Jianwei Zhang

Ju Dong, Liding Zhang, Lei Zhang et al.

Generative policies based on diffusion and flow matching achieve strong performance in robotic manipulation by modeling multi-modal human demonstrations. However, their reliance on iterative Ordinary Differential Equation (ODE) integration introduces substantial latency, limiting high-frequency closed-loop control. Recent single-step acceleration methods alleviate this overhead but often exhibit distributional collapse, producing averaged trajectories that fail to execute coherent manipulation strategies. We propose a framework that distills a Conditional Flow Matching (CFM) expert into a fast single-step student via Implicit Maximum Likelihood Estimation (IMLE). A bi-directional Chamfer distance provides a set-level objective that promotes both mode coverage and fidelity, enabling preservation of the teacher multi-modal action distribution in a single forward pass. A unified perception encoder further integrates multi-view RGB, depth, point clouds, and proprioception into a geometry-aware representation. The resulting high-frequency control supports real-time receding-horizon re-planning and improved robustness under dynamic disturbances.

Minchi Ruan, LiangQing Zhou, Hongtong Li et al.

Precision assembly requires sub-millimeter corrections in contact-rich "last-millimeter" regions where visual feedback fails due to occlusion from the end-effector and workpiece. We present ReTac-ACT (Reconstruction-enhanced Tactile ACT), a vision-tactile imitation learning policy that addresses this challenge through three synergistic mechanisms: (i) bidirectional cross-attention enabling reciprocal visuo-tactile feature enhancement before fusion, (ii) a proprioception-conditioned gating network that dynamically elevates tactile reliance when visual occlusion occurs, and (iii) a tactile reconstruction objective enforcing learning of manipulation-relevant contact information rather than generic visual textures. Evaluated on the standardized NIST Assembly Task Board M1 benchmark, ReTac-ACT achieves 90% peg-in-hole success, substantially outperforming vision-only and generalist baseline methods, and maintains 80% success at industrial-grade 0.1mm clearance. Ablation studies validate that each architectural component is indispensable. The ReTac-ACT codebase and a vision-tactile demonstration dataset covering various clearance levels with both visual and tactile features will be released to support reproducible research.