mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

RoboClaw: An Agentic Framework for Scalable Long-Horizon Robotic Tasks

arXiv 2603.11558 ↗First posted 12 Mar 2026cs.RO cs.AIcited by 30

On the map: Vision-language-action models → Failure recovery and robustness

also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)

Vision-Language-Action (VLA) systems have shown strong potential for language-driven robotic manipulation. However, scaling them to long-horizon tasks remains challenging. Existing pipelines typically separate data collection, policy learning, and deployment, resulting in heavy reliance on manual environment resets and brittle multi-policy execution. We present RoboClaw, an agentic robotics framework that unifies data collection, policy learning, and task execution under a single VLM-driven controller. At the policy level, RoboClaw introduces Entangled Action Pairs (EAP), which couple forward manipulation behaviors with inverse recovery actions to form self-resetting loops for autonomous data collection. This mechanism enables continuous on-policy data acquisition and iterative policy refinement with minimal human intervention. During deployment, the same agent performs high-level reasoning and dynamically orchestrates learned policy primitives to accomplish long-horizon tasks. By maintaining consistent contextual semantics across collection and execution, RoboClaw reduces mismatch between the two phases and improves multi-policy robustness. Experiments in real-world manipulation tasks demonstrate improved stability and scalability compared to conventional open-loop pipelines, while significantly reducing human effort throughout the robot lifecycle, achieving a 25% improvement in success rate over baseline methods on long-horizon tasks and reducing human time investment by 53.7%.

Key facts. Cited by 30 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Failure recovery and robustness, one of 13 directions in Vision-language-action models. Builds on 28 of its 28 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 12 Mar 2026.

Builds on

28 of 28 references.

References · 28

  1. 2023RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Controlcited by 2,993
  2. 2024OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 2,777
  3. 2022Do As I Can, Not As I Say: Grounding Language in Robotic Affordancescited by 2,302
  4. 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,297
  5. 2023PaLM-E: An Embodied Multimodal Language Modelcited by 2,037
  6. 2022RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scalecited by 2,007
  7. 2022Code as Policies: Language Model Programs for Embodied Controlcited by 1,172
  8. 2022Inner Monologue: Embodied Reasoning through Planning with Language Modelscited by 1,057
  9. 2022Language Models as Zero-Shot Planners: Extracting Actionable Knowledge for Embodied Agentscited by 1,029
  10. 2023VoxPoser: Composable 3D Value Maps for Robotic Manipulation with Language Modelscited by 733
  11. 2022A Survey on In-context Learningcited by 717
  12. 2025RoboTwin 2.0: A Scalable Data Generator and Benchmark with Strong Domain Randomization for Robust Bimanual Robotic Manipulationcited by 477
16 more
  1. 2024RoboCasa: Large-Scale Simulation of Everyday Tasks for Generalist Robotscited by 391
  2. 2024Mobile ALOHA: Learning Bimanual Mobile Manipulation with Low-Cost Whole-Body Teleoperationcited by 377
  3. 2025Hi Robot: Open-Ended Instruction Following with Hierarchical Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 216
  4. 2023MimicPlay: Long-Horizon Imitation Learning by Watching Human Playcited by 214
  5. 2023GELLO: A General, Low-Cost, and Intuitive Teleoperation Framework for Robot Manipulatorscited by 180
  6. 2023AnyTeleop: A General Vision-Based Dexterous Robot Arm-Hand Teleoperation Systemcited by 136
  7. 2025HAMSTER: Hierarchical Action Models For Open-World Robot Manipulationcited by 125
  8. 2025A Vision-Language-Action-Critic Model for Robotic Real-World Reinforcement Learningcited by 66
  9. 2025Agentic Robot: A Brain-Inspired Framework for Vision-Language-Action Models in Embodied Agentscited by 30
  10. 2024CyberDemo: Augmenting Simulated Human Demonstration for Real-World Dexterous Manipulationcited by 25
  11. 2025RoboCopilot: Human-in-the-loop Interactive Imitation Learning for Robot Manipulationcited by 22
  12. 2024GenH2R: Learning Generalizable Human-to-Robot Handover via Scalable Simulation, Demonstration, and Imitationcited by 14
  13. 2025HumanoidGen: Data Generation for Bimanual Dexterous Manipulation via LLM Reasoningcited by 12
  14. 2025Genie Centurion: Accelerating Scalable Real-World Robot Training with Human Rewind-and-Refine Guidancecited by 7
  15. 2025Learning Affordances at Inference-Time for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 6
  16. 2025FieldGen: From Teleoperated Pre-Manipulation Trajectories to Field-Guided Data Generationcited by 4

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 30.

