Abstract: Fine manipulation tasks, such as threading cable ties or slotting a battery, are notoriously difficult for robots because they require precision, careful coordination of contact forces, and closed-loop visual feedback. Performing these tasks typically requires high-end robots, accurate sensors, or careful calibration, which can be expensive and difficult to set up. Can learning enable low-cost and imprecise hardware to perform these fine manipulation tasks? We present a low-cost system that performs end-to-end imitation learning directly from real demonstrations, collected with a custom teleoperation interface. Imitation learning, however, presents its own challenges, particularly in high-precision domains: the error of the policy can compound over time, drifting out of the training distribution. To address this challenge, we develop a simple yet novel algorithm Action Chunking with Transformers (ACT) which reduces the effective horizon by predicting actions in chunks. This allows us to learn difficult tasks such as opening a translucent condiment cup and slotting a battery with 80-90% success, with only 10 minutes worth of demonstration data. Project website: https://tonyzhaozh.github.io/aloha/
