OmniVLA: Physically-Grounded Multimodal VLA with Unified Multi-Sensor Perception for Robotic Manipulation
On the map: Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models → Embodied and 3D vision-language models
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Abstract (arXiv)
Vision-language-action (VLA) models have shown strong generalization for robotic action prediction through large-scale vision-language pretraining. However, most existing models rely solely on RGB cameras, limiting their perception and, consequently, manipulation capabilities. We present OmniVLA, an omni-modality VLA model that integrates novel sensing modalities for physically-grounded spatial intelligence beyond RGB perception. The core of our approach is the sensor-masked image, a unified representation that overlays spatially grounded and physically meaningful masks onto the RGB images, derived from sensors including an infrared camera, a mmWave radar, and a microphone array. This image-native unification keeps sensor input close to RGB statistics to facilitate training, provides a uniform interface across sensor hardware, and enables data-efficient learning with lightweight per-sensor projectors. Built on this, we present a multisensory vision-language-action model architecture and train the model based on an RGB-pretrained VLA backbone. We evaluate OmniVLA on challenging real-world tasks where sensor-modality perception guides the robotic manipulation. OmniVLA achieves an average task success rate of 84%, significantly outperforms both RGB-only and raw-sensor-input baseline models by 59% and 28% respectively, meanwhile showing higher learning efficiency and stronger generalization capability.
Key facts. Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Embodied and 3D vision-language models, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models. Builds on 39 of its 47 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 3 Nov 2025.
Builds on
39 of 47 references.
Closest ancestors · 4
Same direction, newest first
- 2025SmolVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model for Affordable and Efficient Robotics2 Jun
- 2025Multimodal Fusion and Vision-Language Models: A Survey for Robot Vision3 Apr
- 2025PointVLA: Injecting the 3D World into Vision-Language-Action Models10 Mar
- 2025DexVLA: Vision-Language Model with Plug-In Diffusion Expert for General Robot Control9 Feb
Other references · 35
- 2023Visual Instruction Tuningcited by 7,792
- 2024GPT-4o System Cardcited by 4,467
- 2023Grounding DINO: Marrying DINO with Grounded Pre-Training for Open-Set Object Detectioncited by 3,274
- 2024SAM 2: Segment Anything in Images and Videoscited by 2,784
- 2024OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 2,777
- 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,297
- 2024Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policycited by 1,427
- 2024Grounded SAM: Assembling Open-World Models for Diverse Visual Taskscited by 914
- 2022BEVFusion: Multi-Task Multi-Sensor Fusion with Unified Bird's-Eye View Representationcited by 844
- 2023MiniGPT-v2: large language model as a unified interface for vision-language multi-task learningcited by 617
- 2025SpatialVLA: Exploring Spatial Representations for Visual-Language-Action Modelcited by 502
- 2024Prismatic VLMs: Investigating the Design Space of Visually-Conditioned Language Modelscited by 336
23 more
- 20243D-VLA: A 3D Vision-Language-Action Generative World Modelcited by 320
- 2023EmbodiedScan: A Holistic Multi-Modal 3D Perception Suite Towards Embodied AIcited by 146
- 2023Q-Transformer: Scalable Offline Reinforcement Learning via Autoregressive Q-Functionscited by 129
- 2021Actionable Models: Unsupervised Offline Reinforcement Learning of Robotic Skillscited by 125
- 2024RCBEVDet: Radar-camera Fusion in Bird's Eye View for 3D Object Detectioncited by 82
- 2022Pre-Training for Robots: Offline RL Enables Learning New Tasks from a Handful of Trialscited by 78
