We introduce Rank-Then-Act (RTA), a framework for learning control policies from expert video demonstrations without environment rewards. RTA trains a Vision-Language Model (VLM) offline as a progress-based ordinal scorer, using a Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) objective over shuffled frame sequences, which forces the model to recover temporal ordering from visual semantics rather than trivial time cues. Importantly, instead of using the scorer directly as a scalar reward model, we propose a correlation-based reward function for reinforcement learning: at each interaction window, we compute the Spearman rank correlation between predicted progress rankings and true temporal indices, yielding a bounded, scale-invariant learning signal. This design decouples reward learning from absolute calibration and enables stable transfer across tasks and environments. We evaluate RTA on discrete control benchmarks (PyBoy: Catrap, Kirby) and continuous control tasks (PointMaze, MetaWorld). RTA consistently matches or outperforms prior video-based reward learning methods and rank-based baselines, while demonstrating strong cross-task reuse of a single pretrained progress scorer. Our results suggest that correlation-structured supervision over video-derived ordinal signals is sufficient for policy learning, offering a scalable alternative to explicit reward design.
Reinforcement learning has enabled the acquisition of impressive robotic skills, but typically requires hand-crafted reward functions that are slow to design and difficult to align with human intentions. Recent work, such as Eureka, automates reward design by using an LLM to iteratively generate and refine reward code from task descriptions. However, they rely on coarse feedback signals such as success rate, which provide little semantic insight into the learned behavior. As a result, their trained policies achieve the final goal but are frequently poorly aligned with task instructions. We introduce the Reward Design Agent (RDA), a VLM-based agentic framework that injects semantic understanding into reward design. RDA decomposes tasks, visually evaluates trajectories, summarizes failure modes, and iteratively revises reward code to better align with task instructions. Across 12 tabletop manipulation tasks from ManiSkill and 4 whole-body manipulation tasks from HumanoidBench, RDA produces policies substantially more instruction-aligned than those of other baselines, while achieving comparable task success rates. Videos and the generated reward code are available on https://nitinkamra1992.github.io/reward-design-agent.
Recent advances in large video-language models (VLMs) rely on extensive fine-tuning techniques that strengthen alignment between textual and visual comprehension. Leading pipelines typically pair supervised fine-tuning (SFT) with reinforcement learning from preference data to enhance video comprehension. However, as VLMs scale in parameter size, so does the cost of gathering enough human feedback. To make fine-tuning more cost-effective, recent frameworks explore reinforcement learning with AI feedback (RLAIF), which replace human preference with AI as a judge. Current RLAIF frameworks rely on a specialized reward model trained with video narratives to create calibrated scalar rewards -- an expensive and restrictive pipeline. We propose Oracle-RLAIF, a novel framework that replaces the trained reward model with a more general Oracle ranker which acts as a drop-in model ranking candidate model responses rather than scoring them. Alongside Oracle-RLAIF, we introduce GRPOrank, a novel rank-based loss function based on Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) that directly optimizes ordinal feedback with rank-aware advantages. Empirically, we demonstrate that Oracle-RLAIF consistently outperforms leading VLMs using existing fine-tuning methods when evaluated across various video comprehension benchmarks. Oracle-RLAIF paves the path to creating flexible and data-efficient frameworks for aligning large multi-modal video models with reinforcement learning from rank rather than score.
Designing effective reward functions remains a major challenge in reinforcement learning (RL), particularly in open-ended environments where task goals are abstract and difficult to quantify. In this work, we present VLM-AR3L, a framework that leverages Vision-Language Models (VLMs) to provide both absolute and relative rewards for RL. VLM-AR3L interprets an agent's visual observations in the context of a natural language task goal, and learns both absolute and relative rewards from VLM-generated preference labels. The absolute reward model predicts scalar evaluations for individual states, while the relative reward model compares consecutive observations to infer progress or regression toward the task goal. Their integration combines the stability of state-based evaluation with the robustness of comparative supervision. We evaluate VLM-AR3L across benchmarks spanning classic control, manipulation, and open-world embodied tasks, with a particular focus on Minecraft given its visual complexity and long-horizon decision-making requirements. Experimental results show that VLM-AR3L consistently outperforms prior VLM-based reward learning methods.