PhysCaP: Grounding Code-as-Policy Agent with Physics-Informed Exploration

Hugging Face Daily Papers Papers

Summary

PhysCaP is a physics-informed code-generation agent that actively explores objects to infer hidden physical properties for efficient robotic manipulation.

We present PhysCaP, a Physics-Informed Code-as-Policy agent for active perception in robotic manipulation. While vision-language-action policies excel at imitating demonstrations, they rely on passive observation and fail to infer latent physical properties critical for manipulation. PhysCaP augments code-as-policy frameworks with a physics-informed exploration layer that enables explicit information-seeking through interaction. It introduces training-free physical property extraction modules that estimate object mass and stiffness from robot proprioception without additional sensors. To balance exploration costs and the efficiency of information obtained, PhysCaP employs a dual-agent design: a Planner that decides when to explore and when to stop, and a Prioritizer that filters implausible interactions and ranks the remainder using a heuristic priority score, enabling efficient, targeted exploration. We evaluate PhysCaP on real-world tabletop manipulation tasks (searching for hidden objects, detecting empty cans, and finding ripe avocados) and a simulated task in LIBERO. The results show that existing passive and naive interactive baselines either fail when physical properties are hidden or over-explore, whereas PhysCaP achieves comparable performance with fewer interactions and reduced execution time. Ablation studies further validate the effectiveness of the proposed physical property extraction modules. Project page: https://physcap.github.io
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Paper page - PhysCaP: Grounding Code-as-Policy Agent with Physics-Informed Exploration

Source: https://huggingface.co/papers/2608.21031

Abstract

PhysCaP is a physics-informed code-generation agent that actively explores objects to infer hidden physical properties for efficient robotic manipulation.

We present PhysCaP, aPhysics-Informed Code-as-Policyagent for active perception in robotic manipulation. Whilevision-language-action policiesexcel at imitating demonstrations, they rely on passive observation and fail to infer latent physical properties critical for manipulation. PhysCaP augmentscode-as-policyframeworks with a physics-informed exploration layer that enables explicit information-seeking through interaction. It introduces training-freephysical property extractionmodules that estimate object mass and stiffness from robotproprioceptionwithout additional sensors. To balance exploration costs and the efficiency of information obtained, PhysCaP employs adual-agent design: aPlannerthat decides when to explore and when to stop, and aPrioritizerthat filters implausible interactions and ranks the remainder using a heuristic priority score, enabling efficient, targeted exploration. We evaluate PhysCaP on real-world tabletop manipulation tasks (searching for hidden objects, detecting empty cans, and finding ripe avocados) and a simulated task inLIBERO. The results show that existing passive and naive interactive baselines either fail when physical properties are hidden or over-explore, whereas PhysCaP achieves comparable performance with fewer interactions and reduced execution time. Ablation studies further validate the effectiveness of the proposedphysical property extractionmodules. Project page: https://physcap.github.io

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