mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

From Seeing to Doing: Bridging Reasoning and Decision for Robotic Manipulation

arXiv 2505.08548 ↗First posted 13 May 2025cs.RO cs.AI cs.LGcited by 34

On the map: LLM reasoning → Spatial and embodied reasoning

also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)

Achieving generalization in robotic manipulation remains a critical challenge, particularly for unseen scenarios and novel tasks. Current Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models, while building on top of general Vision-Language Models (VLMs), still fall short of achieving robust zero-shot performance due to the scarcity and heterogeneity prevalent in embodied datasets. To address these limitations, we propose FSD (From Seeing to Doing), a novel vision-language model that generates intermediate representations through spatial relationship reasoning, providing fine-grained guidance for robotic manipulation. Our approach combines a hierarchical data pipeline for training with a self-consistency mechanism that aligns spatial coordinates with visual signals. Through extensive experiments, we comprehensively validated FSD's capabilities in both "seeing" and "doing," achieving outstanding performance across 8 benchmarks for general spatial reasoning and embodied reference abilities, as well as on our proposed more challenging benchmark VABench. We also verified zero-shot capabilities in robot manipulation, demonstrating significant performance improvements over baseline methods in both SimplerEnv and real robot settings. Experimental results show that FSD achieves 40.6% success rate in SimplerEnv and 72% success rate across 8 real-world tasks, outperforming the strongest baseline by 30%.

Key facts. Cited by 34 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Spatial and embodied reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 73 of its 80 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 13 May 2025.

Builds on

73 of 80 references.

Closest ancestors · 8

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Fine-Tuning Vision-Language-Action Models: Optimizing Speed and Success27 Feb
  2. 2024Reasoning Paths with Reference Objects Elicit Quantitative Spatial Reasoning in Large Vision-Language Models15 Sep
  3. 2024ReKep: Spatio-Temporal Reasoning of Relational Keypoint Constraints for Robotic Manipulation3 Sep
  4. 2024Robotic Control via Embodied Chain-of-Thought Reasoning11 Jul
  5. 2024TopViewRS: Vision-Language Models as Top-View Spatial Reasoners4 Jun
  6. 2024SpatialRGPT: Grounded Spatial Reasoning in Vision Language Models3 Jun
  7. 2024SpatialVLM: Endowing Vision-Language Models with Spatial Reasoning Capabilities22 Jan
  8. 2022Visual Spatial Reasoning30 Apr

