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BifrostUMI: Bridging Robot-Free Demonstrations and Humanoid Whole-Body Manipulation

Summary

BifrostUMI is a portable, efficient, and robot-free data collection framework for humanoid robots. It uses lightweight VR devices to capture human demonstrations as sparse keypoint trajectories and wrist-mounted visual data, training a high-level policy network to predict future keypoints. A robust retargeting pipeline maps these trajectories to the robot's morphology, enabling seamless transfer of agile behaviors from natural human demonstrations to humanoid embodiments. The framework's effectiveness was validated in two distinct experimental scenarios.

SourcearXiv RoboticsAuthor: Chenhao Yu, Hongwu Wang, Youhao Hu, Jiachen Zhang, Yuanyuan Li, Shaqi Luo
BifrostUMI: Bridging Robot-Free Demonstrations and Humanoid Whole-Body Manipulation
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[2605.03452] BifrostUMI: Bridging Robot-Free Demonstrations and Humanoid Whole-Body Manipulation

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Computer Science > Robotics

arXiv:2605.03452 (cs)

[Submitted on 5 May 2026]

Title:BifrostUMI: Bridging Robot-Free Demonstrations and Humanoid Whole-Body Manipulation

Authors:Chenhao Yu, Hongwu Wang, Youhao Hu, Jiachen Zhang, Yuanyuan Li, Shaqi Luo

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Abstract:High-quality data collection is a fundamental cornerstone for training humanoid whole-body visuomotor policies. Current data acquisition paradigms predominantly rely on robot teleoperation, which is often hindered by limited hardware accessibility and low operational efficiency. Inspired by the Universal Manipulation Interface (UMI), we propose BifrostUMI, a portable, efficient, and robot-free data collection framework tailored for humanoid robots. BifrostUMI leverages lightweight VR devices to capture human demonstrations as sparse keypoint trajectories while simultaneously recording wrist-mounted visual data. These multimodal data are subsequently utilized to train a high-level policy network that predicts future keypoint trajectories conditioned on the captured visual features. Through a robust keypoint retargeting pipeline, keypoint trajectories are precisely mapped onto the robot's morphology and executed via a whole-body controller. This approach enables the seamless transfer of diverse and agile behaviors from natural human demonstrations to humanoid embodiments. We demonstrate the efficacy and versatility of the proposed framework across two distinct experimental scenarios.

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Robotics (cs.RO)

Cite as: arXiv:2605.03452 [cs.RO]

(or arXiv:2605.03452v1 [cs.RO] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.03452

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arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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From: Yuanyuan Li [view email] [v1] Tue, 5 May 2026 07:35:09 UTC (9,968 KB)

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Key points

  • Leverages lightweight VR for human demonstration collection without requiring a robot.
  • Sparse keypoint trajectories and wrist visual data train a policy network to predict future keypoints.
  • A keypoint retargeting pipeline maps human motions to humanoid robot morphology, executed by a whole-body controller.
  • Validated in desktop manipulation and mobile operation scenarios.

Highlights and analysis are generated automatically and may contain errors. Check the original source.