Vision-language-action (VLA) models have achieved strong performance on standard robotic manipulation benchmarks. However, their reliability can degrade substantially when task conditions deviate from the nominal setting. Perturbations in object positions and task instructions may lead to complete task failure. Existing VLA policies generally lack an explicit runtime mechanism for distinguishing these failure modes and selecting an appropriate recovery strategy. To systematically mitigate this issue, we propose FIT-MAC, a failure-aware, closed-loop multi-agent control framework for improving the robustness of VLA policies at inference time. FIT-MAC augments a VLA policy with an inference-time control layer. First, the Planner Agent parses the language instruction into a structured task specification that captures the manipulation goal and spatial constraints, and the Grounder Agent resolves each instruction-level reference to a visual target. Next, the Verifier Agent tracks phase-specific execution progress, distinguishes target-binding errors from local execution failures, and determines whether intervention is warranted. The Correction Agent then routes permitted interventions to target rebinding or bounded grasping or placement recovery, depending on the failure type. When no intervention is required, the pretrained VLA remains the default action generator. Extensive experiments on LIBERO-PRO demonstrate that FIT-MAC improves robustness across multiple VLA backbones, consistently increasing success rates and achieving state-of-the-art performance under diverse perturbations.
Figures & tables
Figure 1: Comparison of standard VLA execution and FIT-MAC. Top: a VLA policy predicts actions from visual observations and a language instruction. Bottom: FIT-MAC augments the pretrained policy with specialized agents.
Figure 2: Overview of FIT-MAC. The framework first establishes an instance-level target lock through target rebinding, then monitors stage-specific execution progress and routes detected failures to target correction or bounded local recovery.
Method
LIBERO-Object
LIBERO-Spatial
Avg.
Obj.
Pos.
Sem.
Task
Env.
Obj.
Pos.
Sem.
Task
Env.
MolmoAct Lee et al. (2025)
92.0
6.0
96.0
0.0
–
90.0
0.0
88.0
0.0
–
–
NORA Hung et al. (2025)
86.0
0.0
92.0
0.0
–
92.0
0.0
91.0
0.0
–
–
X-VLA Zheng et al. (2026)
89.0
2.0
98.0
8.0
–
97.0
0.0
96.0
0.0
–
–
AtomVLA Sun et al. (2026)
93.0
10.0
99.0
0.0
–
95.0
16.0
95.0
1.0
–
–
CaP-Agent 0 Fu et al. (2026)
–
22.0
–
18.0
–
–
12.0
–
14.0
–
–
Table 1: Comparison with state-of-the-art methods on LIBERO-PRO. The overall average is reported for methods evaluated on all ten perturbation settings.
LIBERO-Object
LIBERO-Spatial
Perturbation
SR. (%)
IR. (%)
RSR. (%)
SR. (%)
IR. (%)
RSR. (%)
Obj.
99.0
99.8
99.3
97.2
37.8
97.9
Pos.
93.4
99.5
93.8
40.2
87.6
41.3
Sem.
98.8
98.9
99.6
86.8
42.8
98.6
Task
87.2
100.0
87.1
37.8
90.6
35.5
Env.
48.8
50.4
97.5
97.8
21.2
99.1
Table 2: Runtime intervention and recovery behavior of FIT-MAC under different perturbations. Each cell reports SR/IR/RSR (%).
Figure 3: Examples of target correction and execution recovery. The top row shows target rebinding after a grounding failure, the bottom row shows local recovery after a manipulation failure.
Figure 4: FIT-MAC across VLA backbones on LIBERO-PRO. (a) Success rates of OpenVLA, π0 , and π0.5 with and without FIT-MAC, averaged over five perturbation types in each suite. (b) Corresponding absolute gains in success rate.
Configuration
Success Rate (%)
Δ SR
Object
Spatial
Avg.
