mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

QUAR-VLA: Vision-Language-Action Model for Quadruped Robots

arXiv 2312.14457 ↗First posted 22 Dec 2023cs.RO cs.CVcited by 55

On the map: Vision-language-action models → Generalist VLA models and benchmarks

Abstract (arXiv)

The important manifestation of robot intelligence is the ability to naturally interact and autonomously make decisions. Traditional approaches to robot control often compartmentalize perception, planning, and decision-making, simplifying system design but limiting the synergy between different information streams. This compartmentalization poses challenges in achieving seamless autonomous reasoning, decision-making, and action execution. To address these limitations, a novel paradigm, named Vision-Language-Action tasks for QUAdruped Robots (QUAR-VLA), has been introduced in this paper. This approach tightly integrates visual information and instructions to generate executable actions, effectively merging perception, planning, and decision-making. The central idea is to elevate the overall intelligence of the robot. Within this framework, a notable challenge lies in aligning fine-grained instructions with visual perception information. This emphasizes the complexity involved in ensuring that the robot accurately interprets and acts upon detailed instructions in harmony with its visual observations. Consequently, we propose QUAdruped Robotic Transformer (QUART), a family of VLA models to integrate visual information and instructions from diverse modalities as input and generates executable actions for real-world robots and present QUAdruped Robot Dataset (QUARD), a large-scale multi-task dataset including navigation, complex terrain locomotion, and whole-body manipulation tasks for training QUART models. Our extensive evaluation (4000 evaluation trials) shows that our approach leads to performant robotic policies and enables QUART to obtain a range of emergent capabilities.

Key facts. Cited by 55 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Generalist VLA models and benchmarks, one of 13 directions in Vision-language-action models. Builds on 52 of its 66 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 22 Dec 2023.

Builds on

52 of 66 references.

Closest ancestors · 1

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Control28 Jul

Other references · 51

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
  2. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,456
  3. 2017FiLM: Visual Reasoning with a General Conditioning Layercited by 2,286
  4. 2022RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scalecited by 2,007
  5. 2018BDD100K: A Diverse Driving Dataset for Heterogeneous Multitask Learningcited by 1,282
  6. 2022WebShop: Towards Scalable Real-World Web Interaction with Grounded Language Agentscited by 1,197
  7. 2021Isaac Gym: High Performance GPU-Based Physics Simulation For Robot Learningcited by 882
  8. 2022A Generalist Agentcited by 802
  9. 2018QT-Opt: Scalable Deep Reinforcement Learning for Vision-Based Robotic Manipulationcited by 730
  10. 2022R3M: A Universal Visual Representation for Robot Manipulationcited by 678
  11. 2023BridgeData V2: A Dataset for Robot Learning at Scalecited by 634
  12. 2021CLIPort: What and Where Pathways for Robotic Manipulationcited by 617
38 more
  1. 2022BC-Z: Zero-Shot Task Generalization with Robotic Imitation Learningcited by 517
