RL for VLMs

RL: Reinforcement Learning · VLM: Vision-Language Model

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36 papers in the last four weeks, up 227% on the four weeks before. 0.4% of all new papers.

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Latest papers 287

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Imagine-RL: Residual-Confidence-Guided Cross-Attention for World-Model-Augmented VLA Reinforcement Learning
Sep 21, 2026Kejia Hu, Wentong Zhai, Bo Zhao +1Robotic Manipulation Vision-Language-Action Models
Department of Electric Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology · University Of Science and Technology Beijing · Shanghai Jiao Tong University +1
Region-Level Policy Optimization for Fine-grained MLLM Perception
Sep 17, 2026Yuheng Shi, Xiaohuan Pei, Minjing Dong +1Efficient VLM Inference Large Vision-Language Models
University of Sydney · City University of Hong Kong
GroundingVLN: Reasoning and Acting with Grounding for Vision-Language Navigation
Sep 16, 2026Kailing Li, Yu Han, Tianwen Qian +4Vision-Language Navigation Vision-Language Grounding
School of Computer Science and Technology, East China Normal University · NeoteAI · King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
Anchoring What Matters: A Dual-Level Learning Framework for Visually-Grounded Multimodal Reasoning
Sep 16, 2026Xinxin Song, Siyuan Li, Tingxiong Xiao +1Credit Assignment in RL Experience Replay
Department of Automation, Tsinghua University · Institute for Brain and Cognitive Science, Tsinghua University
SAVOR: Self-Aware Visual Grounding via Confidence-Calibrated Reinforcement Learning for Multimodal Hallucination Mitigation
Sep 15, 2026Zixiu Ding, Zilin Zhao, Yingjie He +3Object Hallucination in VLMs Visual Grounding
Central South University · Peking University
VideoScout: Learning Agentic Active Exploration with Adaptive Reasoning Pacing for Long Video Understanding
Sep 14, 2026Weixin Xu, Zhenyu Yang, Bing Wang +2Video Understanding Long-Video Understanding
Func-R1: Incentivizing Mathematical Function Reasoning in Multimodal Large Language Models
Sep 13, 2026Mingze Yin, Xiaohan Wang, Dian Li +8Multimodal Large Language Models Mathematical Reasoning
College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University · Tencent 3AI Thrust, HKUST (GZ) · Zhongguancun Academy +3
Eliciting Self-Verification in Multimodal Reasoning Agents with Reinforcement Learning
Sep 7, 2026Vishwas Sathish, Viresh Ranjan, Xinliang Zhu +2Tool Use in VLMs Multimodal QA
University of Washington · Seattle, WA, USA · Amazon +1
Stable-MM-R1: Anchoring Multimodal Reasoning Dynamics via Entropy-Guided Stratification
Sep 7, 2026Yimeng Ye, Shuang Chen, Wenxuan Huang +8Reinforcement Learning RL Fine-Tuning
Columbia University · CUHK · THU +1
Unfold The World: Factorize 4D Properties in Reinforcing Spatial Reasoning
Sep 3, 2026Yijun Yang, Shenghe Zheng, Wenbo Li +8Visual Spatial Reasoning 3D Spatial Reasoning
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) · Joy Future Academy · The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology +1
Controllable Image Captioning with Prompt-Conditioned Scene Rewards
Sep 1, 2026Jongyeop Hyun, Taeyoung Kim, Hyounghun KimImage Captioning RL for VLMs
Graduate School of Artificial Intelligence, POSTECH · Department of Computer Science and Engineering, POSTECH
Scaffolding Minds: Optimizing Latent Visual Target Representations for Multimodal Reasoning
Aug 20, 2026Haoqiang Kang, Yinpeng Chen, Luyang Liu +5Visual Spatial Reasoning Multimodal Reasoning
Google DeepMind · UC San Diego · Work done at Google DeepMind
FIRE-VLA: Failure-Informed Self-Evolution for Vision-Language-Action Models in Autonomous Driving
Aug 13, 2026Hao DouVLMs for Autonomous Driving Self-Distillation
Harbin Institute of Technology
Temporal GRPO: Beyond Trajectory-Level Credit in Vision-Language-Action Reinforcement Learning
Aug 13, 2026Yao Zhou, Hang Gao, Fengge Wu +2Group Relative Policy Optimization Step-Level Credit Assignment in RL
Institute of Software Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China · University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
SCOUT: Unlocking Enhanced Spatial Reasoning via Structured Chain-of-Thought and Multi-Objective Process Reward
Aug 12, 2026Zile Zhou, Huining Yuan, Weichen Zhang +2Visual Spatial Reasoning Process Reward Models
Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen, China
CARE: Confidence-Aware Reasoning for Reliable Medical VQA
Aug 11, 2026Yuetian Du, Yucheng Wang, Zhenyuan Chen +9Medical VQA Medical VLMs
Zhejiang University · Ant Group · University of Michigan +1
MIRA: Medical Image Reflection for Agentic Diagnosis
Aug 11, 2026Shengzhi Wang, Jun Yang, Kai Wu +11Medical Image Analysis LLM Agent Verification
Tongji University · École Normale Supérieure – PSL · Nanjing University +2
SafeCap: Improving LVLM Safety with Image Captioning Reinforcement Learning
Aug 11, 2026Caoyuan Ma, Wenpu Liu, Weichu Xie +12VLM Robustness Adversarial Attacks on VLMs
The University of Tokyo · Peking University · Wuhan University +4
FactorDrive: Adaptive Multi-Step Reasoning Driven by Planning-Critical Factors for End-to-End Autonomous Driving
Aug 10, 2026Guolei Huang, Tengfei She, Yuxuan Lu +3VLMs for Autonomous Driving End-to-End Autonomous Driving
1Southeast University · 2Universiti Malay · 3Ant Group +2
CodecArena: Codec Quality Assessment via Visual Reinforcement Learning
Aug 10, 2026Jiaye Fu, Weiqi Li, Qiankun Gao +5Video Quality Assessment RL for VLMs
School of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Peking University · School of Computer Science, Peking University · Pengcheng Laboratory
StructReward: Efficient Structured Process Rewards for Self-Correcting Multimodal Reasoning
Aug 8, 2026Yifan Li, Ruxin Sun, Tongzhou ZhaoProcess Reward Models Multimodal Reasoning
Evidence-RL: Towards Evidence-intensive Visual Reasoning
Aug 8, 2026Haojie Huang, Xinlei Yu, Chengming Xu +6Vision-Language Grounding Visually Grounded Reasoning
National University of Singapore · Zhejiang University · Fudan University +2
TEMPO: Semantic-Action Decoupled RL Post-Training for Vision-Language-Action Models
Aug 7, 2026Ziheng Liu, Quantao YangRobotic Manipulation Vision-Language-Action Models
School of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou 310018, China. · Department of Robotics, Perception, and Learning, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.
Gated-BEPO: Confidence-Gated Bellman Credit Assignment for Large Language Model Agents
Aug 7, 2026Hongxi Yan, Ziyue Huang, Shichao Fan +1Credit Assignment in RL Step-Level Credit Assignment in RL
State Key Laboratory of Virtual Reality Technology and Systems, Beihang University, Beijing, China · Zhongguancun Laboratory, Beijing, China · Qualcomm, Beijing, China
Multi-Branch Policy Optimization for Multimodal Large Language Models
Aug 5, 2026Shuai Lyu, Yuning Gong, Ruiling Gao +7Credit Assignment in RL Multimodal Large Language Models
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications Beijing, China · Sichuan University Chengdu, China · Shanghai University Shanghai, China +1
CARE-X: Towards Clinically Useful Radiology VLMs with Auxiliary Supervision, Reward-Aligned Learning, and Tool-Augmented Measurement
Aug 4, 2026Mercy Prasanna Ranjit, Anirban Porya, Sathvik Joel +8Radiology Report Generation Chest X-Ray Classification
Microsoft Research India · Medha AI, Narayana Health, India. · RTIICS, Narayana Health, India
Continue or Replan? Bernoulli-Continuation Policy Learning for Adaptive Horizon Execution
Aug 4, 2026Weichen Xu, Zhenhua Liu, Lin Luo +8Efficient VLA Model Inference Robotic Manipulation
1Peking University · 2Microsoft Research Asia
CAVE: Competence-Aware Visual Boundary Evidence Alignment for Video Temporal Grounding
Aug 3, 2026Wei Jia, Zhicong Lu, Yu Chen +5Temporal Video Grounding Vision-Language Alignment
AMAP, Alibaba Group · University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
RSVideo: Are Your Vision-Language Models Ready for Remote Sensing Videos?
Aug 3, 2026Hongjie Zhou, Shiqin Wang, Haoyang Chen +5Video-Language Model Evaluation Remote Sensing
Wuhan University · Zhongguancun Academy
Remember-R1: Mitigating Long-Context Visual Forgetting through Reinforcement Learning
Aug 2, 2026Jianmin Chen, Jiaqi Tang, Wei Wei +9Vision-Language Models Long-Context Modeling
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Hong Kong, China · Northwestern Polytechnical University Xi’an, China · Zhejiang University Hangzhou, China

