Robotics: Science and Systems XXI

π₀: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Control

Kevin Black, Noah Brown, Danny Driess, Adnan Esmail, Michael Robert Equi, Chelsea Finn, Niccolo Fusai, Lachy Groom, Karol Hausman, Brian Ichter, Szymon Jakubczak, Tim Jones, Liyiming Ke, Sergey Levine, Adrian Li-Bell, Mohith Mothukuri, Suraj Nair, Karl Pertsch, Lucy Xiaoyang Shi, Laura Smith, James Tanner, Quan Vuong, Anna Walling, Haohuan Wang, Ury Zhilinsky

Abstract:

Robot learning holds tremendous promise to unlock the full potential of flexible, general, and dexterous robot systems, as well as to address some of the deepest questions in artificial intelligence. However, bringing robot learning to the level of generality required for effective real-world systems faces major obstacles in terms of data, generalization, and robustness. In this paper, we discuss how generalist robot policies (i.e., robot foundation models) can address these challenges, and how we can design effective generalist robot policies for complex and highly dexterous tasks. We propose a novel flow matching architecture built on top of a pre-trained vision-language model (VLM) to inherit Internet-scale semantic knowledge. We then discuss how this model can be trained on a large and diverse dataset from multiple dexterous robot platforms, including single-arm robots, dual-arm robots, and mobile manipulators. We evaluate our model in terms of its ability to perform tasks via direct prompting, follow language instructions from people and from a high-level VLM policy, and its ability to acquire new skills via fine-tuning. Our results cover a wide variety of tasks, such as laundry folding, table cleaning, and assembling boxes.

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Bibtex:

  
@INPROCEEDINGS{BlackK-RSS-25, 
    AUTHOR    = {Kevin Black AND Noah Brown AND Danny Driess AND Adnan Esmail AND Michael Robert Equi AND Chelsea Finn AND Niccolo Fusai AND Lachy Groom AND Karol Hausman AND Brian Ichter AND Szymon Jakubczak AND Tim Jones AND Liyiming Ke AND Sergey Levine AND Adrian Li-Bell AND Mohith Mothukuri AND Suraj Nair AND Karl Pertsch AND Lucy Xiaoyang Shi AND Laura Smith AND James Tanner AND Quan Vuong AND Anna Walling AND Haohuan Wang AND Ury Zhilinsky}, 
    TITLE     = {{π₀: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Control}}, 
    BOOKTITLE = {Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems}, 
    YEAR      = {2025}, 
    ADDRESS   = {LosAngeles, CA, USA}, 
    MONTH     = {June}, 
    DOI       = {10.15607/RSS.2025.XXI.010} 
}