Bridging VLM and KMP: Enabling Fine-grained robotic manipulation via Semantic Keypoints Representation

From early Movement Primitive (MP) techniques to modern Vision-Language Models (VLMs), autonomous manipulation has remained a pivotal topic in robotics. As two extremes, VLM-based methods emphasize zero-shot and adaptive manipulation but struggle with fine-grained planning. In contrast, MP-based approaches excel in precise trajectory generalization but lack decision-making ability. To leverage the strengths of the two frameworks, we propose VL-MP, which integrates VLM with Kernelized Movement Primitives (KMP) via a low-distortion decision information transfer bridge, enabling fine-grained robotic manipulation under ambiguous situations. One key of VL-MP is the accurate representation of task decision parameters through semantic keypoints constraints, leading to more precise task parameter generation. Additionally, we introduce a local trajectory feature-enhanced KMP to support VL-MP, thereby achieving shape preservation for complex trajectories. Extensive experiments conducted in complex real-world environments validate the effectiveness of VL-MP for adaptive and fine-grained manipulation.

@article{zhu2025_2503.02748,
  title={ Bridging VLM and KMP: Enabling Fine-grained robotic manipulation via Semantic Keypoints Representation },
  author={ Junjie Zhu and Huayu Liu and Jin Wang and Bangrong Wen and Kaixiang Huang and Xiaofei Li and Haiyun Zhan and Guodong Lu },
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.02748},
  year={ 2025 }
}