DEMONSTRATE: Zero-shot Language to Robotic Control via Multi-task Demonstration Learning

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Rickenbach, Rahel, Lee, Bruce, Zurbrügg, René, Alonso, Carmen Amo, Zeilinger, Melanie N.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866912488421851136
author Rickenbach, Rahel
Lee, Bruce
Zurbrügg, René
Alonso, Carmen Amo
Zeilinger, Melanie N.
author_facet Rickenbach, Rahel
Lee, Bruce
Zurbrügg, René
Alonso, Carmen Amo
Zeilinger, Melanie N.
contents The integration of large language models (LLMs) with control systems has demonstrated significant potential in various settings, such as task completion with a robotic manipulator. A main reason for this success is the ability of LLMs to perform in-context learning, which, however, strongly relies on the design of task examples, closely related to the target tasks. Consequently, employing LLMs to formulate optimal control problems often requires task examples that contain explicit mathematical expressions, designed by trained engineers. Furthermore, there is often no principled way to evaluate for hallucination before task execution. To address these challenges, we propose DEMONSTRATE, a novel methodology that avoids the use of LLMs for complex optimization problem generations, and instead only relies on the embedding representations of task descriptions. To do this, we leverage tools from inverse optimal control to replace in-context prompt examples with task demonstrations, as well as the concept of multitask learning, which ensures target and example task similarity by construction. Given the fact that hardware demonstrations can easily be collected using teleoperation or guidance of the robot, our approach significantly reduces the reliance on engineering expertise for designing in-context examples. Furthermore, the enforced multitask structure enables learning from few demonstrations and assessment of hallucinations prior to task execution. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method through simulation and hardware experiments involving a robotic arm tasked with tabletop manipulation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_12855
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle DEMONSTRATE: Zero-shot Language to Robotic Control via Multi-task Demonstration Learning
Rickenbach, Rahel
Lee, Bruce
Zurbrügg, René
Alonso, Carmen Amo
Zeilinger, Melanie N.
Robotics
Systems and Control
The integration of large language models (LLMs) with control systems has demonstrated significant potential in various settings, such as task completion with a robotic manipulator. A main reason for this success is the ability of LLMs to perform in-context learning, which, however, strongly relies on the design of task examples, closely related to the target tasks. Consequently, employing LLMs to formulate optimal control problems often requires task examples that contain explicit mathematical expressions, designed by trained engineers. Furthermore, there is often no principled way to evaluate for hallucination before task execution. To address these challenges, we propose DEMONSTRATE, a novel methodology that avoids the use of LLMs for complex optimization problem generations, and instead only relies on the embedding representations of task descriptions. To do this, we leverage tools from inverse optimal control to replace in-context prompt examples with task demonstrations, as well as the concept of multitask learning, which ensures target and example task similarity by construction. Given the fact that hardware demonstrations can easily be collected using teleoperation or guidance of the robot, our approach significantly reduces the reliance on engineering expertise for designing in-context examples. Furthermore, the enforced multitask structure enables learning from few demonstrations and assessment of hallucinations prior to task execution. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method through simulation and hardware experiments involving a robotic arm tasked with tabletop manipulation.
title DEMONSTRATE: Zero-shot Language to Robotic Control via Multi-task Demonstration Learning
topic Robotics
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.12855