Embodied intelligence · Dexterous robotics

FACT

A Multimodal Force–Action–Track Foundation Model for Human-to-Robot Dexterity

Zhi Cao* · Yining Hong* · Jiaolong Yang · Yejin Choi · Fei-Fei Li · Jiajun Wu† · Huang Huang†

University of Michigan · Stanford University · Microsoft Research
* Equal contribution   † Equal advising
PaperCode (Coming Soon)Data (Coming Soon)

Abstract

Human demonstrations offer a scalable alternative to costly robot data collection for dexterous manipulation, but most human datasets lack force measurements. Dexterous manipulation requires not only visual and proprioceptive understanding but also the ability to anticipate and regulate interaction forces. To scale force-aware human–robot co-training, we introduce EgoForce, a large-scale human tactile dataset capturing force-rich manipulation experience, and combine it with robot demonstrations for pretraining. We present FACT, a robot foundation model that cascades from prospective visual planning to force-aware refinement for dexterous manipulation. FACT comprises two jointly trained components. A Track-Guided Coarse Planner jointly predicts actions, future video, and visual tracks. Future video and visual tracks also provide a shared task representation that facilitates cross-embodiment knowledge transfer and coarse action generation. Building on this coarse plan, a Force–Action Joint Refiner jointly predicts future force and refines the coarse action, allowing anticipated force and action to shape each other during refinement. We evaluate the model on ten tasks requiring fine-grained coordination and force feedback, including tool use, musical instruments, and precision laboratory procedures. Using as few as 10 robot trajectories with 90 human trajectories for fine-tuning, FACT outperforms both baselines, with success-rate gains of up to 60 percentage points over T-Rex. Ablations show that force supervision in human pretraining data is crucial for downstream robot performance after fine-tuning, while visual track prediction and training with future-force prediction improve dexterous execution. Experiments varying the human–robot data ratio during fine-tuning further suggest that FACT learns from human demonstrations nearly as effectively as from robot demonstrations.

FACT research overview figure

Dataset: EgoForce

Human Demonstrations & Tactile Sensing

Left wrist view
Head / middle view
Right wrist view
Tactile sensing
EgoForce dataset demonstration

A large-scale human tactile dataset with three egocentric RGB views and bimanual tactile gloves, spanning diverse tasks and interaction types.

2,000Hours of demonstrations
~40kEpisodes
~1,000Tasks
~120Scenes
~1,000Demonstrators

Method

Stage I · Track-Guided Coarse Planner

Joint future-video, track and action prediction builds a motion-aware coarse plan.

Stage II · Force–Action Joint Refiner

Cached coarse memory conditions joint future-force prediction and fine action refinement.

FACT two-stage architecture

Observe → Plan → Cache → Refine → Execute.

Experiments

FACT is evaluated on ten tasks involving tool use, musical instruments, precision laboratory procedures, and multi-finger coordination. The paper reports gains of up to 60 percentage points over T-Rex in the studied fine-tuning settings.

Pretraining recipe ablation

All ten tasks, as reported in the manuscript.

TaskHuman + force + robot (full)Human without force + robotRobot only
Binary tasks · success rate (%)
Lab pipetting40200
Open test-tube cap80020
Open microcentrifuge flip cap50100
Tie shoelaces2000
Shuffle cards30100
Multi-object grasp404030
Use screwdriver30100
Continuous · correct notes of 10
Play harp6.72.01.2
Play xylophone5.42.21.0
Volume adjustment · engaged trials of 10
Pipette volume520
Mean absolute error (µL) ↓6.420.5N/A

Contribution of human fine-tuning data

TaskRobot : human = 10 : 0Robot : human = 10 : 90
Binary tasks · success rate (%)
Tie shoelaces1020
Shuffle cards1030
Volume adjustment · engaged trials of 10
Pipette volume45
Mean absolute error (µL) ↓11.26.4

BibTeX

Copy the BibTeX entry below.

FACT · Force · Action · Track
Video