Object
Spatial
FIT-MAC
85.4
72.0
78.7
0.0
0.0
w/o target correction
77.2
69.8
73.5
-8.2
-2.2
w/o execution correction
47.0
62.4
54.7
-38.4
-9.6
w/o hard pick
50.2
70.0
60.1
-35.2
-2.0
w/o hard place
63.2
64.0
63.6
-22.2
-8.0
Table 3: Module ablation of FIT-MAC with the OpenVLA backbone on LIBERO-PRO.
Parameter
Values
Object
Spatial
Avg.
Failure threshold
2 / 3 / 4
85.4 / 85.4 / 85.4
70.8 / 70.6 / 70.6
78.1 / 78.0 / 78.0
Confidence threshold
0.10 / 0.12 / 0.18
85.4 / 85.4 / 85.4
71.0 / 70.6 / 71.0
78.2 / 78.0 / 78.2
Minimum rescue step
8 / 12 / 16
85.4 / 85.4 / 85.4
71.2 / 70.6 / 71.0
78.3 / 78.0 / 78.2
Execution horizon
1 / 2 / 3
68.0 / 85.4 / 87.4
72.0 / 70.0 / 69.8
70.0 / 77.7 / 78.6
Table 4: Hyperparameter sensitivity of FIT-MAC with the OpenVLA backbone on LIBERO-PRO. Default values are shown in bold.
Appendix figures & tables18 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
Benchmark
Condition
OpenVLA
OpenVLA + FIT-MAC
π 0
π 0 + FIT-MAC
π 0.5
π 0.5 + FIT-MAC
LIBERO-Object
Task
0.0/–/–
87.3/100.0/87.1
0.0/–/–
84.0/98.0/85.7
1.0/–/–
80.0/100.0/80.0
Pos
0.0/–/–
93.1/99.5/93.8
0.0/–/–
67.0/100.0/67.0
17.0/–/–
67.0/99.0/67.7
Obj
98.0/–/–
99.0/99.8/99.3
94.0/–/–
89.0/100.0/89.0
98.0/–/–
92.0/100.0/92.0
Sem
98.0/–/–
98.8/98.9/99.6
90.0/–/–
87.0/97.0/89.7
96.0/–/–
89.0/97.0/91.8
Env
0.0/–/–
48.8/50.4/97.5
29.0/–/–
65.0/78.0/82.1
73.0/–/–
69.0/79.0/86.1
LIBERO-Spatial
Task
0.0/–/–
37.8/90.6/35.5
0.0/–/–
27.0/100.0/27.0
1.0/–/–
25.0/100.0/25.0
Appendix
Table 5: Complete cross-backbone results under five perturbation conditions. Each cell reports SR/IR/RSR, all expressed as percentages (%).
Benchmark
Method
OpenVLA
π0
π0.5
LIBERO-Object
Backbone only
39.2
42.6
57.0
FIT-MAC
85.4
78.4
79.4
Δ
+46.2
+35.8
+22.4
LIBERO-Spatial
Backbone only
52.6
50.8
52.2
FIT-MAC
72.0
67.4
69.2
Δ
+19.4
+16.6
+17.0
Appendix
Table 6: Average success rates (%) of FIT-MAC with different VLA backbones. Results are averaged over the five perturbation types within each benchmark. The Δ rows report absolute gains over the corresponding backbone-only baselines.
Method
Seed
Obj.
Pos.
Sem.
Task
Env.
OpenVLA + FIT-MAC
7
100.0/100.0/100.0
93.0/100.0/93.0
98.0/98.0/100.0
87.0/100.0/87.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
11
100.0/100.0/100.0
94.0/99.0/94.9
97.0/97.0/100.0
86.0/100.0/86.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
13
100.0/100.0/100.0
93.0/100.0/93.0
98.0/98.0/100.0
87.0/100.0/87.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
17
100.0/100.0/100.0
94.0/99.0/94.9
98.0/98.0/100.0
86.0/100.0/86.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
23
100.0/100.0/100.0
94.0/100.0/94.0
98.0/98.0/100.0
87.0/100.0/87.0
48.0/48.0/100.0
Appendix
Table 7: Multi-seed results of FIT-MAC on LIBERO-Object with OpenVLA. Each cell reports SR/IR/RSR (%).
