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arXiv · 2605.17017

When Dynamics Shift, Robust Task Inference Wins: Offline Imitation Learning with Behavior Foundation Models Revisited

Rishabh Agrawal·Rahul Jain·Ashutosh Nayyar
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Abstract

Behavior Foundation Models (BFMs) enable scalable imitation learning (IL) by pretraining task-agnostic representations that can be rapidly adapted to new tasks. However, existing BFMs assume fixed environment dynamics, limiting their robustness under real-world shifts such as changes in friction, actuation, or sensor noise. We address this by formulating BFM task-inference as a robust minimax optimization problem, enabling adaptation to worst-case dynamics perturbations without modifying pretraining. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first BFM-based framework that achieves robustness to dynamics shifts while relying solely on offline data from a single nominal environment. Our approach significantly outperforms standard BFM and robust offline IL baselines under dynamics shifts. These results demonstrate that robust policy can be achieved entirely at task-inference time, improving the practicality of BFMs in dynamic settings.

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Rishabh Agrawal, Rahul Jain, Ashutosh Nayyar. 2026-05-16. When Dynamics Shift, Robust Task Inference Wins: Offline Imitation Learning with Behavior Foundation Models Revisited. https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.17017

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