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arXiv · 2508.11117

Robot Policy Evaluation for Sim-to-Real Transfer: A Benchmarking Perspective

Xuning Yang·Clemens Eppner·Jonathan Tremblay·Dieter Fox·Stan Birchfield·Fabio Ramos
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Abstract

Current vision-based robotics simulation benchmarks have significantly advanced robotic manipulation research. However, robotics is fundamentally a real-world problem, and evaluation for real-world applications has lagged behind in evaluating generalist policies. In this paper, we discuss challenges and desiderata in designing benchmarks for generalist robotic manipulation policies for the goal of sim-to-real policy transfer. We propose 1) utilizing high visual-fidelity simulation for improved sim-to-real transfer, 2) evaluating policies by systematically increasing task complexity and scenario perturbation to assess robustness, and 3) quantifying performance alignment between real-world performance and its simulation counterparts.

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Xuning Yang, Clemens Eppner, Jonathan Tremblay, Dieter Fox, Stan Birchfield, Fabio Ramos. 2025-08-14. Robot Policy Evaluation for Sim-to-Real Transfer: A Benchmarking Perspective. https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.11117

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