Method
Seed
Obj.
Pos.
Sem.
Task
Env.
OpenVLA + FIT-MAC
7
97.0/36.0/100.0
38.0/89.0/40.4
86.0/42.0/95.2
40.0/96.0/39.6
99.0/28.0/100.0
11
96.0/39.0/100.0
34.0/87.0/36.8
88.0/41.0/100.0
40.0/95.0/38.9
96.0/24.0/100.0
13
98.0/37.0/97.3
41.0/90.0/40.0
88.0/38.0/97.4
35.0/95.0/32.6
97.0/19.0/100.0
17
100.0/37.0/100.0
41.0/91.0/40.7
88.0/44.0/95.5
38.0/94.0/38.3
99.0/24.0/100.0
23
98.0/32.0/100.0
36.0/91.0/38.5
85.0/45.0/95.6
38.0/90.0/35.6
97.0/27.0/96.3
Appendix
Table 8: Multi-seed results of FIT-MAC on LIBERO-Spatial with OpenVLA. Each cell reports SR/IR/RSR (%).
Backbone
Configuration
Task
Pos.
Obj.
Sem.
Env.
OpenVLA
Baseline
0.0/–/–
0.0/–/–
98.0/–/–
98.0/–/–
0.0/–/–
Full FIT-MAC
86.0/100.0/86.0
94.0/99.0/94.9
100.0/100.0/100.0
98.0/98.0/100.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
w/o target_corrector
69.0/80.0/86.3
70.0/75.0/93.3
100.0/100.0/100.0
98.0/98.0/100.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
w/o execution_corrector
0.0/0.0/–
4.0/0.0/–
100.0/0.0/–
97.0/0.0/–
34.0/0.0/–
w/o hard_pick
0.0/0.0/–
4.0/4.0/100.0
100.0/100.0/100.0
98.0/98.0/100.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
w/o hard_place
25.0/100.0/25.0
60.0/96.0/58.3
100.0/0.0/–
97.0/0.0/–
34.0/0.0/–
Appendix
Table 9: Module ablation results under different perturbation conditions on LIBERO-Object. Each cell reports SR/IR/RSR (%).
Backbone
Configuration
Task
Pos.
Obj.
Sem.
Env.
OpenVLA
Baseline
0.0/–/–
0.0/–/–
97.0/–/–
77.0/–/–
89.0/–/–
Full FIT-MAC
38.0/94.0/38.3
41.0/88.0/40.9
97.0/34.0/100.0
85.0/44.0/97.7
99.0/24.0/100.0
w/o target_corrector
41.0/79.0/36.7
25.0/78.0/25.6
98.0/26.0/100.0
86.0/33.0/100.0
99.0/12.0/100.0
w/o execution_corrector
28.0/0.0/–
5.0/0.0/–
95.0/0.0/–
86.0/0.0/–
98.0/0.0/–
w/o hard_pick
28.0/40.0/35.0
41.0/37.0/97.3
97.0/34.0/100.0
85.0/44.0/97.7
99.0/24.0/100.0
w/o hard_place
36.0/80.0/26.3
5.0/70.0/0.0
95.0/0.0/–
86.0/0.0/–
98.0/0.0/–
Appendix
Table 10: Module ablation results under different perturbation conditions on LIBERO-Spatial. Each cell reports SR/IR/RSR (%).
Backbone
Setting
Value
Task
Pos.
Obj.
Sem.
Env.