Other references · 65

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
  2. 2019Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformercited by 14,491
  3. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,302
  4. 2023Judging LLM-as-a-Judge with MT-Bench and Chatbot Arenacited by 8,393
  5. 2023Visual Instruction Tuningcited by 7,792
  6. 2023DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervisioncited by 7,764
  7. 2020Scaling Laws for Neural Language Modelscited by 6,411
  8. 2024GPT-4o System Cardcited by 4,467
  9. 2023Improved Baselines with Visual Instruction Tuningcited by 4,362
  10. 2023Grounding DINO: Marrying DINO with Grounded Pre-Training for Open-Set Object Detectioncited by 3,274
  11. 2023Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Modelscited by 3,155
  12. 2023RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Controlcited by 2,993
38 more
  1. 2024OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 2,777
  2. 2024LLaVA-OneVision: Easy Visual Task Transfercited by 2,669
  3. 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,297
  4. 2024Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policycited by 1,427
  5. 2023LIBERO: Benchmarking Knowledge Transfer for Lifelong Robot Learningcited by 1,338
  6. 2021CLIP-Adapter: Better Vision-Language Models with Feature Adapterscited by 1,021
  7. 2024Grounded SAM: Assembling Open-World Models for Diverse Visual Taskscited by 914
  8. 2023Shikra: Unleashing Multimodal LLM's Referential Dialogue Magiccited by 891
  9. 2023Open X-Embodiment: Robotic Learning Datasets and RT-X Modelscited by 849
  10. 2024DROID: A Large-Scale In-The-Wild Robot Manipulation Datasetcited by 801
  11. 2023VILA: On Pre-training for Visual Language Modelscited by 686
  12. 2022Automatic Chain of Thought Prompting in Large Language Modelscited by 684
  13. 2024RDT-1B: a Diffusion Foundation Model for Bimanual Manipulationcited by 670
  14. 2025FAST: Efficient Action Tokenization for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 643
  15. 2023BridgeData V2: A Dataset for Robot Learning at Scalecited by 634
  16. 2024BLINK: Multimodal Large Language Models Can See but Not Perceivecited by 529
  17. 2025SpatialVLA: Exploring Spatial Representations for Visual-Language-Action Modelcited by 502
  18. 2023Ferret: Refer and Ground Anything Anywhere at Any Granularitycited by 498
  19. 2024Evaluating Real-World Robot Manipulation Policies in Simulationcited by 484
  20. 2024Metric3Dv2: A Versatile Monocular Geometric Foundation Model for Zero-shot Metric Depth and Surface Normal Estimationcited by 389
  21. 2024TraceVLA: Visual Trace Prompting Enhances Spatial-Temporal Awareness for Generalist Robotic Policiescited by 298
  22. 2024Visual CoT: Advancing Multi-Modal Language Models with a Comprehensive Dataset and Benchmark for Chain-of-Thought Reasoningcited by 267
  23. 2024RoboPoint: A Vision-Language Model for Spatial Affordance Prediction for Roboticscited by 242
  24. 2023Any-point Trajectory Modeling for Policy Learningcited by 207
  25. 2021Where2Act: From Pixels to Actions for Articulated 3D Objectscited by 179
  26. 2023Compositional Chain-of-Thought Prompting for Large Multimodal Modelscited by 160
  27. 2024SpatialBot: Precise Spatial Understanding with Vision Language Modelscited by 146
  28. 2024Scaling Proprioceptive-Visual Learning with Heterogeneous Pre-trained Transformerscited by 145
  29. 2024Data Scaling Laws in Imitation Learning for Robotic Manipulationcited by 144
  30. 2025Magma: A Foundation Model for Multimodal AI Agentscited by 138
  31. 2025RoboBrain: A Unified Brain Model for Robotic Manipulation from Abstract to Concretecited by 134
  32. 2024RoboSpatial: Teaching Spatial Understanding to 2D and 3D Vision-Language Models for Roboticscited by 133
  33. 2024Flow as the Cross-Domain Manipulation Interfacecited by 126
  34. 2025HAMSTER: Hierarchical Action Models For Open-World Robot Manipulationcited by 125
  35. 2023DDCoT: Duty-Distinct Chain-of-Thought Prompting for Multimodal Reasoning in Language Modelscited by 124
  36. 2024Track2Act: Predicting Point Tracks from Internet Videos enables Generalizable Robot Manipulationcited by 116
  37. 2024SAT: Dynamic Spatial Aptitude Training for Multimodal Language Modelscited by 111
  38. 2024EmbSpatial-Bench: Benchmarking Spatial Understanding for Embodied Tasks with Large Vision-Language Modelscited by 100

50 most cited of 65 All 65 (JSON)

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 12; 2026: 22.

34 papers.

