# RoboBrain: A Unified Brain Model for Robotic Manipulation from Abstract to Concrete

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.21257 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.21257/

## Key facts

- Cited by 135 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Embodied and 3D vision-language models, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models.
- Builds on 75 of its 96 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Feb 2025.

## Placed in

- Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models / [Embodied and 3D vision-language models](https://mlsanity.com/mllm/embodied-and-3d-vision-language-models/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 75)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13971/) (2023)
- [Visual Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08485/) (2023)
- [BLIP-2: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training with Frozen Image Encoders and Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12597/) (2023)
- [RoFormer: Enhanced Transformer with Rotary Position Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.09864/) (2021)
- [Improved Baselines with Visual Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03744/) (2023)
- [Qwen2-VL: Enhancing Vision-Language Model's Perception of the World at Any Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12191/) (2024)
- [LAION-5B: An open large-scale dataset for training next generation image-text models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08402/) (2022)
- [Qwen Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16609/) (2023)
- [Mistral 7B](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06825/) (2023)
- [Sigmoid Loss for Language Image Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15343/) (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)
- [LLaVA-OneVision: Easy Visual Task Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03326/) (2024)
- [InternVL: Scaling up Vision Foundation Models and Aligning for Generic Visual-Linguistic Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14238/) (2023)
- [VQA: Visual Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.00468/) (2015)
- [Do As I Can, Not As I Say: Grounding Language in Robotic Affordances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.01691/) (2022)
- [MMBench: Is Your Multi-modal Model an All-around Player?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.06281/) (2023)
- [MMMU: A Massive Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding and Reasoning Benchmark for Expert AGI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16502/) (2023)
- [PaLM-E: An Embodied Multimodal Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.03378/) (2023)
- [RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06817/) (2022)
- [Towards VQA Models That Can Read](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08920/) (2019)
- [MME: A Comprehensive Evaluation Benchmark for Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13394/) (2023)
- [ChartQA: A Benchmark for Question Answering about Charts with Visual and Logical Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.10244/) (2022)
- [DocVQA: A Dataset for VQA on Document Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.00398/) (2020)
- [Conceptual 12M: Pushing Web-Scale Image-Text Pre-Training To Recognize Long-Tail Visual Concepts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.08981/) (2021)
- [Kimi k1.5: Scaling Reinforcement Learning with LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12599/) (2025)
- [OK-VQA: A Visual Question Answering Benchmark Requiring External Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.00067/) (2019)
- [Inner Monologue: Embodied Reasoning through Planning with Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.05608/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 135)

- [RoboRefer: Towards Spatial Referring with Reasoning in Vision-Language Models for Robotics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.04308/) (2025)
- [VLA-JEPA: Enhancing Vision-Language-Action Model with Latent World Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.10098/) (2026)
- [A Survey on Vision-Language-Action Models: An Action Tokenization Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.01925/) (2025)
- [Vision-Language-Action Models for Robotics: A Review Towards Real-World Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.07077/) (2025)
- [Large VLM-based Vision-Language-Action Models for Robotic Manipulation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.13073/) (2025)
- [Being-H0.5: Scaling Human-Centric Robot Learning for Cross-Embodiment Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.12993/) (2026)
- [Efficient Inference for Large Reasoning Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23077/) (2025)
- [Pure Vision Language Action (VLA) Models: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.19012/) (2025)
- [GuardReasoner-VL: Safeguarding VLMs via Reinforced Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.11049/) (2025)
- [Vision Language Action Models in Robotic Manipulation: A Systematic Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.10672/) (2025)
- [Embodied-R1: Reinforced Embodied Reasoning for General Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.13998/) (2025)
- [VLA-R1: Enhancing Reasoning in Vision-Language-Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.01623/) (2025)
- [VLA-OS: Structuring and Dissecting Planning Representations and Paradigms in Vision-Language-Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.17561/) (2025)
- [Planning with Reasoning using Vision Language World Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.02722/) (2025)
- [From Seeing to Doing: Bridging Reasoning and Decision for Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.08548/) (2025)
- [Visual Embodied Brain: Let Multimodal Large Language Models See, Think, and Control in Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00123/) (2025)
- [RDT2: Exploring the Scaling Limit of UMI Data Towards Zero-Shot Cross-Embodiment Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.03310/) (2026)
- [RoboOS: A Hierarchical Embodied Framework for Cross-Embodiment and Multi-Agent Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.03673/) (2025)
- [ManipLVM-R1: Reinforcement Learning for Reasoning in Embodied Manipulation with Large Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.16517/) (2025)
- [TIGeR: Tool-Integrated Geometric Reasoning in Vision-Language Models for Robotics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.07181/) (2025)
- [Robobench: A Comprehensive Evaluation Benchmark for Multimodal Large Language Models as Embodied Brain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.17801/) (2025)
- [Fast-ThinkAct: Efficient Vision-Language-Action Reasoning via Verbalizable Latent Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.09708/) (2026)
- [Think3D: Thinking with Space for Spatial Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.13029/) (2026)
- [PALM: Progress-Aware Policy Learning via Affordance Reasoning for Long-Horizon Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.07060/) (2026)
- [RFTF: Reinforcement Fine-tuning for Embodied Agents with Temporal Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19767/) (2025)
- [Seeing Across Views: Benchmarking Spatial Reasoning of Vision-Language Models in Robotic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.19400/) (2025)
- [Show-Harness: Just a VLM Agent Can Play Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.10522/) (2026)
- [RoVer: Robot Reward Model as Test-Time Verifier for Vision-Language-Action Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.10975/) (2025)
- [VIKI-R: Coordinating Embodied Multi-Agent Cooperation via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09049/) (2025)
- [From Language to Locomotion: Retargeting-free Humanoid Control via Motion Latent Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.14952/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent advancements in Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have shown remarkable capabilities across various multimodal contexts. However, their application in robotic scenarios, particularly for long-horizon manipulation tasks, reveals significant limitations. These limitations arise from the current MLLMs lacking three essential robotic brain capabilities: Planning Capability, which involves decomposing complex manipulation instructions into manageable sub-tasks; Affordance Perception, the ability to recognize and interpret the affordances of interactive objects; and Trajectory Prediction, the foresight to anticipate the complete manipulation trajectory necessary for successful execution. To enhance the robotic brain's core capabilities from abstract to concrete, we introduce ShareRobot, a high-quality heterogeneous dataset that labels multi-dimensional information such as task planning, object affordance, and end-effector trajectory. ShareRobot's diversity and accuracy have been meticulously refined by three human annotators. Building on this dataset, we developed RoboBrain, an MLLM-based model that combines robotic and general multi-modal data, utilizes a multi-stage training strategy, and incorporates long videos and high-resolution images to improve its robotic manipulation capabilities. Extensive experiments demonstrate that RoboBrain achieves state-of-the-art performance across various robotic tasks, highlighting its potential to advance robotic brain capabilities.