Efficient VLA Models

VLA: Vision-Language-Action

Follow this topic Ask about this topic

Momentum

12 papers in the last four weeks, up 140% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

Jul 13Week of Sep 28

Latest papers 70

All topics

XS-VLA: Teaching Tiny Vision-Language-Action Models with Spatial Supervision and Demonstration Conditioning
Jul 5, 2026Iok Tong Lei, Ying Jie Yap, Wei Huang +5Robot Policy Learning Language-Conditioned Robot Manipulation
Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. · National College for Excellent Engineers, Beihang University, Beijing, China. · Independent Researcher +1
Learning to Move Before Learning to Do: Task-Agnostic pretraining for VLAs
Jul 2, 2026Junhao Shi, Siyin Wang, Xiaopeng Yu +3Self-Supervised Pre-Training Efficient VLA Models
1Fudan University · 2Shanghai Innovation Institute
Z-1: Efficient Reinforcement Learning for Vision-Language-Action Models
Jun 30, 2026Lang Cao, Renhong Chen, Luyi Li +3Robot Skill Learning Efficient VLA Models
Zioneer Robot Team
Drop-Then-Recovery: How Redundant Are Vision-Language-Action Models?
Jun 26, 2026Guoheng Sun, Kaixi Feng, Shwai He +8Model Compression Efficient VLA Models
University of Maryland, College Park · 2Cisco Research
UniFS: Unified Fast-to-Slow Hierarchical Architecture for Vision-Language-Action Models
Jun 22, 2026Lin Sun, Zhiwei Guan, Conglin Wang +7Efficient VLM Inference Efficient VLA Model Inference
JD.com, China · Yiwu Research Institute of Fudan University, China · Tianjin University, China
PolicyTrim: Boosting Intrinsic Policy Efficiency of Vision-Language-Action Models
Jun 21, 2026Xianghui Wang, Feng Chen, Wenbo Zhang +4Efficient VLA Models Vision-Language-Action Models
1Sichuan University · 2Adelaide University · 3Beijing Institute of Technology
UniviewVLA: A Unified Multiview Vision-Language-Action Model with World Modeling
Jun 19, 2026Tao Xu, Runhao Zhang, Zhijian Huang +7World Models for Robotics Multi-View Learning
1Tongji University · 2Shanghai Innovation Institute · 4Xiaomi EV +1
FOCA: Future-Oriented Conditioning for Data-Efficient Vision-Language-Action Adaptation
Jun 18, 2026Duc Minh Nguyen, Nghiem Tuong Diep, Binh Gia Nguyen +20VLM Adaptation Efficient VLA Models
VinRobotics, Vietnam · Center for AI Research, VinUniversity, Vietnam · University of Utah, USA +4
Finetuning Vision-Language-Action Models Requires Fewer Layers Than You Think
Jun 18, 2026Gia-Binh Nguyen, Trong-Bao Ho, Thien-Loc Ha +18Model Compression Efficient VLA Model Inference
Center for AI Research, VinUniversity · VinRobotics · University of Arkansas +10
PearlVLA: Progressive Embodied Action-Plan Refinement in Latent Space
Jun 16, 2026Bochen Yang, Lianlei ShanEfficient VLA Models Latent Visual Reasoning
Imperial College London · Tsinghua University
Acting While Understanding: Asynchronous Semantic-Action Decoupling for Real-Time Vision-Language-Action Models
Jun 13, 2026Shenhao Yan, Ge Wang, Qi Liu +7Efficient VLM Inference Efficient VLA Model Inference
Northeastern University · Ising AI · CUHK-Shenzhen
Think Less, Act Early: Reinforced Latent Reasoning with Early Exit in Vision-Language-Action Models
Jun 13, 2026Dianqiao Lei, Lianlei ShanEfficient Inference Efficient VLA Model Inference
1Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
BLUE: Toward Better Language Use in Efficient Vision-Language-Action Models for Autonomous Driving
Jun 7, 2026George Ling, Lijin Yang, Hao Yang +1VLMs for Autonomous Driving Autonomous Driving
Bosch Research
vla.cpp: A Unified Inference Runtime for Vision-Language-Action Models
Jun 6, 2026Khanh D. Nguyen, Hung T. Ho, Chinh T. Nguyen +5AI Accelerator Inference Efficient VLM Inference
VinRobotics, Vietnam · Max Planck Research School for Intelligent Systems, Germany · University of Stuttgart, Germany +3
TBD-VLA: Temporal Block Diffusion Vision Language Action Model
Jun 5, 2026Sung-Wook Lee, Xuhui Kang, Yen-Ling KuoEfficient VLA Model Inference Efficient VLA Models
University of Virginia
VisualThink-VLA: Visual Intermediate Reasoning for Effective and Low-Latency Vision-Language-Action Policies
May 28, 2026Mingjian Gao, Wenqiao Zhang, Yuqian Yuan +9Efficient VLM Inference Efficient VLA Model Inference
1Zhejiang University · 2Cornell University · 3National University of Singapore +1
ElegantVLA: Learning When to Think for Efficient Vision-Language-Action Models
May 28, 2026Ye Li, Huanan Liu, Kangye Ji +7Efficient VLM Inference Efficient VLA Model Inference
Tsinghua University · University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Ω-QVLA: Robust Quantization for Vision-Language-Action Models via Composite Rotation and Per-step Scaling
May 27, 2026Xinyu Wang, Mingze Li, Sicheng Lyu +6VLM Quantization Efficient VLA Model Inference
McGill University · Université de Montréal · Mila – Quebec AI Institute +2
EXPO-FT: Sample-Efficient Reinforcement Learning Finetuning for Vision-Language-Action Models
May 25, 2026Perry Dong, Kuo-Han Hung, Tian Gao +2Robot Skill Learning Robotic RL
Stanford University
DriveMA: Rethinking Language Interfaces in Driving VLAs with One-Step Meta-Actions
May 20, 2026Weicheng Zheng, Yixin Huang, Qiao Sun +2VLMs for Autonomous Driving Efficient VLA Models
Shanghai Qi Zhi Institute · Tongji University · Tsinghua University
ActQuant: Sub-4-bit Action-Guided Quantization for Vision-Language-Action Models
May 19, 2026Arash Akbari, Arman Akbari, Masih Eskandar +11Mixed-Precision Quantization VLM Quantization
1Northeastern University · University of Georgia · 3Cisco Systems
Offline Semantic Guidance for Efficient Vision-Language-Action Policy Distillation
May 15, 2026Jin Shi, Brady Zhang, Yishun LuVLM Distillation Efficient VLA Model Inference
Department of Mechanical Engineering University College London London, United Kingdom · Department of Engineering Science University of Oxford Oxford, United Kingdom
Evo-Depth: A Lightweight Depth-Enhanced Vision-Language-Action Model
May 14, 2026Tao Lin, Yuxin Du, Jiting Liu +14Language-Conditioned Robot Manipulation Efficient VLA Models
School of AI, Shanghai Jiao Tong University · King Abdullah University of Science and Technology · SJTU-Quic Robot Joint Lab +1
LoopVLA: Learning Sufficiency in Recurrent Refinement for Vision-Language-Action Models
May 11, 2026Boyang Shen, Kaixiang Yang, Hao Wang +4Efficient VLM Inference Efficient VLA Model Inference
1Huazhong University of Science and Technology · 2Wuhan United Imaging Surgical Co.,Ltd. (UIS)
One Token Per Frame: Reconsidering Visual Bandwidth in World Models for VLA Policy
May 8, 2026Zuojin Tang, Shengchao Yuan, Xiaoxin Bai +4Action-Conditioned World Models Efficient VLA Models
Zhejiang University · Central South University · Harbin Institute of Technology +2
ForgeVLA: Federated Vision-Language-Action Learning without Language Annotations
May 8, 2026Yuhao Zhou, Yunpeng Zhu, Yang Zhou +7Vision-Language Models Efficient VLA Models
Sichuan University · Engineering Research Center of Machine Learning and Industry Intelligence, Ministry of Education · Zhejiang University +2
MolmoAct2: Action Reasoning Models for Real-world Deployment
May 4, 2026Haoquan Fang, Jiafei Duan, Donovan Clay +26Robotics Efficient VLA Models
1Allen Institute for AI · University of Washington · 3National University of Singapore +6
Latent Bridge: Feature Delta Prediction for Efficient Dual-System Vision-Language-Action Model Inference
May 4, 2026Yudong Liu, Yuan Li, Zijia Tang +12Efficient VLM Inference Efficient VLA Model Inference
1Duke University · 2Qualcomm AI Research · University of Florida
Being-H0.7: A Latent World-Action Model from Egocentric Videos
Apr 30, 2026Hao Luo, Wanpeng Zhang, Yicheng Feng +6Visuomotor Policy Learning Efficient VLA Models
BeingBeyond Team
Motubrain: An Advanced World Action Model for Robot Control
Apr 30, 2026Motubrain Team, Chendong Xiang, Fan Bao +17Robotic Control World Models for Robotics
Motubrain Team

