HuggingFaceVLA/community_dataset_v3

Lerobot Community Datasets v3 - A Cross-Embodiment Pretraining Dataset for Vision Language Action Models

A large-scale robotics dataset for vision-language-action learning, featuring 791 datasets across 46 robot types, enabling cross-embodiment pretraining for generalist robot policies.

Overview

This is a crowdsourced, open-source dataset compiled from 235 community contributors worldwide. Building upon the pretraining datasets used for SmolVLA, Community Datasets v1 and v2, this cleaned and organized version opens the door for cross-embodiment training on another completely new batch of community-contributed data.

The dataset spans 46+ robot embodiments including single-arm, bimanual, mobile manipulation, and a few humanoid robots. All data was collected using the LeRobot framework and is compatible with the VLAb pretraining framework.

📊 Dataset Statistics

Metric	Value
Total Datasets	791
Total Episodes	50,622
Total Frames	25,971,082
Total Duration	251.5 hours (10.5 days)
Contributors	235
Robot Types	46 different embodiments
Action Dimensions	12 different configurations
Average Hours/Dataset	0.30

🤖 Robot Type Distribution

By Category

• Single-arm manipulators: 88.4% (699 datasets)
• Bimanual systems: 6.7% (53 datasets)
• Mobile manipulation: 3.4% (27 datasets)
• Humanoid platforms: 1.3% (10 datasets)
• Other configurations: 0.3% (2 datasets)

Top 10 Robot Types

Robot Type	Datasets	%	Category
so100	248	31.4%	Single-arm
so101_follower	124	15.7%	Single-arm
so100_follower	121	15.3%	Single-arm
so101	82	10.4%	Single-arm
arx5	43	5.4%	Single-arm
koch	38	4.8%	Single-arm
trossen_ai_mobile	25	3.2%	Mobile
bi_xarm6_follower	16	2.0%	Bimanual
so100_bimanual	12	1.5%	Bimanual
koch_follower	8	1.0%	Single-arm

🗂️ Dataset Structure

community_dataset_v3_clean/
├── contributor1/
│   ├── dataset_name_1/
│   │   ├── data/           # Parquet files with observations
│   │   │   ├── episode_000000.parquet
│   │   │   ├── episode_000001.parquet
│   │   │   └── ...
│   │   ├── videos/         # MP4 recordings (multi-view)
│   │   │   ├── episode_000000_image.mp4
│   │   │   └── ...
│   │   └── meta/           # Metadata
│   │       └── info.json
│   └── dataset_name_2/
├── contributor2/
└── ...

🚀 Usage

1. Authenticate with Hugging Face

You need to be logged in to access the dataset:

# Login to Hugging Face
huggingface-cli login

# Or alternatively, set your token as an environment variable
# export HF_TOKEN=your_token_here

Get your token from https://huggingface.co/settings/tokens

Download the Dataset

hf download HuggingFaceVLA/community_dataset_v1 \
       --repo-type=dataset \
       --local-dir /path/local_dir/community_dataset_v1

Load Individual Datasets

from lerobot.common.datasets.lerobot_dataset import LeRobotDataset
import os

# Browse available datasets
for contributor in os.listdir("./community_dataset_v3_clean"):
    contributor_path = f"./community_dataset_v3_clean/{contributor}"
    if os.path.isdir(contributor_path):
        for dataset in os.listdir(contributor_path):
            print(f"📁 {contributor}/{dataset}")

# Load a specific dataset
dataset = LeRobotDataset(
    repo_id="local",
    root="./community_dataset_v3/contributor_name/dataset_name"
)

# Access data
print(f"Episodes: {len(dataset.episode_data_index)}")
print(f"Total frames: {len(dataset)}")

Train with VLAb

This dataset is designed for cross-embodiment VLA training using VLAb:

accelerate launch --config_file accelerate_configs/multi_gpu.yaml \
    src/lerobot/scripts/train.py \
    --policy.type=smolvla2 \
    --policy.repo_id=HuggingFaceTB/SmolVLM2-500M-Video-Instruct \
    --dataset.repo_id="community_dataset_v3/contributor1/dataset1,community_dataset_v3/contributor2/dataset2" \
    --dataset.root="./community_dataset_v3" \
    --dataset.video_backend=pyav \
    --dataset.features_version=2 \
    --output_dir="./outputs/training" \
    --batch_size=8 \
    --steps=200000 \
    --wandb.enable=true \
    --wandb.project="smolvla2-cross-embodiment"

Training Challenges with Cross-Embodiment Data

The Reality of Community-Contributed Data

This dataset includes 791 datasets recorded by community members under different conditions worldwide, creating an authentic in-the-wild setup. While this diversity is valuable for cross-embodiment learning, it comes with real challenges: varying data quality, inconsistent recording setups, and heterogeneous robot configurations. Using these datasets out-of-the-box will likely result in random collate errors and warnings during training.

