README.md

---
license: apache-2.0
base_model: lerobot/smolvla_base
library_name: lerobot
pipeline_tag: robotics
tags: [robotics, vla, smolvla, lerobot, manipulation, maniguard, franka]
---

# SmolVLA - Clutter (joint, 2-cam)

HuggingFace LeRobot **SmolVLA** fine-tuned on the ManiGuard **clutter** base task (sim
Franka Panda). Part of the ManiGuard VLA benchmark - SmolVLA vs pi0.5 vs GR00T on the
same task families with identical data, cameras, and controller.

## Model
- **Base:** [lerobot/smolvla_base](https://huggingface.co/lerobot/smolvla_base) - SmolVLM2 vision-language backbone + flow-matching action expert
- **Embodiment:** Franka Panda, **8-D joint** state/action (7 arm joints + 1 gripper), padded to SmolVLA's 32-D
- **Cameras (2):** `observation.images.top` (overview = `left` view) + `observation.images.wrist` (256x256)
- **Action:** absolute joint targets (fed straight to a JointController at eval); 50-step chunk
- **Tuning:** SmolVLA default - vision encoder **frozen**, train the action expert (**no LoRA**)

## Training
- 8-GPU accelerate DDP, global batch 512, 3522 steps (~2 epochs over 901,520 frames)
- Data: [IDEAS-Lab-Northwestern/datagen-clutter-v1-joint-5cam](https://huggingface.co/datasets/IDEAS-Lab-Northwestern/datagen-clutter-v1-joint-5cam) - the 5-cam datagen dataset, prepared to a 2-cam standard-keyed copy (H.264 videos)

## Usage
Load with `SmolVLAPolicy.from_pretrained("IDEAS-Lab-Northwestern/smolvla-base-datagen-v1-clutter-joint-2cam-yanZ")` from [LeRobot](https://github.com/huggingface/lerobot). The checkpoint carries the normalization stats.

> WARNING - Convention (must match at eval): joint-space JointController (absolute joint targets) + 2 cameras (`observation.images.top` = the `left` overview, `observation.images.wrist`). A mismatched controller, camera set, or overview view silently feeds an out-of-distribution input.