mlsanityData to 13 Oct 2026

A4-Agent: An Agentic Framework for Zero-Shot Affordance Reasoning

arXiv 2512.14442 ↗First posted 16 Dec 2025cs.CV cs.ROcited by 4

On the map: LLM reasoning → Spatial and embodied reasoning

also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)

Affordance prediction, which identifies interaction regions on objects based on language instructions, is critical for embodied AI. Prevailing end-to-end models couple high-level reasoning and low-level grounding into a single monolithic pipeline and rely on training over annotated datasets, which leads to poor generalization on novel objects and unseen environments. In this paper, we move beyond this paradigm by proposing A4-Agent, a training-free agentic framework that decouples affordance prediction into a three-stage pipeline. Our framework coordinates specialized foundation models at test time: (1) a Dreamer that employs generative models to visualize textithow an interaction would look; (2) a Thinker that utilizes large vision-language models to decide textitwhat object part to interact with; and (3) a Spotter that orchestrates vision foundation models to precisely locate textitwhere the interaction area is. By leveraging the complementary strengths of pre-trained models without any task-specific fine-tuning, our zero-shot framework significantly outperforms state-of-the-art supervised methods across multiple benchmarks and demonstrates robust generalization to real-world settings.

Key facts. Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 13 Oct 2026). Placed in Spatial and embodied reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 32 of its 59 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 16 Dec 2025.

Builds on

32 of 59 references.

Closest ancestors · 1

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Affordance-R1: Reinforcement Learning for Generalizable Affordance Reasoning in Multimodal Large Language Model8 Aug

Other references · 31

  1. 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,278
  2. 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 9,091
  3. 2025Qwen3 Technical Reportcited by 8,510
  4. 2025DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learningcited by 6,247
  5. 2025Qwen2.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 5,499
  6. 2024GPT-4o System Cardcited by 4,536
  7. 2023Grounding DINO: Marrying DINO with Grounded Pre-Training for Open-Set Object Detectioncited by 3,299
  8. 2024SAM 2: Segment Anything in Images and Videoscited by 2,820
  9. 2025Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Modelscited by 2,610
  10. 2025InternVL3: Exploring Advanced Training and Test-Time Recipes for Open-Source Multimodal Modelscited by 1,798
  11. 2025Qwen-Image Technical Reportcited by 1,002
  12. 2025Vision-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 659
19 more
  1. 2025VLM-R1: A Stable and Generalizable R1-style Large Vision-Language Modelcited by 520
  2. 2025Seg-Zero: Reasoning-Chain Guided Segmentation via Cognitive Reinforcementcited by 237
  3. 2025Imagine while Reasoning in Space: Multimodal Visualization-of-Thoughtcited by 205
  4. 2022Human-to-Robot Imitation in the Wildcited by 158
  5. 2024Is Sora a World Simulator? A Comprehensive Survey on General World Models and Beyondcited by 111
  6. 2025Thinking with Generated Imagescited by 72
  7. 2025Detect Anything via Next Point Predictioncited by 66
  8. 2025VisionReasoner: Unified Reasoning-Integrated Visual Perception via Reinforcement Learningcited by 50
  9. 2025Are Video Models Ready as Zero-Shot Reasoners? An Empirical Study with the MME-CoF Benchmarkcited by 41
  10. 2023Ditto in the House: Building Articulation Models of Indoor Scenes through Interactive Perceptioncited by 40
  11. 20253D-AffordanceLLM: Harnessing Large Language Models for Open-Vocabulary Affordance Detection in 3D Worldscited by 29
  12. 2024GREAT: Geometry-Intention Collaborative Inference for Open-Vocabulary 3D Object Affordance Groundingcited by 26
  13. 2024Learning 2D Invariant Affordance Knowledge for 3D Affordance Groundingcited by 21
  14. 2025TiViBench: Benchmarking Think-in-Video Reasoning for Video Generative Modelscited by 18
  15. 2025ComfyMind: Toward General-Purpose Generation via Tree-Based Planning and Reactive Feedbackcited by 15
  16. 2025GLOVER++: Unleashing the Potential of Affordance Learning from Human Behaviors for Robotic Manipulationcited by 14
  17. 2025DualCamCtrl: Dual-Branch Diffusion Model for Geometry-Aware Camera-Controlled Video Generationcited by 11
  18. 20253DAffordSplat: Efficient Affordance Reasoning with 3D Gaussianscited by 9
  19. 2025PhysToolBench: Benchmarking Physical Tool Understanding for MLLMscited by 9

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Cited by year (2026 to 13 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 4.

4 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025AffordBot: 3D Fine-grained Embodied Reasoning via Multimodal Large Language Models
  2. 2024INTRA: Interaction Relationship-aware Weakly Supervised Affordance Grounding
  3. 2024WorldAfford: Affordance Grounding based on Natural Language Instructions
  4. 2026ADAPT: Benchmarking Commonsense Planning under Unspecified Affordance Constraints
  5. 2025Afford-X: Generalizable and Slim Affordance Reasoning for Task-oriented Manipulation
  6. 2026Affordance Agent Harness: Verification-Gated Skill Orchestration
  7. 2025UAD: Unsupervised Affordance Distillation for Generalization in Robotic Manipulation
  8. 2025TRACE: Textual Reasoning for Affordance Coordinate Extraction