Intelligent Service Robotics (ISR) · 2026

Kitchen Robotic Manipulation utilizing Foundation Models

1RAIVLAB, Kumoh National Institute of Technology 2KIMLAB, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Real-world deployment

Abstract

Deploying robots in everyday human environments requires perception systems that are both robust and adaptable to diverse, dynamic conditions. In this work, we present a modular perception pipeline for household manipulation tasks, with a focus on dishware handling in kitchen environments. The pipeline integrates open-vocabulary object detection, multi-view segmentation, instance-aware 3D reconstruction, and a 2D-3D feature fusion strategy for 6D pose estimation and grasp planning. Its modular design enables systematic substitution of multiple visual and geometric foundation models, allowing us to identify the best-performing configuration through extensive evaluation on a custom kitchen dataset. The best-performing configuration (LLMDet + SAMv2 + DINOv2 + GeoTransformer) achieves an ADI of 89.12% on the 20-scene kitchen benchmark with cluttered and occluded conditions. Furthermore, real-world demonstrations confirm that the best configuration can be deployed on physical robots without environment-specific retraining, successfully executing tasks such as sink-to-dishwasher transfer and cup stacking. It validates the adaptability and scalability of the pipeline and highlights its potential as a practical framework for household robotic systems.

Video

Modular and Zero-Shot Perception Pipeline

Modular perception pipeline from RGB-D scans through recognition, pose estimation, and grasp generation
Given a manipulator equipped with an RGB-D camera that scans the workspace, the system sequentially captures RGB-D images and the corresponding joint angles. From these inputs, the pipeline recognizes target objects, estimates their 6D poses, and generates grasp candidates for manipulation. Every module is designed to be swappable, allowing systematic exploration of foundation-model combinations.
PAPRAS

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All real-world demonstrations were conducted using PAPRAS.

PAPRAS is a Plug-And-Play Robotic Arm System designed for rapid deployment across everyday environments. Its portable arms and modular mounting approach make it a natural platform for evaluating household manipulation across diverse kitchen environments.

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Real-Kitchen Demonstrations

We deploy the best-performing configuration on physical robots across diverse kitchen environments, validating sink-to-dishwasher transfer, simple grasping, and cup stacking without any environment-specific retraining.

Kitchen 1
Kitchen 1
Kitchen 1
(Embodiment Change)
Kitchen 2

BibTeX

@article{jeon2026kitchen,
  title   = {Kitchen Robotic Manipulation utilizing Foundation Models},
  author  = {Jeon, Myung-Hwan and Yamsani, Sankalp and Kim, Joohyung},
  journal = {Intelligent Service Robotics},
  year    = {2026},
  url     = {https://raivlab.github.io/FM_kitchen},
  note    = {Accepted. To appear.}
}