Unified Embodied VLM Reasoning with Robotic Action via Autoregressive Discretized Pre-training
On the map: LLM reasoning → Spatial and embodied reasoning
also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)
General-purpose robotic systems operating in open-world environments must achieve both broad generalization and high-precision action execution, a combination that remains challenging for existing Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models. While large Vision-Language Models (VLMs) improve semantic generalization, insufficient embodied reasoning leads to brittle behavior, and conversely, strong reasoning alone is inadequate without precise control. To provide a decoupled and quantitative assessment of this bottleneck, we introduce Embodied Reasoning Intelligence Quotient (ERIQ), a large-scale embodied reasoning benchmark in robotic manipulation, comprising 6K+ question-answer pairs across four reasoning dimensions. By decoupling reasoning from execution, ERIQ enables systematic evaluation and reveals a strong positive correlation between embodied reasoning capability and end-to-end VLA generalization. To bridge the gap from reasoning to precise execution, we propose FACT, a flow-matching-based action tokenizer that converts continuous control into discrete sequences while preserving high-fidelity trajectory reconstruction. The resulting GenieReasoner jointly optimizes reasoning and action in a unified space, outperforming both continuous-action and prior discrete-action baselines in real-world tasks. Together, ERIQ and FACT provide a principled framework for diagnosing and overcoming the reasoning-precision trade-off, advancing robust, general-purpose robotic manipulation. Project page: https://geniereasoner.github.io/GenieReasoner/
Key facts. Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Spatial and embodied reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 45 of its 69 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 30 Dec 2025.
Builds on
45 of 69 references.
Closest ancestors · 10
Same direction, newest first
- 2025EO-1: An Open Unified Embodied Foundation Model for General Robot Control28 Aug
- 2025InstructVLA: Vision-Language-Action Instruction Tuning from Understanding to Manipulation23 Jul
- 2025Robo2VLM: Visual Question Answering from Large-Scale In-the-Wild Robot Manipulation Datasets21 May
- 2025ManipBench: Benchmarking Vision-Language Models for Low-Level Robot Manipulation14 May
- 2025Training Strategies for Efficient Embodied Reasoning13 May
- 2025Cosmos-Reason1: From Physical Common Sense To Embodied Reasoning18 Mar
- 2024VidEgoThink: Assessing Egocentric Video Understanding Capabilities for Embodied AI15 Oct
- 2024Robotic Control via Embodied Chain-of-Thought Reasoning11 Jul
- 2023EgoPlan-Bench: Benchmarking Multimodal Large Language Models for Human-Level Planning11 Dec
- 2022Inner Monologue: Embodied Reasoning through Planning with Language Models12 Jul
Other references · 35
- 2022Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flowcited by 3,550
- 2024OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 2,777
- 2024LLaVA-OneVision: Easy Visual Task Transfercited by 2,669
- 2022Do As I Can, Not As I Say: Grounding Language in Robotic Affordancescited by 2,302
- 2022RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scalecited by 2,007
- 2025π0.5: a Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Generalizationcited by 1,653
- 2022Code as Policies: Language Model Programs for Embodied Controlcited by 1,172
- 2025GR00T N1: An Open Foundation Model for Generalist Humanoid Robotscited by 1,167
- 2023Language Model Beats Diffusion -- Tokenizer is Key to Visual Generationcited by 633
- 2022Socratic Models: Composing Zero-Shot Multimodal Reasoning with Languagecited by 513
- 2025SmolVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model for Affordable and Efficient Roboticscited by 507
- 2025AgiBot World Colosseo: A Large-scale Manipulation Platform for Scalable and Intelligent Embodied Systemscited by 390
23 more
- 2024TraceVLA: Visual Trace Prompting Enhances Spatial-Temporal Awareness for Generalist Robotic Policiescited by 298
- 2024RoboPoint: A Vision-Language Model for Spatial Affordance Prediction for Roboticscited by 242
