# UAV-VLA: Vision-Language-Action System for Large Scale Aerial Mission Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.05014 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.05014/

## Key facts

- Cited by 28 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 16 of its 21 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Jan 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15818/) (2023)
- [OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09246/) (2024)
- [RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06817/) (2022)
- [AerialVLN: Vision-and-Language Navigation for UAVs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.06735/) (2023)
- [Towards Realistic UAV Vision-Language Navigation: Platform, Benchmark, and Methodology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.07087/) (2024)
- [Aerial Vision-and-Dialog Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.12219/) (2022)
- [CityNav: A Large-Scale Dataset for Real-World Aerial Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.14240/) (2024)
- [Bi-VLA: Vision-Language-Action Model-Based System for Bimanual Robotic Dexterous Manipulations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.06039/) (2024)
- [Exploring Spatial Representation to Enhance LLM Reasoning in Aerial Vision-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08500/) (2024)
- [A Safer Vision-based Autonomous Planning System for Quadrotor UAVs with Dynamic Obstacle Trajectory Prediction and Its Application with LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12893/) (2023)
- [FlightAR: AR Flight Assistance Interface with Multiple Video Streams and Object Detection Aimed at Immersive Drone Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.16943/) (2024)
- [MissionGPT: Mission Planner for Mobile Robot based on Robotics Transformer Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.05107/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [Vision-Language-Action Models for Robotics: A Review Towards Real-World Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.07077/) (2025)
- [Pure Vision Language Action (VLA) Models: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.19012/) (2025)
- [Vision Language Action Models in Robotic Manipulation: A Systematic Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.10672/) (2025)
- [RaceVLA: VLA-based Racing Drone Navigation with Human-like Behaviour](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.02572/) (2025)
- [CognitiveDrone: A VLA Model and Evaluation Benchmark for Real-Time Cognitive Task Solving and Reasoning in UAVs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.01378/) (2025)
- [FlightGPT: Towards Generalizable and Interpretable UAV Vision-and-Language Navigation with Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.12835/) (2025)
- [See, Point, Fly: A Learning-Free VLM Framework for Universal Unmanned Aerial Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22653/) (2025)
- [LongFly: Long-Horizon UAV Vision-and-Language Navigation with Spatiotemporal Context Integration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.22010/) (2025)
- [AerialVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model for UAV Navigation via Minimalist End-to-End Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.14363/) (2026)
- [Is your VLM Sky-Ready? A Comprehensive Spatial Intelligence Benchmark for UAV Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.13269/) (2025)
- [UAV-CodeAgents: Scalable UAV Mission Planning via Multi-Agent ReAct and Vision-Language Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07236/) (2025)
- [Inject Once Survive Later: Backdooring Vision-Language-Action Models to Persist Through Downstream Fine-tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.00500/) (2026)
- [AIR-VLA: Vision-Language-Action Systems for Aerial Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.21602/) (2026)
- [AERMANI-VLM: Structured Prompting and Reasoning for Aerial Manipulation with Vision Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.01472/) (2025)
- [DroneVLA: VLA based Aerial Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.13809/) (2026)
- [AugVLA-3D: Depth-Driven Feature Augmentation for Vision-Language-Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.10698/) (2026)
- [Fly0: Persistent Metric Anchoring for Zero-Shot Aerial Vision-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.15875/) (2026)
- [Large Language Model-Assisted UAV Operations and Communications: A Multifaceted Survey and Tutorial](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.19534/) (2026)
- [UnderwaterVLA: Dual-brain Vision-Language-Action architecture for Autonomous Underwater Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22441/) (2025)
- [Embodied4C: Measuring What Matters for Embodied Vision-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.18028/) (2025)
- [HumanDiffusion: A Vision-Based Diffusion Trajectory Planner with Human-Conditioned Goals for Search and Rescue UAV](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.14973/) (2026)
- [Towards Precise Intent-Aligned VLA Aerial Navigation via Expert-Guided GRPO](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.02313/) (2026)
- [CosFly-VLA: A Spatially Aware Vision-Language-Action Model for UAV Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.15004/) (2026)
- [From Semantic Grounding to Decision Optimization: A Unified Framework for Long-Horizon UAV Vision-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.09564/) (2026)
- [FlightDiffusion: Revolutionising Autonomous Drone Training with Diffusion Models Generating FPV Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.14082/) (2025)
- [DiffusionCinema: Text-to-Aerial Cinematography](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.17412/) (2026)
- [RACO: Reliability-Aware Coarse-Goal Optimization for Inspection-Oriented UAV Vision-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.22678/) (2026)
- [WareFly-VLA: A Vision-Language-Action Framework for UAV Navigation and Human Tracking in Smart Warehouses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.08526/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The UAV-VLA (Visual-Language-Action) system is a tool designed to facilitate communication with aerial robots. By integrating satellite imagery processing with the Visual Language Model (VLM) and the powerful capabilities of GPT, UAV-VLA enables users to generate general flight paths-and-action plans through simple text requests. This system leverages the rich contextual information provided by satellite images, allowing for enhanced decision-making and mission planning. The combination of visual analysis by VLM and natural language processing by GPT can provide the user with the path-and-action set, making aerial operations more efficient and accessible. The newly developed method showed the difference in the length of the created trajectory in 22% and the mean error in finding the objects of interest on a map in 34.22 m by Euclidean distance in the K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) approach.