What We Encountered During Data Cleaning

Starting with 851 datasets, we systematically debugged and cleaned the collection. Here's what we found:

1. Missing Video Files (Primary Removal Reason)

Some datasets had incomplete episode recordings where video files were missing:

ERROR Failed to load video for key 'observation.images.image' at episode X: 
[Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/path/to/episode_XXXXXX.mp4'

Impact: Training crashes when these episodes were sampled
Action: Removed ~15-20 datasets with missing files

2. Data Type Incompatibilities

Certain datasets returned inconsistent data types during batch formation:

RuntimeError: Could not infer dtype of dict
AttributeError: 'list' object has no attribute 'device'

Impact: Random crashes during forward pass
Action: Removed ~10-15 problematic datasets, implemented resilient batch collation

3. Multi-Camera Configuration Issues

Different datasets had varying numbers of camera views, causing tensor shape mismatches:

Root cause: The max_num_images parameter wasn't properly propagated in the codebase, leading to inconsistent image tensor shapes when datasets had different numbers of cameras (some had 2, others had 4+ views).

Impact: Thousands of dimension/channel erros for the datasets with more than 3 images. Action: Set config.max_num_images = 3 to standardize input. This number balances multi-view information (essential for spatial reasoning) while being compatible with most datasets in the collection - the majority of community datasets use 2-3 camera views for manipulation tasks.

4. Video Timing Misalignments

Frame timestamps occasionally violated tolerance thresholds:

Some query timestamps violate tolerance (tensor([2.0667]) > tolerance_s=0.0001)

Impact: Minor temporal inconsistency, but training continued
Action: Automatic fallback to closest frames

Final Dataset Cleaning Results

• Original datasets: 851
• Datasets with missing files: ~15-20 (removed)
• Datasets with data type issues: ~10-15 (removed)
• Datasets with conversion failures: 16 (fixed and reprocessed)
• Datasets with different FPS values: Many datasets remain valid but have varying frame rates (some recorded at different fps than the standard 30fps)
• Final clean dataset: 791 datasets

🎯 Intended Use

This dataset enables:

• Cross-embodiment VLA training - Learn policies that generalize across robot types
• Multi-task manipulation - Pick & place, sorting, assembly, bimanual tasks
• Transfer learning - Leverage diverse demonstrations for new robots
• Imitation learning research - Large-scale behavior cloning
• Generalist robot policies - Train models that work on multiple platforms
• Mobile manipulation - Navigation + manipulation tasks
• Embodied AI research - Vision-motor coordination

🏆 Top Contributors

Contributor	Datasets	%
shuohsuan	57	7.2%
villekuosmanen	47	5.9%
LeRobot-worldwide-hackathon	31	3.9%
lt-s	27	3.4%
Qipei	23	2.9%
bjb7	18	2.3%
kumarhans	18	2.3%
Ryosei2	17	2.1%
kyomangold	16	2.0%
psg777	16	2.0%

🤝 Contributing

Future contributions should follow:

• LeRobot dataset format (v2.1+)
• Consistent naming for features and camera views
• Quality validation checks
• Precise task descriptions
• Robot type and action space metadata

See the LeRobot dataset guide for best practices.

Please acknowledge all individual contributors who created the original datasets.

📄 License

Released under Apache 2.0 license. Individual datasets may have additional attribution requirements.

When using this dataset:

• ✅ Cite the dataset and VLAb framework
• ✅ Acknowledge community contributors
• ✅ Follow Apache 2.0 license terms
• ✅ Consider contributing your own data

🔗 Related Resources

• VLAb Framework - Large-scale pre-training
• SmolVLA Model - Pre-trained VLA
• SmolVLA Blog - Introduction and tutorials
• SmolVLA Paper - Technical details
• LeRobot Docs - Complete documentation
• Dataset Guide - Best practices
• Community Dataset v2 - Previous Dataset
• Community Dataset v1 - First release

Built with ❤️ by the LeRobot Community and SmolVLA Team