OpenVLA
FIT-MAC
–
86.0/100.0/86.0
94.0/99.0/94.9
100.0/100.0/100.0
98.0/98.0/100.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
failures
2
86.0/100.0/86.0
94.0/99.0/94.9
100.0/100.0/100.0
98.0/98.0/100.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
failures
3
86.0/100.0/86.0
94.0/100.0/94.0
100.0/100.0/100.0
98.0/98.0/100.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
failures
4
86.0/100.0/86.0
94.0/100.0/94.0
100.0/100.0/100.0
98.0/98.0/100.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
π 0.5
FIT-MAC
–
80.0/100.0/80.0
67.0/99.0/67.7
92.0/100.0/92.0
89.0/97.0/91.8
69.0/79.0/86.1
failures
2
66.0/84.0/78.6
71.0/95.0/74.7
91.0/99.0/91.9
85.0/99.0/85.9
81.0/84.0/96.4
Appendix
Table 11: Sensitivity to the intervention-gate threshold on LIBERO-Object. Each cell reports SR/IR/RSR (%).
Backbone
Setting
Value
Task
Pos.
Obj.
Sem.
Env.
OpenVLA
FIT-MAC
–
38.0/94.0/38.3
41.0/88.0/40.9
97.0/34.0/100.0
85.0/44.0/97.7
99.0/24.0/100.0
failures
2
36.0/95.0/35.8
39.0/89.0/41.6
97.0/31.0/100.0
85.0/46.0/97.8
97.0/27.0/100.0
failures
3
31.0/94.0/30.9
41.0/88.0/40.9
97.0/34.0/100.0
85.0/44.0/97.7
99.0/24.0/100.0
failures
4
31.0/94.0/30.9
41.0/88.0/40.9
97.0/34.0/100.0
85.0/44.0/97.7
99.0/24.0/100.0
π 0.5
FIT-MAC
–
25.0/100.0/25.0
37.0/98.0/37.8
97.0/52.0/100.0
93.0/63.0/88.9
94.0/41.0/97.6
failures
2
39.0/100.0/39.0
51.0/97.0/49.5
95.0/52.0/94.2
94.0/62.0/91.9
95.0/42.0/95.2
Appendix
Table 12: Sensitivity to the intervention-gate threshold on LIBERO-Spatial. Each cell reports SR/IR/RSR (%).
Backbone
Setting
Value
Task
Pos.
Obj.
Sem.
Env.
OpenVLA
FIT-MAC
–
86.0/100.0/86.0
94.0/99.0/94.9
100.0/100.0/100.0
98.0/98.0/100.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
confidence
0.10
86.0/100.0/86.0
94.0/99.0/94.9
100.0/100.0/100.0
98.0/98.0/100.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
confidence
0.12
86.0/100.0/86.0
94.0/100.0/94.0
100.0/100.0/100.0
98.0/98.0/100.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
confidence
0.18
86.0/100.0/86.0
94.0/99.0/94.9
100.0/100.0/100.0
98.0/98.0/100.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
π 0.5
FIT-MAC
–
80.0/100.0/80.0
67.0/99.0/67.7
92.0/100.0/92.0
89.0/97.0/91.8
69.0/79.0/86.1
confidence
0.10
69.0/85.0/81.2
71.0/95.0/74.7
91.0/100.0/91.0
88.0/100.0/88.0
83.0/86.0/95.3
Appendix
Table 13: Sensitivity to the confidence threshold on LIBERO-Object. Each cell reports SR/IR/RSR.
Backbone
Setting
Value
Task
Pos.
Obj.
Sem.
Env.
