TOPS: Reshaping Flow Source and Transport for Multi-Task Robot Manipulation
2610.36694

Authors

Tuo An,Chuhao Zhou,Jiahua Dong,Jingliang Li,Jiaqi Bai

Abstract

Flow-based policies for language-conditioned multi-task manipulation commonly share a single $*Gaussian*$ source prior and a common linear transport path across tasks. However, reliably executing multiple tasks with distinct motion requirements remains challenging for a shared policy.

We introduce $**TOPS**$ ($**T**$ask-$**O**$riented $**P**$riors and $**S**$chedules), which adapts the flow source prior and interpolation schedule to each task without modifying the network architecture. TOPS first constructs multimodal task sources from reverse-mapped expert action sequences, allowing language instructions to select where generation begins.

Guided by source-target covariance mismatch, it then slows the transition toward expert actions early in denoising and accelerates it later along directions requiring expansion. Under a $*Gaussian*$ endpoint model, our analysis shows that this schedule adjustment can lower an upper bound on velocity-prediction risk.

Experiments on LIBERO, LIBERO-Plus, and CALVIN demonstrate improved performance across in-distribution, perturbation and cross-environment settings, alongside better data efficiency. Using one integration step, TOPS raises LIBERO-10 success from $53.44\%$ to $69.67\%$ compared with ten-step Standard Flow Matching (FM), while reducing inference time to approximately one-sixth of the baseline.

TOPS also yields consistent gains when transferred to the large-scale flow-based $π_{0.5}$ policy across all four evaluated settings. Real-world experiments further demonstrate improved task success, including an increase from $20\%$ with standard FM to $80\%$ with TOPS on the upper-drawer opening task.

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