30 papers.

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  1. 2026ASPIRE: Agentic /Skills Discovery for Roboticscited by 44
  2. 2026Harness VLA: Steering Frozen VLAs into Reliable Manipulation Primitives via Memory-Guided Agentscited by 37
  3. 2026Show-Harness: Just a VLM Agent Can Play Robotscited by 17
  4. 2026Goal2Skill: Long-Horizon Manipulation with Adaptive Planning and Reflectioncited by 9
  5. 2026AutoResearch AI: Towards AI-Powered Research Automation for Scientific Discoverycited by 9
  6. 2026Towards the Harness of Embodied Agentscited by 7
  7. 2026Agent as Policy for Robotic Manipulationcited by 6
  8. 2026Cortex: A Bidirectionally Aligned Embodied Agent Framework for Long-horizon Manipulationcited by 4
  9. 2026HarnessVLN: Unifying Training-Free Embodied Navigation through an Agent Harnesscited by 3
  10. 2026ROSClaw: A Hierarchical Semantic-Physical Framework for Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Collaborationcited by 1
  11. 2026Diagnosing Semantic Handoff Failures in Agent-Orchestrated Vision-Language-Action Skill Compositioncited by 1
  12. 20262AM: Grounding Agent-Side Memory as Guidance for Steerable Action Models in Long-Horizon Manipulationcited by 1
18 more
  1. 2026RACaP: Agentic Reasoning, Acting, and Coding as Policies for Evolvable Robot Learningcited by 1
  2. 2026Octopus Protocol: One-Shot Hardware Discovery and Control for AI Agents via Infrastructure-as-Promptscited by 0
  3. 2026MindHelper: Closed-Loop Embodied Mental-State Reasoning for Precision Interventioncited by 0
  4. 2026A Glimpse into Long-term Physical Coexistence with Intelligent Robotscited by 0
  5. 2026Contract-Grounded Behavior Tree Synthesis via Coding Agentscited by 0
  6. 2026Weights or Skills? A Survey of Robot-Learning Techniques: from Action-Predicting Weights to Robots that Write their Own Skillscited by 0
  7. 2026verdi: retrieval is not transfer for continual world model optimizationcited by 0
  8. 2026Task-Specified Active Metrological Inspection with Measurement-Steered VLA Manipulation and Deterministic Evidence Gatingcited by 0
  9. 2026ARSTAG: An Agentic Real2Sim2Real System for Task-Specific Robot Data Generationcited by 0
  10. 2026From Passive Execution to Active Exploration: Agentic Embodied Manipulation in Realistic Environmentscited by 0
  11. 2026RAPID: Robot Agentic Programming from Demonstrationscited by 0
  12. 2026SEES: A Self-Evolving Embodied System via Failure-Guided VLA Policy Adaptationcited by 0
  13. 2026RoboFoundry: System-as-Policy Evolution for Self-Learning Embodied Agentscited by 0
  14. 2026CogWAM: Aligning Semantic Cognition with World Action Modeling via Event-Driven Interfacescited by 0
  15. 2026Explore, Execute, Evolve: A Skill Acquisition and Reuse Loop for Embodied Agentscited by 0
  16. 2026Skill-Space Shooting for Autonomous Robot Policy Improvementcited by 0
  17. 2026Agentic RSR: Real-to-Sim-to-Real through Scene Reconstruction and Execution-Grounded Robot Policiescited by 0
  18. 2026NavGPT-3: Harnessing Context in a Hierarchical Navigation Runtimecited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025RoboCerebra: A Large-scale Benchmark for Long-horizon Robotic Manipulation Evaluation
  2. 2026VoLo: A Physical Orchestrator for Open-Vocabulary Long-Horizon Manipulation
  3. 2026RoboBRIDGE: A Modular Framework for Bridging Policies to Robust Real-World Robotic Agents
  4. 2026CaP-X: A Framework for Benchmarking and Improving Coding Agents for Robot Manipulation
  5. 2026Find Something You Can't Do: Agentic Real-World Reinforcement Learning for Self-Improving VLA Models
  6. 2025Reinforced Embodied Planning with Verifiable Reward for Real-World Robotic Manipulation
  7. 2026ChainVLA: Chaining Vision-Language-Action Queries through a Unified Execution State for Long-Horizon Manipulation
  8. 2026AtomBridge: Agentic VLA Inference Plugin for Long-Horizon Tasks in Scientific Experiments