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Main Authors: Cobo-Briesewitz, Eckart, Burghoff, Tilman, Shcherba, Denis, Jordana, Armand, Toussaint, Marc
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.06773
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author Cobo-Briesewitz, Eckart
Burghoff, Tilman
Shcherba, Denis
Jordana, Armand
Toussaint, Marc
author_facet Cobo-Briesewitz, Eckart
Burghoff, Tilman
Shcherba, Denis
Jordana, Armand
Toussaint, Marc
contents Scaling up datasets is highly effective in improving the performance of deep learning models, including in the field of robot learning. However, data collection still proves to be a bottleneck. Approaches relying on collecting human demonstrations are labor-intensive and inherently limited: they tend to be narrow, task-specific, and fail to adequately explore the full space of feasible states. Synthetic data generation could remedy this, but current techniques mostly rely on local trajectory optimization and fail to find diverse solutions. In this work, we propose a novel method capable of finding diverse long-horizon manipulations through black-box simulation. We achieve this by combining an RRT-style search with sampling-based MPC, together with a novel sampling scheme that guides the exploration toward stable configurations. Specifically, we sample from a manifold of stable states while growing a search tree directly through simulation, without restricting the planner to purely stable motions. We demonstrate the method's ability to discover diverse manipulation strategies, including pushing, grasping, pivoting, throwing, and tool use, across different robot morphologies, without task-specific guidance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_06773
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Stability-Guided Exploration for Diverse Motion Generation
Cobo-Briesewitz, Eckart
Burghoff, Tilman
Shcherba, Denis
Jordana, Armand
Toussaint, Marc
Robotics
Scaling up datasets is highly effective in improving the performance of deep learning models, including in the field of robot learning. However, data collection still proves to be a bottleneck. Approaches relying on collecting human demonstrations are labor-intensive and inherently limited: they tend to be narrow, task-specific, and fail to adequately explore the full space of feasible states. Synthetic data generation could remedy this, but current techniques mostly rely on local trajectory optimization and fail to find diverse solutions. In this work, we propose a novel method capable of finding diverse long-horizon manipulations through black-box simulation. We achieve this by combining an RRT-style search with sampling-based MPC, together with a novel sampling scheme that guides the exploration toward stable configurations. Specifically, we sample from a manifold of stable states while growing a search tree directly through simulation, without restricting the planner to purely stable motions. We demonstrate the method's ability to discover diverse manipulation strategies, including pushing, grasping, pivoting, throwing, and tool use, across different robot morphologies, without task-specific guidance.
title Stability-Guided Exploration for Diverse Motion Generation
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.06773