mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

AsyncVLA: Asynchronous Flow Matching for Vision-Language-Action Models

arXiv 2511.14148 ↗First posted 18 Nov 2025cs.RO cs.AI cs.LGcited by 17

On the map: Vision-language-action models → Efficient VLA inference and adaptation

also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)

Vision-language-action (VLA) models have recently emerged as a powerful paradigm for building generalist robots. However, traditional VLA models that generate actions through flow matching (FM) typically rely on rigid and uniform time schedules, i.e., synchronous FM (SFM). Without action context awareness and asynchronous self-correction, SFM becomes unstable in long-horizon tasks, where a single action error can cascade into failure. In this work, we propose asynchronous flow matching VLA (AsyncVLA), a novel framework that introduces temporal flexibility in asynchronous FM (AFM) and enables self-correction in action generation. AsyncVLA breaks from the vanilla SFM in VLA models by generating the action tokens in a non-uniform time schedule with action context awareness. Besides, our method introduces the confidence rater to extract confidence of the initially generated actions, enabling the model to selectively refine inaccurate action tokens before execution. Moreover, we propose a unified training procedure for SFM and AFM that endows a single model with both modes, improving KV-cache utilization. Extensive experiments on robotic manipulation benchmarks demonstrate that AsyncVLA is data-efficient and exhibits self-correction ability. AsyncVLA outperforms existing methods across both simulation and real-world evaluations. Our code is available at https://github.com/YuhuaJiang2002/AsyncVLA.

Key facts. Cited by 17 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Efficient VLA inference and adaptation, one of 13 directions in Vision-language-action models. Builds on 59 of its 68 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 18 Nov 2025.

Builds on

59 of 68 references.

Closest ancestors · 4

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Unified Diffusion VLA: Vision-Language-Action Model via Joint Discrete Denoising Diffusion Process3 Nov
  2. 2025dVLA: Diffusion Vision-Language-Action Model with Multimodal Chain-of-Thought30 Sep
  3. 2025Discrete Diffusion VLA: Bringing Discrete Diffusion to Action Decoding in Vision-Language-Action Policies27 Aug
  4. 2025FAST: Efficient Action Tokenization for Vision-Language-Action Models16 Jan

Other references · 55

  1. 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,702
  2. 2025Qwen2.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 5,587
  3. 2023RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Controlcited by 3,080
  4. 2024OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 2,887
  5. 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusioncited by 2,838
  6. 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,407
  7. 2022RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scalecited by 2,061
  8. 2025π0.5: a Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Generalizationcited by 1,761
  9. 2024Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policycited by 1,484
  10. 2023LIBERO: Benchmarking Knowledge Transfer for Lifelong Robot Learningcited by 1,410
  11. 2025GR00T N1: An Open Foundation Model for Generalist Humanoid Robotscited by 1,225
  12. 2025Large Language Diffusion Modelscited by 912
38 more
  1. 2025Fine-Tuning Vision-Language-Action Models: Optimizing Speed and Successcited by 883
  2. 2022A Generalist Agentcited by 808
  3. 2023BridgeData V2: A Dataset for Robot Learning at Scalecited by 657
  4. 2025SmolVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model for Affordable and Efficient Roboticscited by 530
  5. 2025SpatialVLA: Exploring Spatial Representations for Visual-Language-Action Modelcited by 519
  6. 2024Evaluating Real-World Robot Manipulation Policies in Simulationcited by 495
  7. 2025CoT-VLA: Visual Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 451
  8. 2024CogACT: A Foundational Vision-Language-Action Model for Synergizing Cognition and Action in Robotic Manipulationcited by 422
  9. 2024Mobile ALOHA: Learning Bimanual Mobile Manipulation with Low-Cost Whole-Body Teleoperationcited by 391
  10. 2025WorldVLA: Towards Autoregressive Action World Modelcited by 367
  11. 2025From System 1 to System 2: A Survey of Reasoning Large Language Modelscited by 320
  12. 2024TraceVLA: Visual Trace Prompting Enhances Spatial-Temporal Awareness for Generalist Robotic Policiescited by 304
  13. 2025X-VLA: Soft-Prompted Transformer as Scalable Cross-Embodiment Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 303
  14. 2024A Survey on Vision-Language-Action Models for Embodied AIcited by 279
  15. 2025MolmoAct: Action Reasoning Models that can Reason in Spacecited by 197
  16. 2025MemoryVLA: Perceptual-Cognitive Memory in Vision-Language-Action Models for Robotic Manipulationcited by 192
  17. 2025ThinkAct: Vision-Language-Action Reasoning via Reinforced Visual Latent Planningcited by 156
  18. 2025SimpleVLA-RL: Scaling VLA Training via Reinforcement Learningcited by 151
  19. 2025VLA-Adapter: An Effective Paradigm for Tiny-Scale Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 145
  20. 2025Magma: A Foundation Model for Multimodal AI Agentscited by 139
  21. 2025SDAR: A Synergistic Diffusion-AutoRegression Paradigm for Scalable Sequence Generationcited by 129
  22. 2025What Can RL Bring to VLA Generalization? An Empirical Studycited by 108
  23. 2024FlowPolicy: Enabling Fast and Robust 3D Flow-based Policy via Consistency Flow Matching for Robot Manipulationcited by 104
  24. 2025F1: A Vision-Language-Action Model Bridging Understanding and Generation to Actionscited by 86
  25. 2025InternVLA-M1: A Spatially Guided Vision-Language-Action Framework for Generalist Robot Policycited by 84
  26. 2025BridgeVLA: Input-Output Alignment for Efficient 3D Manipulation Learning with Vision-Language Modelscited by 80
  27. 2025Vision-Language-Action (VLA) Models: Concepts, Progress, Applications and Challengescited by 74
  28. 2024Diffusion-VLA: Generalizable and Interpretable Robot Foundation Model via Self-Generated Reasoningcited by 57
  29. 2025RLinf: Flexible and Efficient Large-scale Reinforcement Learning via Macro-to-Micro Flow Transformationcited by 57
  30. 2025Igniting VLMs toward the Embodied Spacecited by 53
  31. 2025FlowVLA: Visual Chain of Thought-based Motion Reasoning for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 50
  32. 2025Unified Multimodal Discrete Diffusioncited by 49
  33. 2025VLA-0: Building State-of-the-Art VLAs with Zero Modificationcited by 49
  34. 2025Reflective Planning: Vision-Language Models for Multi-Stage Long-Horizon Robotic Manipulationcited by 42
  35. 2025MoManipVLA: Transferring Vision-language-action Models for General Mobile Manipulationcited by 34
  36. 2025LLaDA-VLA: Vision Language Diffusion Action Modelscited by 30
  37. 2025VITA: Vision-to-Action Flow Matching Policycited by 25
  38. 2024A Self-Correcting Vision-Language-Action Model for Fast and Slow System Manipulationcited by 21