Jul 5, 2026, cs.ROJ/K move · Enter open · S save

XS-VLA: Teaching Tiny Vision-Language-Action Models with Spatial Supervision and Demonstration Conditioning

Iok Tong Lei, Ying Jie Yap, Wei Huang, Qingchen Xie+4

Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. · National College for Excellent Engineers, Beihang University, Beijing, China. · Independent Researcher+1

Robot Policy Learning Language-Conditioned Robot Manipulation Efficient VLA Models Vision-Language-Action Models Vision-Based Robot Control Knowledge Distillation

Open paper AskPDF arXiv

How can richer training supervision improve robot control while keeping the deployed policy compact? We present XS-VLA, a staged training framework using teacher-derived spatial labels and demonstration-conditioned action learning. Coarse-Grained Spatial Distillation (CSD) initializes the backbone through an auxiliary region-label task. Latent Flow Matching (LFM) then conditions an action-space velocity field on a demonstration latent, using KL regularization while jointly optimizing the backbone and action modules. The deployed policy contains 243.99M parameters and operates without the teacher or posterior encoder. XS-VLA achieves 90.25% average LIBERO success in each of two training seeds, compared with 86.00% for a SmolVLA-256M base trained under our settings. Ablations examine both training stages through matched image pretraining and Huber/MSE controls. On three Mobile ALOHA tasks, average strict success increases from 21.7% to 65.0%. These results demonstrate the control utility of auxiliary representation initialization and regularized demonstration-conditioned flow learning for compact VLA~policies.

Momentum

Related topics

Latest papers 70