SmolVLA - Cup Nesting Policy (v2)

DecisionFacts/cup_nesting_smolvla_v2 is a fine-tuned SmolVLA (Vision-Language-Action) policy trained for precision cup nesting and stacking tasks using the SO-101 (Standard Open Arm) follower arm.

This model was trained using Hugging Face's LeRobot library with a Flow Matching action expert head attached to the SmolVLM2 backbone.

Model Summary

• Developed by: DecisionFacts
• Base Model: lerobot/smolvla_base
• Framework: LeRobot
• Robotic Embodiment: SO-101 Arm (6-DOF)
• Task Domain: Object Manipulation / Cup Nesting & Stacking
• Policy Architecture: SmolVLA (Vision-Language Backbone + Flow Matching Action Head)

Setup & Usage

1. Installation

Ensure you have lerobot installed with smolvla extra dependencies:

pip install "lerobot[smolvla]"

Model Card for smolvla

SmolVLA is a compact, efficient vision-language-action model that achieves competitive performance at reduced computational costs and can be deployed on consumer-grade hardware.

This policy has been trained and pushed to the Hub using LeRobot.

Learn how to train and run it in the LeRobot smolvla guide, or browse the full documentation.

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Model Details

• License: apache-2.0
• Fine-tuned from: lerobot/smolvla_base
• Robot type: so_follower
• Cameras: cam_front, cam_top

Inputs & Outputs

The policy consumes these observation features and produces these action features.

Inputs

Outputs

Training Dataset

• Repository: DecisionFacts/Physical_AI_SO101_Cup_Nesting_Task
• Episodes: 200
• Frames: 226915
• Frame rate: 30 FPS
• Task(s): "Pick up the empty solo cup and nest it inside the other static cup."

Training Configuration

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How to Get Started with the Model

New to LeRobot? These guides cover the full workflow:

• Install LeRobot — set up the lerobot package.
• Hardware setup — assemble, wire, and calibrate your robot and cameras.
• Record data & train a policy — the end-to-end imitation-learning walkthrough.
• CLI cheat-sheet — quick reference for the lerobot-* commands.

The short version to run and train this policy:

Run the policy on your robot

lerobot-rollout \
  --strategy.type=base \
  --robot.type=so_follower \
  --robot.port=<your_robot_port> \
  --robot.cameras="{ <camera_1>: {type: opencv, index_or_path: <index_or_path>, width: 640, height: 480, fps: 30}, <camera_2>: {type: opencv, index_or_path: <index_or_path>, width: 640, height: 480, fps: 30}}" \
  --policy.path=DecisionFacts/cup_nesting_smolvla_v2 \
  --task="Pick up the empty solo cup and nest it inside the other static cup." \
  --duration=60

Replace the remaining <...> placeholders with your own values: --robot.port and the camera names/indices are specific to your machine, and the camera names must match the observation keys this policy was trained on.

When --strategy.type=base is used the script doesn't record the episodes. Skipping duration will make the policy run indefinitely. For more information look at rollout documentation.

Train your own policy

This policy type is usually fine-tuned from the pretrained base model lerobot/smolvla_base:

lerobot-train \
  --dataset.repo_id=${HF_USER}/<dataset> \
  --policy.path=lerobot/smolvla_base \
  --output_dir=outputs/train/<policy_repo_id> \
  --job_name=lerobot_training \
  --policy.device=cuda \
  --policy.repo_id=${HF_USER}/<policy_repo_id> \
  --wandb.enable=true

Writes checkpoints to outputs/train/<policy_repo_id>/checkpoints/.

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Evaluation

No evaluation results have been provided for this policy yet.

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Citation

If you use this policy, please cite the method linked in the description above, along with LeRobot:

@misc{cadene2024lerobot,
    author = {Cadene, Remi and Alibert, Simon and Soare, Alexander and Gallouedec, Quentin and Zouitine, Adil and Palma, Steven and Kooijmans, Pepijn and Aractingi, Michel and Shukor, Mustafa and Aubakirova, Dana and Russi, Martino and Capuano, Francesco and Pascal, Caroline and Choghari, Jade and Moss, Jess and Wolf, Thomas},
    title = {LeRobot: State-of-the-art Machine Learning for Real-World Robotics in Pytorch},
    howpublished = "\url{https://github.com/huggingface/lerobot}",
    year = {2024}
}

If you use this dataset in your work, please cite it as follows:

@misc{decisionfacts_teleops_dataset,
  credits      = {Prabhu Raghav, Sreeram B Unni, Balamurugan Pandi, Saravana Kumar, Sriram Gopalan},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://huggingface.co/datasets/DecisionFacts/Physical_AI_SO101_Cup_Nesting_Task}}
}