50 most cited of 55 All 55 (JSON)

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 1; 2026: 16.

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  1. 2026GuidedVLA: Specifying Task-Relevant Factors via Plug-and-Play Action Attention Specializationcited by 10
  2. 2026StreamingVLA: Streaming Vision-Language-Action Model with Action Flow Matching and Adaptive Early Observationcited by 6
  3. 2025OMP: One-step Meanflow Policy with Directional Alignmentcited by 4
  4. 2026Escaping the Diversity Trap in Robotic Manipulation via Anchor-Centric Adaptationcited by 4
  5. 2026CKT-WAM: Parameter-Efficient Context Knowledge Transfer Between World Action Modelscited by 3
  6. 2026FBFM: A Training-Free Asynchronous Feedback Mechanism for Flow-Matching in World-Action Models Executioncited by 3
  7. 2026Causal Flow Q-Learning for Robust Offline Reinforcement Learningcited by 2
  8. 2026Acting While Understanding: Asynchronous Semantic-Action Decoupling for Real-Time Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 2
  9. 2026DriftingVLA: Native One-Step Vision-Language-Action Generation via Per-Dimension Temporal Driftingcited by 2
  10. 2026PAMAE: Phase-Aware-MoE Action Experts Towards Reliable Flow-Matching Vision-Language-Action Policiescited by 1
  11. 2026Toward Unified Robot Learning: Bridging Representation, Vision-Language-Action, and World Modelscited by 0
  12. 2026IMLE-VLA: Fast Single-Step Action Generation for Vision-Language-Action Policiescited by 0
5 more
  1. 2026PanoFuse: Panorama-Enhanced Vision-Language-Action Learning with Decoupled Semantic-Geometric Routingcited by 0
  2. 2026DSDyn-VLA: A Dual-Stream Dynamic Manipulation Framework with Motion Perception, Future Awareness, and Realtime Correctioncited by 0
  3. 2026Toward Real-Time VLAs: Stage-Aware Two-Step Flow Denoising and System-Level Evaluationcited by 0
  4. 2026RealtimeWAM: One-Step Asynchronous World Action Modelscited by 0
  5. 2026REACT: Rolling Denoising and Dual Decoupling for Reactive Robot Control with VLA Modelscited by 0

Similar, not cited

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  1. 2026AdaVLA: Adaptive Step Flow Matching for Training-free Acceleration of Vision-Language-Action Models
  2. 2026RAVEL: Asynchronous Rolling Inference for Flow-Based Vision-Language-Action Models
  3. 2026Fewer Steps, Better Actions: Rethinking Flow-Matching Inference for VLA Policies
  4. 2026Flow Control: Steering Vision-Language-Action Models with Simple Real-Time Inputs
  5. 2026π0-EqM: Equilibrium Matching for Closed-Loop Vision-Language-Action Control
  6. 2025VLA-RAIL: A Real-Time Asynchronous Inference Linker for VLA Models and Robots
  7. 2026FlashVLA: Streaming Action Decoding for Fast and Asynchronous VLA Inference
  8. 2026Reflex: Real-Time VLA Control through Streaming Inference