OpenVLA
FIT-MAC
–
38.0/94.0/38.3
41.0/88.0/40.9
97.0/34.0/100.0
85.0/44.0/97.7
99.0/24.0/100.0
confidence
0.10
37.0/95.0/36.8
39.0/90.0/41.1
97.0/31.0/100.0
85.0/46.0/97.8
97.0/27.0/100.0
confidence
0.12
31.0/94.0/30.9
41.0/88.0/40.9
97.0/33.0/100.0
85.0/44.0/97.7
99.0/24.0/100.0
confidence
0.18
36.0/95.0/35.8
39.0/90.0/41.1
98.0/32.0/100.0
85.0/46.0/97.8
97.0/27.0/100.0
π 0.5
FIT-MAC
–
25.0/100.0/25.0
37.0/98.0/37.8
97.0/52.0/100.0
93.0/63.0/88.9
94.0/41.0/97.6
confidence
0.10
41.0/100.0/41.0
44.0/89.0/37.1
96.0/52.0/98.1
93.0/64.0/90.6
96.0/42.0/97.6
Appendix
Table 14: Sensitivity to the confidence threshold on LIBERO-Spatial. Each cell reports SR/IR/RSR.
Backbone
Setting
Value
Task
Pos.
Obj.
Sem.
Env.
OpenVLA
FIT-MAC
–
86.0/100.0/86.0
94.0/99.0/94.9
100.0/100.0/100.0
98.0/98.0/100.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
rescue_min_step
8
86.0/100.0/86.0
94.0/99.0/94.9
100.0/100.0/100.0
98.0/98.0/100.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
rescue_min_step
12
86.0/100.0/86.0
94.0/100.0/94.0
100.0/100.0/100.0
98.0/98.0/100.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
rescue_min_step
16
86.0/100.0/86.0
94.0/99.0/94.9
100.0/100.0/100.0
98.0/98.0/100.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
π 0.5
FIT-MAC
–
80.0/100.0/80.0
67.0/99.0/67.7
92.0/100.0/92.0
89.0/97.0/91.8
69.0/79.0/86.1
rescue_min_step
8
68.0/85.0/80.0
75.0/95.0/78.9
91.0/99.0/91.9
85.0/99.0/85.9
64.0/75.0/84.0
Appendix
Table 15: Sensitivity to the minimum rescue step on LIBERO-Object. Each cell reports SR/IR/RSR.
Backbone
Setting
Value
Task
Pos.
Obj.
Sem.
Env.
OpenVLA
FIT-MAC
–
38.0/94.0/38.3
41.0/88.0/40.9
97.0/34.0/100.0
85.0/44.0/97.7
99.0/24.0/100.0
rescue_min_step
8
37.0/95.0/36.8
39.0/90.0/41.1
97.0/31.0/100.0
86.0/47.0/97.9
97.0/27.0/100.0
rescue_min_step
12
31.0/94.0/30.9
41.0/88.0/40.9
97.0/31.0/100.0
85.0/44.0/97.7
99.0/24.0/100.0
rescue_min_step
16
36.0/95.0/35.8
39.0/90.0/41.1
97.0/31.0/100.0
86.0/47.0/97.9
97.0/27.0/100.0
π 0.5
FIT-MAC
–
25.0/100.0/25.0
37.0/98.0/37.8
97.0/52.0/100.0
93.0/63.0/88.9
94.0/41.0/97.6
rescue_min_step
8
36.0/100.0/36.0
41.0/90.0/34.4
97.0/52.0/98.1
95.0/63.0/92.1
95.0/42.0/95.2
Appendix
Table 16: Sensitivity to the minimum rescue step on LIBERO-Spatial. Each cell reports SR/IR/RSR.
Backbone
Setting
Value
Task
Pos.
Obj.
Sem.
Env.
OpenVLA
FIT-MAC
–
86.0/100.0/86.0
94.0/99.0/94.9
100.0/100.0/100.0
98.0/98.0/100.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
exec_horizon
1
36.0/100.0/36.0
58.0/100.0/58.0
100.0/100.0/100.0
97.0/98.0/99.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
exec_horizon
2
86.0/100.0/86.0
94.0/100.0/94.0
100.0/100.0/100.0
98.0/98.0/100.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
exec_horizon
3
96.0/100.0/96.0
94.0/99.0/94.9
100.0/100.0/100.0
98.0/98.0/100.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
exec_horizon
4
77.0/100.0/77.0
79.0/99.0/79.8
99.0/100.0/99.0
98.0/98.0/100.0
49.0/49.0/100.0
π 0.5
FIT-MAC
–
80.0/100.0/80.0
67.0/99.0/67.7
92.0/100.0/92.0
89.0/97.0/91.8
69.0/79.0/86.1
Appendix
Table 17: Sensitivity to the execution horizon on LIBERO-Object. Each cell reports SR/IR/RSR.
