# RoboFlamingo-Plus: Fusion of Depth and RGB Perception with Vision-Language Models for Enhanced Robotic Manipulation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.19510 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.19510/

## Key facts

- Cited by 12 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 24 of its 30 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Mar 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, 24 of 24)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [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)
- [Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10683/) (2019)
- [EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11946/) (2019)
- [Flamingo: a Visual Language Model for Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.14198/) (2022)
- [RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15818/) (2023)
- [FiLM: Visual Reasoning with a General Conditioning Layer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.07871/) (2017)
- [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)
- [CALVIN: A Benchmark for Language-Conditioned Policy Learning for Long-Horizon Robot Manipulation Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03227/) (2021)
- [OpenFlamingo: An Open-Source Framework for Training Large Autoregressive Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.01390/) (2023)
- [BC-Z: Zero-Shot Task Generalization with Robotic Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.02005/) (2022)
- [Universal Sentence Encoder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.11175/) (2018)
- [VIMA: General Robot Manipulation with Multimodal Prompts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03094/) (2022)
- [Mobile ALOHA: Learning Bimanual Mobile Manipulation with Low-Cost Whole-Body Teleoperation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02117/) (2024)
- [Vision-Language Foundation Models as Effective Robot Imitators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.01378/) (2023)
- [PaLI-X: On Scaling up a Multilingual Vision and Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18565/) (2023)
- [Language Conditioned Imitation Learning over Unstructured Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.07648/) (2020)
- [RoboAgent: Generalization and Efficiency in Robot Manipulation via Semantic Augmentations and Action Chunking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.01918/) (2023)
- [Goal-Conditioned Reinforcement Learning: Problems and Solutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.08299/) (2022)
- [What Matters in Language Conditioned Robotic Imitation Learning over Unstructured Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06252/) (2022)
- [RoboVQA: Multimodal Long-Horizon Reasoning for Robotics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.00899/) (2023)
- [Grounding Language with Visual Affordances over Unstructured Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.01911/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [Vision-Language-Action (VLA) Models: Concepts, Progress, Applications and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.04769/) (2025)
- [GraphCoT-VLA: A 3D Spatial-Aware Reasoning Vision-Language-Action Model for Robotic Manipulation with Ambiguous Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.07650/) (2025)
- [Parallels Between VLA Model Post-Training and Human Motor Learning: Progress, Challenges, and Trends](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.20966/) (2025)
- [A Review of 3D Object Detection with Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.18738/) (2025)
- [An Anatomy of Vision-Language-Action Models: From Modules to Milestones and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.11362/) (2025)
- [StableVLA: Towards Robust Vision-Language-Action Models without Extra Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.18287/) (2026)
- [QuoVLA: Quotient Space for Vision-Language-Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.24890/) (2026)
- [VLA-Pro: Cross-Task Procedural Memory Transfer for Vision-Language-Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.29562/) (2026)
- [T-Rex: Task-Adaptive Spatial Representation Extraction for Robotic Manipulation with Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.19498/) (2025)
- [FrankenBot: Brain-Morphic Modular Orchestration for Robotic Manipulation with Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.21627/) (2025)
- [Sample-Efficient Robot Skill Learning for Construction Tasks: Benchmarking Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning and Vision-Language-Action VLA Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.14031/) (2025)
- [Learning Compositional Spatio-Temporal Video Grounding with Synthetic Curriculum](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.30584/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

As robotic technologies advancing towards more complex multimodal interactions and manipulation tasks, the integration of advanced Vision-Language Models (VLMs) has become a key driver in the field. Despite progress with current methods, challenges persist in fusing depth and RGB information within 3D environments and executing tasks guided by linguistic instructions. In response to these challenges, we have enhanced the existing RoboFlamingo framework by introducing RoboFlamingo-Plus, which incorporates depth data into VLMs to significantly improve robotic manipulation performance. Our research achieves a nuanced fusion of RGB and depth information by integrating a pre-trained Vision Transformer (ViT) with a resampling technique, closely aligning this combined data with linguistic cues for superior multimodal understanding. The novelty of RoboFlamingo-Plus lies in its adaptation of inputs for depth data processing, leveraging a pre-trained resampler for depth feature extraction, and employing cross-attention mechanisms for optimal feature integration. These improvements allow RoboFlamingo-Plus to not only deeply understand 3D environments but also easily perform complex, language-guided tasks in challenging settings. Experimental results show that RoboFlamingo-Plus boosts robotic manipulation by 10-20% over current methods, marking a significant advancement. Codes and model weights are public at RoboFlamingo-Plus.