- 2025Hi Robot: Open-Ended Instruction Following with Hierarchical Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 216
- 2025EmbodiedBench: Comprehensive Benchmarking Multi-modal Large Language Models for Vision-Driven Embodied Agentscited by 213
- 2025MemoryVLA: Perceptual-Cognitive Memory in Vision-Language-Action Models for Robotic Manipulationcited by 183
- 2025HybridVLA: Collaborative Diffusion and Autoregression in a Unified Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 176
- 2025Knowledge Insulating Vision-Language-Action Models: Train Fast, Run Fast, Generalize Bettercited by 142
- 2024xGen-MM (BLIP-3): A Family of Open Large Multimodal Modelscited by 116
- 2025ChatVLA: Unified Multimodal Understanding and Robot Control with Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 112
- 2025OneTwoVLA: A Unified Vision-Language-Action Model with Adaptive Reasoningcited by 105
- 2022Grounding Language with Visual Affordances over Unstructured Datacited by 101
- 2025Discrete Diffusion VLA: Bringing Discrete Diffusion to Action Decoding in Vision-Language-Action Policiescited by 90
- 2025F1: A Vision-Language-Action Model Bridging Understanding and Generation to Actionscited by 85
- 2025Describe Anything: Detailed Localized Image and Video Captioningcited by 84
- 2025InternVLA-M1: A Spatially Guided Vision-Language-Action Framework for Generalist Robot Policycited by 83
- 2025Gemini Robotics: Bringing AI into the Physical Worldcited by 77
- 2025VQ-VLA: Improving Vision-Language-Action Models via Scaling Vector-Quantized Action Tokenizerscited by 67
- 2025EmbodiedEval: Evaluate Multimodal LLMs as Embodied Agentscited by 55
- 2025VLA-0: Building State-of-the-Art VLAs with Zero Modificationcited by 49
- 2024VLMPC: Vision-Language Model Predictive Control for Robotic Manipulationcited by 32
- 2025Robobench: A Comprehensive Evaluation Benchmark for Multimodal Large Language Models as Embodied Braincited by 24
- 2025FASTer: Toward Efficient Autoregressive Vision Language Action Modeling via Neural Action Tokenizationcited by 21
- 2024MMRo: Are Multimodal LLMs Eligible as the Brain for In-Home Robotics?cited by 14
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 7.
7 papers.
- 2026ACoT-VLA: Action Chain-of-Thought for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 30
- 2026SOP: A Scalable Online Post-Training System for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 19
- 2026SteerVLA: Steering Vision-Language-Action Models in Long-Tail Driving Scenarioscited by 11
- 2026GE-Act 2.0: Pretraining and Scaling a World-Action Model for Robotic Manipulationcited by 4
- 2026CometVLA: Co-Training on an Embodied Data Pyramid towards Physical Understandingcited by 1
- 2026Probing Collision Grounding in Vision-Language Models for Safe Human-Robot Collaborationcited by 0
- 2026Rethinking Causal Action Tokenization with Conditional Annealing in Flow Matchingcited by 0
- 2026Rethinking Causal Action Tokenization with Conditional Annealing in Flow Matching28 Sep 2026
- 2026GE-Act 2.0: Pretraining and Scaling a World-Action Model for Robotic Manipulation4 Sep 2026
- 2026CometVLA: Co-Training on an Embodied Data Pyramid towards Physical Understanding31 Aug 2026
- 2026Probing Collision Grounding in Vision-Language Models for Safe Human-Robot Collaboration29 May 2026
- 2026SteerVLA: Steering Vision-Language-Action Models in Long-Tail Driving Scenarios9 Feb 2026
- 2026ACoT-VLA: Action Chain-of-Thought for Vision-Language-Action Models16 Jan 2026
- 2026SOP: A Scalable Online Post-Training System for Vision-Language-Action Models6 Jan 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026Revisiting Embodied Chain-of-Thought for Generalizable Robot Manipulation
- 2026Unmasking the Illusion of Embodied Reasoning in Vision-Language-Action Models
- 2025Large VLM-based Vision-Language-Action Models for Robotic Manipulation: A Survey
- 2026MobileVLA-R1 2.0: RL-Enhanced Reasoning for Mobile Robot Control
- 2025Mind to Hand: Purposeful Robotic Control via Embodied Reasoning
- 2026ReFineVLA: Multimodal Reasoning-Aware Generalist Robotic Policies via Teacher-Guided Fine-Tuning
- 2026G0.5: One Autoregressive Stream for Robot Reasoning and Action
- 2026ElegantVLA: Learning When to Think for Efficient Vision-Language-Action Models