  2. 2022MineDojo: Building Open-Ended Embodied Agents with Internet-Scale Knowledgecited by 469
  3. 2023Vision-Language Foundation Models as Effective Robot Imitatorscited by 344
  4. 2022Video PreTraining (VPT): Learning to Act by Watching Unlabeled Online Videoscited by 338
  5. 2021Bridge Data: Boosting Generalization of Robotic Skills with Cross-Domain Datasetscited by 248
  6. 2023Affordances from Human Videos as a Versatile Representation for Roboticscited by 221
  7. 2022Interactive Language: Talking to Robots in Real Timecited by 217
  8. 2023Where are we in the search for an Artificial Visual Cortex for Embodied Intelligence?cited by 215
  9. 2022Multi-Game Decision Transformerscited by 212
  10. 2023ViNT: A Foundation Model for Visual Navigationcited by 210
  11. 2023RoboAgent: Generalization and Efficiency in Robot Manipulation via Semantic Augmentations and Action Chunkingcited by 167
  12. 2022GNM: A General Navigation Model to Drive Any Robotcited by 161
  13. 2023Open-World Object Manipulation using Pre-trained Vision-Language Modelscited by 155
  14. 2018Making Sense of Vision and Touch: Self-Supervised Learning of Multimodal Representations for Contact-Rich Taskscited by 150
  15. 2021The Surprising Effectiveness of Representation Learning for Visual Imitationcited by 149
  16. 2017Using Simulation and Domain Adaptation to Improve Efficiency of Deep Robotic Graspingcited by 138
  17. 2022VIOLA: Imitation Learning for Vision-Based Manipulation with Object Proposal Priorscited by 135
  18. 2023RT-Trajectory: Robotic Task Generalization via Hindsight Trajectory Sketchescited by 131
  19. 2022Socially Compliant Navigation Dataset (SCAND): A Large-Scale Dataset of Demonstrations for Social Navigationcited by 122
  20. 2021Rapid Exploration for Open-World Navigation with Latent Goal Modelscited by 118
  21. 2022Walk These Ways: Tuning Robot Control for Generalization with Multiplicity of Behaviorcited by 113
  22. 2023Large Language Models as Generalizable Policies for Embodied Taskscited by 86
  23. 2017Self-supervised Deep Reinforcement Learning with Generalized Computation Graphs for Robot Navigationcited by 74
  24. 2023Symbol tuning improves in-context learning in language modelscited by 72
  25. 2021Learning Vision-Guided Quadrupedal Locomotion End-to-End with Cross-Modal Transformerscited by 71
  26. 2023Learning to Model the World with Languagecited by 66
  27. 2022Watch and Match: Supercharging Imitation with Regularized Optimal Transportcited by 64
  28. 2023Multi-Stage Cable Routing through Hierarchical Imitation Learningcited by 59
  29. 2023HYDRA: Hybrid Robot Actions for Imitation Learningcited by 54
  30. 2022TartanDrive: A Large-Scale Dataset for Learning Off-Road Dynamics Modelscited by 48
  31. 2023Train Offline, Test Online: A Real Robot Learning Benchmarkcited by 47
  32. 2023SayTap: Language to Quadrupedal Locomotioncited by 40
  33. 2023Barkour: Benchmarking Animal-level Agility with Quadruped Robotscited by 33
  34. 2016More than a Million Ways to Be Pushed: A High-Fidelity Experimental Dataset of Planar Pushingcited by 30
  35. 2018GONet: A Semi-Supervised Deep Learning Approach For Traversability Estimationcited by 28
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  38. 2022Learning Agent-Aware Affordances for Closed-Loop Interaction with Articulated Objectscited by 15