Backbone
Setting
Value
Task
Pos.
Obj.
Sem.
Env.
OpenVLA
FIT-MAC
–
38.0/94.0/38.3
41.0/88.0/40.9
97.0/34.0/100.0
85.0/44.0/97.7
99.0/24.0/100.0
exec_horizon
1
38.0/94.0/38.3
40.0/88.0/39.8
97.0/34.0/100.0
86.0/45.0/97.8
99.0/24.0/100.0
exec_horizon
2
28.0/94.0/27.7
41.0/88.0/40.9
97.0/34.0/100.0
85.0/44.0/97.7
99.0/24.0/100.0
exec_horizon
3
31.0/95.0/30.5
39.0/90.0/41.1
97.0/31.0/100.0
85.0/46.0/97.8
97.0/27.0/100.0
exec_horizon
4
29.0/95.0/28.4
39.0/90.0/41.1
97.0/31.0/100.0
84.0/46.0/95.7
97.0/27.0/100.0
π 0.5
FIT-MAC
–
25.0/100.0/25.0
37.0/98.0/37.8
97.0/52.0/100.0
93.0/63.0/88.9
94.0/41.0/97.6
Appendix
Table 18: Sensitivity to the execution horizon on LIBERO-Spatial. Each cell reports SR/IR/RSR.
Figure 5: Qualitative target-correction cases. In each row, the policy initially selects or approaches an incorrect object (red). FIT-MAC detects the error, corrects the target binding, and redirects manipulation toward the intended object (green).
Figure 6: Qualitative execution-correction cases. The robot initially transports or places the selected bowl at an incorrect destination (red). FIT-MAC detects the placement error and redirects the bowl to the instructed plate (green).
Figure 7: Representative FIT-MAC failures. Left: target rebinding error, The VLM selects the bowl next to the ramekin rather than the instructed bowl, causing the controller to grasp the wrong object. Right: pick stall, The target is correctly identified, but repeated grasp attempts fail.
Query
Step
Phase
Event / evidence
Diagnosis and route
Controller state
1
10
Pick approach
Two bowl candidates are detected. Grounding resolves the spatial relation and selects the black bowl[1] with VLM confidence 0.95 .
Target grounding; target correction completed.
Target-instance lock established; base policy starts execution.
5
42
Pick approach
The robot continues approaching the resolved target.
Hard-pick correction starts in approach-hover phase.
7
51
Pick approach
The correction state remains pending.
Execution failure; correction remains active.
Hard-pick controller continues with one corrective action.
30
74
Place transport
The pick attempt transitions successfully to placement. The object is reported as lifted and carried.
Successful pick-to-place transition.
Destination-locked place correction starts in lift-carry phase.
31
75
Place transport
The monitor reports insufficient placement progress and a placement stall.
Execution failure; correction remains active.
Destination is locked to the plate_1.
Appendix
Table 19: Representative runtime trace of a successful LIBERO-Spatial episode under Task perturbation. Target correction resolves ambiguity between candidate bowls during grounding. Execution correction activates after a wrong-target approach and remains active through placement correction.
