Vision-Language-Action Models

Also known as VLA

Overview

These models combine vision-language backbones with action generators that produce continuous motion or discrete action tokens, often in chunks and with proprioceptive input. They are commonly trained on robot demonstrations, with flow-matching and diffusion policies, reinforcement fine-tuning, and predictive world models used to improve control and planning. Research spans tabletop and bimanual manipulation, mobile and aerial navigation, autonomous driving, and humanoid control, evaluated on benchmarks such as LIBERO, CALVIN, RoboTwin, and driving simulators. A central challenge is making broad visual and language competence translate into reliable closed-loop behavior under new objects, viewpoints, embodiments, delays, and safety constraints; benchmark success can still conceal weak instruction grounding and sim-to-real failures.

Latest papers

CardsList

1,154 papers249 papers in the last four weeks, up 144% on the four weeks before. 1.5% of all new papers.

  1. AtlasVLA: Persistent World-Ego State Modeling for Vision-Language-Action Models

    Aug 7, 2026Guiyu Zhao, Longteng Guo, Yanghong Mei +7Long-Horizon Robotic ManipulationVision-Language-Action Models

  2. CrossTracer: Cross-Embodiment Navigation via VLA Model Reasoning and Trace Residuals Adapting

    Aug 7, 2026Yao Wang, Siyuan Wang, Zhirui Sun +4Trajectory GenerationRobot Navigation

  3. DyPES-VLA: Learning Shared Dynamics Priors and Embodiment-Specific Control for Cross-Embodiment Manipulation

    Aug 6, 2026Junfeng Li, Junjie He, Zhide Zhong +12Cross-Embodiment Robot LearningRobotics

  4. Visual Grounding in Zero-Shot Vision-Language Control

    Aug 6, 2026J. de Curtò, Dayani Plasencia, Diego Sánchez +1VLM EvaluationVLMs for Autonomous Driving

  5. Beyond Flat Policies: Hierarchical Post-Training for Embodied Agents in Robotic Manipulation

    Aug 6, 2026He Kong, Zengjue Chen, Qi Wang +6Long-Horizon Robotic ManipulationHierarchical RL

  6. In-Context VLA: Endowing Vision-Language-Action Models with Language via In-Context Post-Training and Agentic Tool Use

    Aug 6, 2026Jiarui Yang, Wen Huang, Jiale Zhang +2ICL for RoboticsContinual Learning for VLA Models

  7. World-to-Wrist: Task-Conditioned Future Wrist Modeling for Fine-Grained Robot Manipulation

    Aug 5, 2026Yuhao Pan, Haosong Peng, Zhengshen Zhang +8Language-Conditioned Robot ManipulationContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

  8. BridgeVLA++: A Data-Efficient, Generalizable, and Memory-Augmented Vision-Language-Action Framework for 3D Manipulation

    Aug 5, 2026Peiyan Li, Yuze Zhu, Yixiang Chen +10Memory-Augmented VLMsGeneralization in Robotic Manipulation

  9. Suppression Sticks, Locality Is Fragile: A Closed-Loop Target-and-Control Audit of Task-Vector Negation in VLA Policies

    Aug 5, 2026Shaoguang Wang, Weiyu Guo, Rushi Dai +3Robotic Policy EvaluationTask Arithmetic

  10. Mind-VLA: Instruction-Aware Spatial Representation Alignment for Vision-Language-Action Models

    Aug 5, 2026Xingyu Ding, Yuzhong Zhao, Yang Wu +4Robotic ManipulationVision-Language-Action Models

  11. Retrieve in Time, Correct in Frequency

    Aug 5, 2026Yuze Fan, Yue Cao, Pengjie Gao +7Robotic ManipulationVision-Language-Action Models

  12. CofactVLA: Deconfounding Vision-Language-Action Models via Counterfactual Intervention

    Aug 5, 2026Yan Zhang, Yinan Wu, Haoran Duan +1Robotic ManipulationVision-Language-Action Models

  13. SAFECAST: Robust Failure Detection for VLA Policies with Contrast-Set Training and Calibration

    Aug 4, 2026Harshitha Rajaprakash, Aditeya Prajapati, Rong Xue +2Vision-Language-Action ModelsRobustness of VLA Models

  14. Track4Action: Distilling World-Centric 3D Tracker into Vision-Language-Action Policies

    Aug 4, 2026Chenyi Wang, Xinkai Wang, Bokai Lin +4Visuomotor Policy LearningVision-Language-Action Models

  15. Unified Visuomotor Targets: Supervising VLAs Beyond Physical Actions

    Aug 4, 2026Zhenyang Feng, Unnat JainLatent Action LearningVisuomotor Policy Learning

  16. Continue or Replan? Bernoulli-Continuation Policy Learning for Adaptive Horizon Execution

    Aug 4, 2026Weichen Xu, Zhenhua Liu, Lin Luo +8Efficient VLA Model InferenceRobotic Manipulation

  17. How Should Vision-Language-Action Models Use Proprioceptive State?

    Aug 4, 2026Yiren Zhao, Ziyang Chen, Ziyang Rao +5Robotic ControlVision-Language-Action Models

  18. Ego2Robot: Scalable Robot Data Synthesis from Egocentric Human Data

    Aug 3, 2026Ye Wang, Pei Lin, Xiong-Hui Chen +12Robot Skill LearningGeneralization in Robotic Manipulation

  19. Grounded Semantic Re-Binding for Robust Instruction Generalization in Vision-Language-Action Models

    Aug 3, 2026Zhaokai Yin, Zhipeng ZhangVision-Language GroundingVision-Language-Action Models

  20. ChainVLA: Chaining Vision-Language-Action Queries through a Unified Execution State for Long-Horizon Manipulation

    Aug 3, 2026Yuzhi Huang, Weijue Bu, Ziyi Xiong +4Memory-Augmented VLMsLong-Horizon Robotic Manipulation

  21. Learning Panorama-Aware VLA for Mobile Manipulation with Whole-Body Teleoperation

    Aug 3, 2026Donglin Yang, Haoran Chen, Xingyu Chen +6Mobile ManipulationBimanual Robotic Manipulation

  22. Look Where It Matters: Adaptive Visual Refinement for Vision-Language-Action Models

    Aug 3, 2026Jin Cui, Yanbin Hu, Xinyue Long +3Robotic ManipulationVision-Language-Action Models

  23. Multi-View Unified Camera Fields: Geometry-Shaped Action-Facing Representations for RGB-Only Multi-Camera VLA Policies

    Aug 3, 2026Jiarui Yang, Yehao Lu, Yuning Su +9Multi-View ConsistencyRobotic Manipulation