mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

OmniVLA: An Omni-Modal Vision-Language-Action Model for Robot Navigation

arXiv 2509.19480 ↗First posted 23 Sep 2025cs.RO cs.LGcited by 38

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

Abstract (arXiv)

Humans can flexibly interpret and compose different goal specifications, such as language instructions, spatial coordinates, or visual references, when navigating to a destination. In contrast, most existing robotic navigation policies are trained on a single modality, limiting their adaptability to real-world scenarios where different forms of goal specification are natural and complementary. In this work, we present a training framework for robotic foundation models that enables omni-modal goal conditioning for vision-based navigation. Our approach leverages a high-capacity vision-language-action (VLA) backbone and trains with three primary goal modalities: 2D poses, egocentric images, and natural language, as well as their combinations, through a randomized modality fusion strategy. This design not only expands the pool of usable datasets but also encourages the policy to develop richer geometric, semantic, and visual representations. The resulting model, OmniVLA, achieves strong generalization to unseen environments, robustness to scarce modalities, and the ability to follow novel natural language instructions. We demonstrate that OmniVLA outperforms specialist baselines across modalities and offers a flexible foundation for fine-tuning to new modalities and tasks. We believe OmniVLA provides a step toward broadly generalizable and flexible navigation policies, and a scalable path for building omni-modal robotic foundation models. We present videos showcasing OmniVLA performance and will release its checkpoints and training code on our project page.

Key facts. Cited by 38 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Generalist VLA models and benchmarks, one of 13 directions in Vision-language-action models. Builds on 39 of its 49 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 23 Sep 2025.

Builds on

39 of 49 references.

Closest ancestors · 6

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025CAST: Counterfactual Labels Improve Instruction Following in Vision-Language-Action Models19 Aug
  2. 2025SmolVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model for Affordable and Efficient Robotics2 Jun
  3. 2025Fine-Tuning Vision-Language-Action Models: Optimizing Speed and Success27 Feb
  4. 2024NaVILA: Legged Robot Vision-Language-Action Model for Navigation5 Dec
  5. 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Control31 Oct
  6. 2024OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Model13 Jun

Other references · 33

  1. 2023PaLM-E: An Embodied Multimodal Language Modelcited by 2,071
  2. 2024Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policycited by 1,484
  3. 2023Open X-Embodiment: Robotic Learning Datasets and RT-X Modelscited by 862
  4. 2022A Generalist Agentcited by 808
  5. 2023VILA: On Pre-training for Visual Language Modelscited by 692
  6. 2022LM-Nav: Robotic Navigation with Large Pre-Trained Models of Language, Vision, and Actioncited by 439
  7. 2024Prismatic VLMs: Investigating the Design Space of Visually-Conditioned Language Modelscited by 339
  8. 2024Molmo and PixMo: Open Weights and Open Data for State-of-the-Art Vision-Language Modelscited by 329
  9. 2019Learning Latent Plans from Playcited by 316
  10. 2023NoMaD: Goal Masked Diffusion Policies for Navigation and Explorationcited by 248
  11. 2023ViNT: A Foundation Model for Visual Navigationcited by 222
  12. 2018Semi-parametric Topological Memory for Navigationcited by 209
21 more
  1. 2022CoWs on Pasture: Baselines and Benchmarks for Language-Driven Zero-Shot Object Navigationcited by 194
  2. 2022GNM: A General Navigation Model to Drive Any Robotcited by 171
  3. 2016End-to-end Learning of Driving Models from Large-scale Video Datasetscited by 148
  4. 2022What Matters in Language Conditioned Robotic Imitation Learning over Unstructured Datacited by 138
  5. 2022Socially Compliant Navigation Dataset (SCAND): A Large-Scale Dataset of Demonstrations for Social Navigationcited by 127
  6. 2021Rapid Exploration for Open-World Navigation with Latent Goal Modelscited by 121
  7. 2022Vision-and-Language Navigation: A Survey of Tasks, Methods, and Future Directionscited by 117
  8. 2024Scaling Cross-Embodied Learning: One Policy for Manipulation, Navigation, Locomotion and Aviationcited by 114
  9. 2017Self-supervised Deep Reinforcement Learning with Generalized Computation Graphs for Robot Navigationcited by 77
  10. 2024Mobility VLA: Multimodal Instruction Navigation with Long-Context VLMs and Topological Graphscited by 73
  11. 2023SACSoN: Scalable Autonomous Control for Social Navigationcited by 61
  12. 2022ViKiNG: Vision-Based Kilometer-Scale Navigation with Geographic Hintscited by 58
  13. 2019Deep Visual MPC-Policy Learning for Navigationcited by 56
  14. 2022TartanDrive: A Large-Scale Dataset for Learning Off-Road Dynamics Modelscited by 49
  15. 2024CoNVOI: Context-aware Navigation using Vision Language Models in Outdoor and Indoor Environmentscited by 43
  16. 2023Goal Representations for Instruction Following: A Semi-Supervised Language Interface to Controlcited by 32
  17. 2024LeLaN: Learning A Language-Conditioned Navigation Policy from In-the-Wild Videoscited by 32
  18. 2022ExAug: Robot-Conditioned Navigation Policies via Geometric Experience Augmentationcited by 19
  19. 2025Learning to Drive Anywhere with Model-Based Reannotationcited by 13
  20. 2022Spatio-Temporal Graph Localization Networks for Image-based Navigationcited by 10
  21. 2021Depth360: Self-supervised Learning for Monocular Depth Estimation using Learnable Camera Distortion Modelcited by 4

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 3; 2026: 35.

