{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/general-flow-as-foundation-affordance-for","title":"General Flow as Foundation Affordance for Scalable Robot Learning","arxiv_id":"2401.11439","date":"2024-01-21","proceeding":null,"authors":["Chengbo Yuan","Chuan Wen","Tong Zhang","Yang Gao"],"abstract":"We address the challenge of acquiring real-world manipulation skills with a scalable framework. We hold the belief that identifying an appropriate prediction target capable of leveraging large-scale datasets is crucial for achieving efficient and universal learning. Therefore, we propose to utilize 3D flow, which represents the future trajectories of 3D points on objects of interest, as an ideal prediction target. To exploit scalable data resources, we turn our attention to human videos. We develop, for the first time, a language-conditioned 3D flow prediction model directly from large-scale RGBD human video datasets. Our predicted flow offers actionable guidance, thus facilitating zero-shot skill transfer in real-world scenarios. We deploy our method with a policy based on closed-loop flow prediction. Remarkably, without any in-domain finetuning, our method achieves an impressive 81\\% success rate in zero-shot human-to-robot skill transfer, covering 18 tasks in 6 scenes. Our framework features the following benefits: (1) scalability: leveraging cross-embodiment data resources; (2) wide application: multiple object categories, including rigid, articulated, and soft bodies; (3) stable skill transfer: providing actionable guidance with a small inference domain-gap. Code, data, and supplementary materials are available https://general-flow.github.io","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.11439v2","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.11439v2.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"general-flow-as-foundation-affordance-for","repo_url":"https://github.com/michaelyuancb/general_flow","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":0,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"pytorch","reach":null}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"prediction","task_name":"Prediction"}],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2401.11439","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2401.11439"}},"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers","read_at":"2026-09-24T18:15:14+00:00","read_at_is":"when the build read Syntology's graph, not when any sample ran","claim":"Per-sample execution status on synthesized fixtures; not a correctness claim about the paper. Samples come from repositories linked to the paper, official or community; repo_kind says which.","repos":[{"provenance":"external:paperswithcode_snapshot_2025-07-28","url":"https://github.com/michaelyuancb/general_flow","reach":null}],"summary":{"unverified":1},"by_repo_kind":{"official":{"samples":1,"ran":0,"repositories":1}},"repo_kind_vocabulary":{"official":"The archive marks this repository official for the paper","named_in_paper":"The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official","listed":"In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper","found_in_text":"Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted","community":"Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested"},"n_pointer_only_for_licence":0,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"a8766d777d9b458e","entry":"get_prediction","repo":"michaelyuancb/general_flow","repo_kind":"official","path":"inference.py","file_url":"https://github.com/michaelyuancb/general_flow/blob/HEAD/inference.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"unverified","verification_level":0,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"a8766d777d9b458e"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}