Sep 21, 2026, cs.ROJ/K move · Enter open · S save

Imagine-RL: Residual-Confidence-Guided Cross-Attention for World-Model-Augmented VLA Reinforcement Learning

Kejia Hu, Wentong Zhai, Bo Zhao, Shuai Liang

Department of Electric Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology · University Of Science and Technology Beijing · Shanghai Jiao Tong University+1

Robotic Manipulation Vision-Language-Action Models RL for VLMs Model-Based RL

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Reliable action evaluation in contact-rich manipulation requires looking beyond the current observation to future visual and contact consequences. Existing noise-space reinforcement learning efficiently steers a frozen Vision-Language-Action (VLA) policy, but its critics largely ignore these consequences. We present Imagine-RL, which augments noise-space VLA post-training with action-conditioned visual-torque imagination. For each candidate action chunk, a frozen visual-torque latent world model (VTLWM) autoregressively predicts compact future representations without pixel reconstruction. A current image-state-action query attends to observed histories and predicted futures, while previous-window prediction residuals provide token-wise confidence priors that suppress unreliable future tokens. By combining current evidence with predicted consequences, the action critic better evaluates candidate actions and supervises the actor, while the VLA and VTLWM remain frozen. Across four real-robot tasks with 50 evaluation trials per task, Imagine-RL uses only 100 RL trajectories and improves the average success rate by (23.6%) over DSRL and by (60%) over VLA baselines.

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