38 papers.

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  1. 2026Steerable Vision-Language-Action Policies for Embodied Reasoning and Hierarchical Controlcited by 20
  2. 2026LAP: Language-Action Pre-Training Enables Zero-shot Cross-Embodiment Transfercited by 18
  3. 2026Metis: A Generalizable and Efficient World-Action Model for Autonomous Driving and Urban Navigationcited by 11
  4. 2026TIC-VLA: A Think-in-Control Vision-Language-Action Model for Robot Navigation in Dynamic Environmentscited by 10
  5. 2026AsyncVLA: An Asynchronous VLA for Fast and Robust Navigation on the Edgecited by 10
  6. 2026An Efficient and Multi-Modal Navigation System with One-Step World Modelcited by 9
  7. 2026RAE-NWM: Navigation World Model in Dense Visual Representation Spacecited by 9
  8. 2026Do Audio-Visual Large Language Models Really See and Hear?cited by 9
  9. 2026RoboCurate: Harnessing Diversity with Action-Verified Neural Trajectory for Robot Learningcited by 8
  10. 2026NavWAM: A Navigation World Action Model for Goal-Conditioned Visual Navigationcited by 8
  11. 2025VLA-R: Vision-Language Action Retrieval toward Open-World End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 5
  12. 2026Safe-Night VLA: Seeing the Unseen via Thermal-Perceptive Vision-Language-Action Models for Safety-Critical Manipulationcited by 5
26 more
  1. 2026Latent World Models with Monotone Planning Costs for Image-Goal Navigationcited by 5
  2. 2025MM-Nav: Multi-View VLA Model for Robust Visual Navigation via Multi-Expert Learningcited by 3
  3. 2025UrbanVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model for Urban Micromobilitycited by 3
  4. 2026Visual Verification Enables Inference-time Steering and Autonomous Policy Improvementcited by 3
  5. 2026AsyncShield: A Plug-and-Play Edge Adapter for Asynchronous Cloud-based VLA Navigationcited by 2
  6. 2026Meanings and Measurements: Multi-Agent Probabilistic Grounding for Vision-Language Navigationcited by 1
  7. 2026Green for Go, Red for No: Visual Grounding via Semantic Segmentation for VLA Navigation Policiescited by 1
  8. 2026A Comprehensive Survey and Systematic Real-World Evaluation of Embodied Vision-and-Language Navigationcited by 1
  9. 2026TANGO: Humanoid Navigation in Cluttered Environments with a Whole-Body Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 1
  10. 2026Omni-C: Compressing Heterogeneous Modalities into a Single Dense Encodercited by 0
  11. 2026APPLV: Adaptive Planner Parameter Learning from Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 0
  12. 2026Act on What You See: Unlocking Safe Social Navigation in Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 0
  13. 2026Foresight: Iterative Reasoning About Clues that Matter for Navigationcited by 0
  14. 2026Vision-Language Models for Deployable Social Robot Navigation: Bridging Semantic Reasoning and Low-Level Controlcited by 0
  15. 2026GemNav: Discrete-Token Visual Robot Navigation using a Multimodal Large Language Modelcited by 0
  16. 2026CrossTracer: Cross-Embodiment Navigation via VLA Model Reasoning and Trace Residuals Adaptingcited by 0
  17. 2026If, Then, Otherwise: Diagnosing Conditional Branching in Vision-Language Navigationcited by 0
  18. 2026ShieldVLA: Feasibility-Aware Safety Alignment for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 0
  19. 2026Skytopia: Monocular Drone Navigation with Action-Conditioned Latent World Modelscited by 0
  20. 2026Where Should I Join? Robot Group Joining via Language-Guided Goal Predictioncited by 0
  21. 2026InfraVLA: Extending Vision-Language-Action Navigation with Infrastructure Camerascited by 0
  22. 2026Predictive Semantic Safety: From Visual Physical Reasoning to Safety-Critical Controlcited by 0
  23. 2026PreAct-Nav: Agentic Reasoning Before Action for Urban Navigationcited by 0
  24. 2026Seeing the Invisible: Physics-Guided Visual Prompting for Temperature- and Radiation-Aware VLA Navigationcited by 0
  25. 2026ADAPT: Audio-Depth Action Planning with Transition-Aware Rewards for Lights-Out Industrial Navigationcited by 0
  26. 2026Training Generalist Navigation Policies via Action Self-Distillationcited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026OpenFrontier: General Navigation with Visual-Language Grounded Frontiers
  2. 2025OpenNav: Open-World Navigation with Multimodal Large Language Models
  3. 2026Uni-LaViRA: Language-Vision-Robot Actions Translation for Unified Embodied Navigation
  4. 2025Can Pretrained Vision-Language Embeddings Alone Guide Robot Navigation?
  5. 2026PlatonicNav: Unveiling Semantic Correspondence in Navigation with Platonic Topological Maps
  6. 2025FiLM-Nav: Efficient and Generalizable Navigation via VLM Fine-tuning
  7. 2024Uni-NaVid: A Video-based Vision-Language-Action Model for Unifying Embodied Navigation Tasks
  8. 2025VLD: Visual Language Goal Distance for Reinforcement Learning Navigation