λ: A Benchmark for Data-Efficiency in Long-Horizon Indoor Mobile Manipulation Robotics

Abstract

Learning to execute long-horizon mobile manipulation tasks is crucial for advancing robotics in household and workplace settings. However, current approaches are typically data-inefficient, underscoring the need for improved models that require realistically sized benchmarks to evaluate their efficiency. To address this, we introduce the LAMBDA (λ) benchmark-Long-horizon Actions for Mobile-manipulation Benchmarking of Directed Activities-which evaluates the data efficiency of models on language-conditioned, long-horizon, multi-room, multi-floor, pick-and-place tasks using a dataset of manageable size, more feasible for collection. Our benchmark includes 571 human-collected demonstrations that provide realism and diversity in simulated and real-world settings. Unlike planner-generated data, these trajectories offer natural variability and replay-verifiability, ensuring robust learning and evaluation. We leverage λ to benchmark current end-to-end learning methods and a modular neuro-symbolic approach that combines foundation models with task and motion planning. We find that learning methods, even when pretrained, yield lower success rates, while a neuro-symbolic method performs significantly better and requires less data.