50 most cited of 51 All 51 (JSON)

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 12; 2025: 31; 2026: 12.

55 papers.

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  1. 2024A Survey on Vision-Language-Action Models for Embodied AIcited by 274
  2. 2024NaVILA: Legged Robot Vision-Language-Action Model for Navigationcited by 201
  3. 2025VLA-Adapter: An Effective Paradigm for Tiny-Scale Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 140
  4. 2025ChatVLA: Unified Multimodal Understanding and Robot Control with Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 112
  5. 2025UP-VLA: A Unified Understanding and Prediction Model for Embodied Agentcited by 99
  6. 2025PD-VLA: Accelerating Vision-Language-Action Model Integrated with Action Chunking via Parallel Decodingcited by 88
  7. 2025Vision-Language-Action Models for Robotics: A Review Towards Real-World Applicationscited by 82
  8. 2025ReconVLA: Reconstructive Vision-Language-Action Model as Effective Robot Perceivercited by 80
  9. 2025Vision-Language-Action (VLA) Models: Concepts, Progress, Applications and Challengescited by 72
  10. 2024Exploring the Adversarial Vulnerabilities of Vision-Language-Action Models in Roboticscited by 68
  11. 2025VLA-RFT: Vision-Language-Action Reinforcement Fine-tuning with Verified Rewards in World Simulatorscited by 65
  12. 2025WorldEval: World Model as Real-World Robot Policies Evaluatorcited by 64
38 more
  1. 2024LLM3:Large Language Model-based Task and Motion Planning with Motion Failure Reasoningcited by 63
  2. 2025ChatVLA-2: Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Embodied Reasoning from Pretrained Knowledgecited by 49
  3. 2025VLAS: Vision-Language-Action Model With Speech Instructions For Customized Robot Manipulationcited by 48
  4. 2025Long-VLA: Unleashing Long-Horizon Capability of Vision Language Action Model for Robot Manipulationcited by 48
  5. 2025Pure Vision Language Action (VLA) Models: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 46
  6. 2025ReinboT: Amplifying Robot Visual-Language Manipulation with Reinforcement Learningcited by 44
  7. 2025Humanoid-VLA: Towards Universal Humanoid Control with Visual Integrationcited by 43
  8. 2024Scaling Diffusion Policy in Transformer to 1 Billion Parameters for Robotic Manipulationcited by 38
  9. 2025Unified Diffusion VLA: Vision-Language-Action Model via Joint Discrete Denoising Diffusion Processcited by 37
  10. 2024Autonomous Improvement of Instruction Following Skills via Foundation Modelscited by 32
  11. 2024GeRM: A Generalist Robotic Model with Mixture-of-experts for Quadruped Robotcited by 28
  12. 2025MoRE: Unlocking Scalability in Reinforcement Learning for Quadruped Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 27
  13. 2024CARP: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Coarse-to-Fine Autoregressive Predictioncited by 26
  14. 2025GEVRM: Goal-Expressive Video Generation Model For Robust Visual Manipulationcited by 26
  15. 2025EVOLVE-VLA: Test-Time Training from Environment Feedback for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 20
  16. 2025PixelVLA: Advancing Pixel-level Understanding in Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 16
  17. 2024Seeing Through Their Eyes: Evaluating Visual Perspective Taking in Vision Language Modelscited by 15
  18. 2025MobileVLA-R1: Reinforcing Vision-Language-Action for Mobile Robotscited by 15
  19. 2024Score and Distribution Matching Policy: Advanced Accelerated Visuomotor Policies via Matched Distillationcited by 12
  20. 2025RationalVLA: A Rational Vision-Language-Action Model with Dual Systemcited by 12
  21. 2025Rethinking Latent Redundancy in Behavior Cloning: An Information Bottleneck Approach for Robot Manipulationcited by 10
  22. 2025BEDI: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Evaluating Embodied Agents on UAVscited by 10
  23. 2024QUART-Online: Latency-Free Large Multimodal Language Model for Quadruped Robot Learningcited by 9
  24. 2026Rethinking the Practicality of Vision-language-action Model: A Comprehensive Benchmark and An Improved Baselinecited by 9
  25. 2025QuaDreamer: Controllable Panoramic Video Generation for Quadruped Robotscited by 7
  26. 2025RoboBERT: An End-to-end Multimodal Robotic Manipulation Modelcited by 6
  27. 2024Unveiling the Depths: A Multi-Modal Fusion Framework for Challenging Scenarioscited by 4
  28. 2025UnderwaterVLA: Dual-brain Vision-Language-Action architecture for Autonomous Underwater Navigationcited by 3
  29. 2025VLA^2: Empowering Vision-Language-Action Models with an Agentic Framework for Unseen Concept Manipulationcited by 3
  30. 2026Self-Supervised Bootstrapping of Action-Predictive Embodied Reasoningcited by 3
  31. 2026AugVLA-3D: Depth-Driven Feature Augmentation for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 3
  32. 2025Beyond Recognition: Evaluating Visual Perspective Taking in Vision Language Modelscited by 2
  33. 2025Gaussian2Scene: 3D Scene Representation Learning via Self-supervised Learning with 3D Gaussian Splattingcited by 2
  34. 2025EmbodiedCoder: Parameterized Embodied Mobile Manipulation via Modern Coding Modelcited by 2
  35. 2026Ada3Drift: Adaptive Training-Time Drifting for One-Step 3D Visuomotor Robotic Manipulationcited by 2
  36. 2026OpenGo: An OpenClaw-Based Robotic Dog with Real-Time Skill Switchingcited by 1
  37. 2026CounterAlign: Counterfactual Supervision for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 1
  38. 2026FWBC-VLA: Force-Aware Whole-Body Compensation for Contact-Rich Loco-Manipulationcited by 1

50 most cited of 55 All 55 (JSON)

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  1. 2025An Anatomy of Vision-Language-Action Models: From Modules to Milestones and Challenges
  2. 2025Vision Language Action Models in Robotic Manipulation: A Systematic Review
  3. 2026QuoVLA: Quotient Space for Vision-Language-Action Models
  4. 2024What Matters in Building Vision-Language-Action Models for Generalist Robots
  5. 2025Efficient Vision-Language-Action Models for Embodied Manipulation: A Systematic Survey
  6. 2025CoT-VLA: Visual Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Vision-Language-Action Models
  7. 2026StarVLA-α: Reducing Complexity in Vision-Language-Action Systems
  8. 2026What Matters in Orchestrating Robot Policies: A Systematic Study of Hierarchical VLA Agents