- 2021A Workflow for Offline Model-Free Robotic Reinforcement Learningcited by 68
- 2024Generalizable Humanoid Manipulation with 3D Diffusion Policiescited by 49
- 2025VLAS: Vision-Language-Action Model With Speech Instructions For Customized Robot Manipulationcited by 48
- 2024MultiPLY: A Multisensory Object-Centric Embodied Large Language Model in 3D Worldcited by 38
- 2025VLA-Touch: Enhancing Vision-Language-Action Models with Dual-Level Tactile Feedbackcited by 37
- 2024Unleashing HyDRa: Hybrid Fusion, Depth Consistency and Radar for Unified 3D Perceptioncited by 35
- 2023Action-Quantized Offline Reinforcement Learning for Robotic Skill Learningcited by 34
- 20253D CAVLA: Leveraging Depth and 3D Context to Generalize Vision Language Action Models for Unseen Taskscited by 30
- 2025Doracamom: Joint 3D Detection and Occupancy Prediction with Multi-view 4D Radars and Cameras for Omnidirectional Perceptioncited by 21
- 2024TOP-ERL: Transformer-based Off-Policy Episodic Reinforcement Learningcited by 18
- 2024CRT-Fusion: Camera, Radar, Temporal Fusion Using Motion Information for 3D Object Detectioncited by 18
- 2025LXLv2: Enhanced LiDAR Excluded Lean 3D Object Detection with Fusion of 4D Radar and Cameracited by 13
- 2025Spatial Traces: Enhancing VLA Models with Spatial-Temporal Understandingcited by 11
- 2025SAMFusion: Sensor-Adaptive Multimodal Fusion for 3D Object Detection in Adverse Weathercited by 10
- 2024PEAC: Unsupervised Pre-training for Cross-Embodiment Reinforcement Learningcited by 9
- 2024RCTrans: Radar-Camera Transformer via Radar Densifier and Sequential Decoder for 3D Object Detectioncited by 7
- 2020Robotic Grasping of Fully-Occluded Objects using RF Perceptioncited by 5
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 7.
7 papers.
- 2026A Pragmatic VLA Foundation Modelcited by 97
- 2026Safe-Night VLA: Seeing the Unseen via Thermal-Perceptive Vision-Language-Action Models for Safety-Critical Manipulationcited by 5
- 2026From Instruction to Event: Sound-Triggered Mobile Manipulationcited by 2
- 2026MuseVLA: An Adaptive Multimodal Sensing Vision-Language-Action Model for Robotic Manipulationcited by 1
- 2026SEVO: Semantic-Enhanced Virtual Observation for Robust VLA Manipulation via Active Illumination and Data-Centric Collectioncited by 0
- 2026Point2Radio: A Foundation Model for Cross-Scene Radio Fields from Material-Aware Point Cloudscited by 0
- 2026mmHRI: Towards Privacy-Preserving Human-Robot Interaction with Millimeter-Wave Radarcited by 0
- 2026mmHRI: Towards Privacy-Preserving Human-Robot Interaction with Millimeter-Wave Radar28 Sep 2026
- 2026Point2Radio: A Foundation Model for Cross-Scene Radio Fields from Material-Aware Point Clouds31 Jul 2026
- 2026MuseVLA: An Adaptive Multimodal Sensing Vision-Language-Action Model for Robotic Manipulation16 Jun 2026
- 2026SEVO: Semantic-Enhanced Virtual Observation for Robust VLA Manipulation via Active Illumination and Data-Centric Collection11 May 2026
- 2026Safe-Night VLA: Seeing the Unseen via Thermal-Perceptive Vision-Language-Action Models for Safety-Critical Manipulation5 Mar 2026
- 2026From Instruction to Event: Sound-Triggered Mobile Manipulation29 Jan 2026
- 2026A Pragmatic VLA Foundation Model26 Jan 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026SG-VLA: Learning Spatially-Grounded Vision-Language-Action Models for Mobile Manipulation
- 2025Efficient Vision-Language-Action Models for Embodied Manipulation: A Systematic Survey
- 2025Vision Language Action Models in Robotic Manipulation: A Systematic Review
- 2025Unified Vision-Language-Action Model
- 2026H-VLA: Hierarchical Vision-Language-Action Model with Key-Action Reasoning and Motion Planning in a Unified Action Space
- 2026SimVLA: A Simple VLA Baseline for Robotic Manipulation
- 2025Clutter-Robust Vision-Language-Action Models through Object-Centric and Geometry Grounding
- 2025OmniVTLA: Vision-Tactile-Language-Action Models with Semantic-Aligned Tactile Sensing