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  1. 2025Being-H0: Vision-Language-Action Pretraining from Large-Scale Human Videoscited by 94
  2. 2025Large VLM-based Vision-Language-Action Models for Robotic Manipulation: A Surveycited by 66
  3. 2025FlowVLA: Visual Chain of Thought-based Motion Reasoning for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 50
  4. 2025Embodied-R1: Reinforced Embodied Reasoning for General Robotic Manipulationcited by 36
  5. 2026HY-Embodied-0.5: Embodied Foundation Models for Real-World Agentscited by 18
  6. 2025XR-1: Towards Versatile Vision-Language-Action Models via Learning Unified Vision-Motion Representationscited by 15
  7. 2025TraceGen: World Modeling in 3D Trace Space Enables Learning from Cross-Embodiment Videoscited by 13
  8. 2025Towards Spatial Trace with Reasoning in Vision-Language Models for Roboticscited by 12
  9. 2025Where, What, Why: Towards Explainable Driver Attention Predictioncited by 10
  10. 2026Long-Horizon Manipulation via Trace-Conditioned VLA Planningcited by 9
  11. 2025LocateAnything3D: Vision-Language 3D Detection with Chain-of-Sightcited by 8
  12. 2026Hy-Embodied-VLM-1.0: Efficient Physical-World Agentscited by 7
22 more
  1. 2026Embodied-R1.5: Evolving Physical Intelligence via Embodied Foundation Modelscited by 5
  2. 2025Less is More: Improving LLM Reasoning with Minimal Test-Time Interventioncited by 4
  3. 2026Do MLLMs Really Understand Space? A Mathematical Reasoning Evaluationcited by 3
  4. 2026ST-VLA: Enabling 4D-Aware Spatiotemporal Understanding for General Robot Manipulationcited by 3
  5. 2026RoboAlign: Learning Test-Time Reasoning for Language-Action Alignment in Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 3
  6. 2026RoboHarness: A Memory-Augmented Policy Harness for Vision-Language-Action Model Robustness via In-Context Adaptationcited by 3
  7. 2026AnySlot: Goal-Conditioned Vision-Language-Action Policies for Zero-Shot Slot-Level Placementcited by 2
  8. 2026RoboStressBench: Benchmarking VLM Robustness to Physical Visual Stress in Embodied Scenescited by 2
  9. 2026Towards Predictive, Aligned, and Scalable Robot Learningcited by 2
  10. 2025VITA-E: Natural Embodied Interaction with Concurrent Seeing, Hearing, Speaking, and Actingcited by 1
  11. 2025Obstruction reasoning for robotic graspingcited by 1
  12. 2026SOLE-R1: Video-Language Reasoning as the Sole Reward for On-Robot Reinforcement Learningcited by 1
  13. 2026Pointing-VLA: Typed Spatial Grounding Interfaces for Vision-Language-Action Manipulationcited by 1
  14. 2026World Action Agent: Harnessing VLMs for Robot Manipulation via World Action Rehearsalcited by 1
  15. 2026AnchorVLA4D: an Anchor-Based Spatial-Temporal Vision-Language-Action Model for Robotic Manipulationcited by 0
  16. 2026Spatially Grounded Long-Horizon Task Planning in the Wildcited by 0
  17. 2026RoboPIN: Grounded Embodied Reasoning via Pinned Chain-of-Thoughtcited by 0
  18. 2026APIVOT: Adaptive Planning with Interleaved Vision-Language Thoughtscited by 0
  19. 2026Capek 0.5: An Execution-Centric Vision-Language Model for Embodied Intelligencecited by 0
  20. 20263DWay: Generalizing Robot Manipulation via 3D Consistent Waypointscited by 0
  21. 2026PhysBrain 1.5: From Vision-Language Models to Physical Foundation Modelscited by 0
  22. 2026ME-VLM: A Unified VLM for Embodied Cognition and Agent Coordinationcited by 0

Similar, not cited

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  1. 2026Bridging Semantics and Kinematics: A Modular Framework for Zero-Shot Robotic Manipulation ↗
  2. 2025Seeing Across Views: Benchmarking Spatial Reasoning of Vision-Language Models in Robotic Scenes
  3. 2025PEEK: Guiding and Minimal Image Representations for Zero-Shot Generalization of Robot Manipulation Policies
  4. 2025OmniManip: Towards General Robotic Manipulation via Object-Centric Interaction Primitives as Spatial Constraints
  5. 2024Task-oriented Robotic Manipulation with Vision Language Models
  6. 2026ThinkingVLA: Interleaved Vision and Language Reasoning for Robotic Manipulation
  7. 2026RoboIRGBench: Benchmarking Implicit Referential Grounding in Vision-Language-Action Models
  8. 2026Thinking in Text and Images: Interleaved Vision--Language Reasoning Traces for Long-Horizon Robot Manipulation