Long-horizon robot manipulation with Vision-Language-Action (VLA) policies remains vulnerable to execution-time deviations, as final task success provides little information for diagnosing and correcting failures caused by action noise, object displacement, or goal misalignment. We introduce a stage-aware failure verification and Prompt Recovery framework that enables closed-loop correction of a fixed VLA policy without parameter updates or privileged simulator states. The framework introduces an observable-history-based Learned Verifier that jointly estimates manipulation progress and execution risk by temporally modeling multi-view visual observations, proprioceptive states, and executed actions. To provide interpretable task understanding, we represent manipulation execution through semantic progress stages, including approach, alignment, grasp, transport, and placement, and identify stage-specific failure patterns. Upon detecting abnormal execution, the framework preserves the original instruction and generates a stage-conditioned recovery prompt, allowing the same frozen VLA policy to produce corrective actions. Extensive multi-round evaluations on LIBERO and LIBERO Plus demonstrate that the proposed approach substantially improves closed-loop reliability under diverse perturbations. Without access to privileged object or goal coordinates, the Learned Verifier achieves recovery performance close to that of the privileged rule-based verifier in the evaluated settings. These results show that observable visual-proprioceptive-action history is sufficient to infer latent task states and enable practical failure recovery for existing VLA policies.
Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models demonstrate strong perfor-1 mance on language-conditioned robotic manipulation within their training dis-2 tribution, yet their generalization capabilities remain fundamentally limited. They3 lack the robustness required to handle perturbations, frequently failing when con-4 fronted with lighting changes, altered camera viewpoints, or small initial-state5 variations. We propose PROBEACT, a training-free runtime intervention frame-6 work that detects and recovers from grasping and placement failures in pre-7 trained VLA policies without modifying their weights or requiring additional8 demonstrations. PROBEACT combines three components: (i) a lightweight multi-9 target hidden-state probe that predicts the 3D positions of task-relevant objects10 from intermediate VLA features, with Hungarian-matched identity tracking for11 multi-object scenes; (ii) an object-agnostic kinematic state machine that detects12 grasp, transport, and placement failures using only gripper-internal signals and13 end-effector kinematics; and (iii) a hierarchical Control Barrier Function (CBF)14 filter that encodes repeated-failure locations as soft safe-set constraints, mini-15 mally correcting VLA actions while preserving baseline behavior. As a plug-and-16 play, training-free intervention loop, PROBEACT is orthogonal to existing train-17 ing pipelines. Evaluated on the LIBERO-plus benchmark, our framework acts as18 a universal safety net, improving the success rate of the OpenVLA-OFT model19 from 69.6% to 74.1%, while demonstrating broad applicability to both base and20 fine-tuned VLA policies.
Fan Zhang, Seongbin Park, Baharan Mirzasoleiman +2
University of California Los Angeles United States
Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models remain brittle in long-horizon, contact-rich manipulation because success-only imitation provides little supervision for execution drift, while failed rollouts are often discarded. We introduce RePO-VLA, a recovery-driven policy optimization framework that assigns distinct roles to success, recovery, and failure trajectories. RePO-VLA first applies Recovery-Aware Initialization (RAI), slicing recovery segments and resetting history so corrective actions depend on the current adverse state rather than the preceding failure. It then learns a Progress-Aware Semantic Value Function (PAS-VF), aligning spatiotemporal trajectory features with instructions and successful references. The resulting labels salvage useful failure prefixes via reliability decay, while low-value labels mark drift and terminal breakdowns, teaching differences among nominal, failed, and corrective actions. The data engine turns adverse states into planner-generated or human-collected corrective rollouts, teaching recovery to the success manifold. Value-Conditioned Refinement (VCR) trains the policy to prefer high-progress actions. At deployment, a fixed high value (v=1.0) biases actions toward the learned success manifold without online failure detectors or heuristic retries. We introduce FRBench, with standardized error injection and recovery-focused evaluation. Across simulated and real-world bimanual tasks, RePO-VLA improves robustness, raising adversarial success from 20% to 75% on average and up to 80% in scaled real-world trials.
Weijia Liufu, Xiaoyu Guo, Ruiyi Chen +16
1Sun Yat-sen University · 2South China University of Technology · 3Peng Cheng Laboratory +3