryu, Thomas W. Mitchel et al.
Geometry-free view synthesis transformers have recently achieved state-of-the-art performance in Novel View Synthesis (NVS), outperforming traditional approaches that rely on explicit geometry modeling. Yet the factors governing their scaling with compute remain unclear. We present a systematic study of scaling laws for view synthesis transformers and derive design principles for training compute-optimal NVS models. Contrary to prior findings, we show that encoder-decoder architectures can be compute-optimal; we trace earlier negative results to suboptimal architectural choices and comparisons across unequal training compute budgets. Across several compute levels, we demonstrate that our encoder-decoder architecture, which we call the Scalable View Synthesis Model (SVSM), scales as effectively as decoder-only models, achieves a superior performance-compute Pareto frontier, and surpasses the previous state-of-the-art on real-world NVS benchmarks with substantially reduced training compute.
ROMar 12, 2025
SE(3)-Equivariant Robot Learning and Control: A Tutorial SurveyJoohwan Seo, Soochul Yoo, Junwoo Chang et al.
Recent advances in deep learning and Transformers have driven major breakthroughs in robotics by employing techniques such as imitation learning, reinforcement learning, and LLM-based multimodal perception and decision-making. However, conventional deep learning and Transformer models often struggle to process data with inherent symmetries and invariances, typically relying on large datasets or extensive data augmentation. Equivariant neural networks overcome these limitations by explicitly integrating symmetry and invariance into their architectures, leading to improved efficiency and generalization. This tutorial survey reviews a wide range of equivariant deep learning and control methods for robotics, from classic to state-of-the-art, with a focus on SE(3)-equivariant models that leverage the natural 3D rotational and translational symmetries in visual robotic manipulation and control design. Using unified mathematical notation, we begin by reviewing key concepts from group theory, along with matrix Lie groups and Lie algebras. We then introduce foundational group-equivariant neural network design and show how the group-equivariance can be obtained through their structure. Next, we discuss the applications of SE(3)-equivariant neural networks in robotics in terms of imitation learning and reinforcement learning. The SE(3)-equivariant control design is also reviewed from the perspective of geometric control. Finally, we highlight the challenges and future directions of equivariant methods in developing more robust, sample-efficient, and multi-modal real-world robotic systems.
CVOct 15, 2025
True Self-Supervised Novel View Synthesis is TransferableThomas W. Mitchel, Hyunwoo Ryu, Vincent Sitzmann
In this paper, we identify that the key criterion for determining whether a model is truly capable of novel view synthesis (NVS) is transferability: Whether any pose representation extracted from one video sequence can be used to re-render the same camera trajectory in another. We analyze prior work on self-supervised NVS and find that their predicted poses do not transfer: The same set of poses lead to different camera trajectories in different 3D scenes. Here, we present XFactor, the first geometry-free self-supervised model capable of true NVS. XFactor combines pair-wise pose estimation with a simple augmentation scheme of the inputs and outputs that jointly enables disentangling camera pose from scene content and facilitates geometric reasoning. Remarkably, we show that XFactor achieves transferability with unconstrained latent pose variables, without any 3D inductive biases or concepts from multi-view geometry -- such as an explicit parameterization of poses as elements of SE(3). We introduce a new metric to quantify transferability, and through large-scale experiments, we demonstrate that XFactor significantly outperforms prior pose-free NVS transformers, and show that latent poses are highly correlated with real-world poses through probing experiments.