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

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.11558 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.11558/

## Key facts

- Cited by 33 papers in the map (data through 14 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.

## Placed in

- Vision-language-action models / [Failure recovery and robustness](https://mlsanity.com/vla/failure-recovery-and-robustness/)
- LLM agents and tool use / [Multimodal and embodied agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/multimodal-and-embodied-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15818/) (2023)
- [OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09246/) (2024)
- [π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.24164/) (2024)
- [Do As I Can, Not As I Say: Grounding Language in Robotic Affordances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.01691/) (2022)
- [PaLM-E: An Embodied Multimodal Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.03378/) (2023)
- [RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06817/) (2022)
- [Code as Policies: Language Model Programs for Embodied Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.07753/) (2022)
- [Inner Monologue: Embodied Reasoning through Planning with Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.05608/) (2022)
- [Language Models as Zero-Shot Planners: Extracting Actionable Knowledge for Embodied Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.07207/) (2022)
- [VoxPoser: Composable 3D Value Maps for Robotic Manipulation with Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.05973/) (2023)
- [A Survey on In-context Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.00234/) (2022)
- [RoboTwin 2.0: A Scalable Data Generator and Benchmark with Strong Domain Randomization for Robust Bimanual Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.18088/) (2025)
- [RoboCasa: Large-Scale Simulation of Everyday Tasks for Generalist Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.02523/) (2024)
- [Mobile ALOHA: Learning Bimanual Mobile Manipulation with Low-Cost Whole-Body Teleoperation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02117/) (2024)
- [MimicPlay: Long-Horizon Imitation Learning by Watching Human Play](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.12422/) (2023)
- [Hi Robot: Open-Ended Instruction Following with Hierarchical Vision-Language-Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.19417/) (2025)
- [GELLO: A General, Low-Cost, and Intuitive Teleoperation Framework for Robot Manipulators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13037/) (2023)
- [AnyTeleop: A General Vision-Based Dexterous Robot Arm-Hand Teleoperation System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.04577/) (2023)
- [HAMSTER: Hierarchical Action Models For Open-World Robot Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.05485/) (2025)
- [A Vision-Language-Action-Critic Model for Robotic Real-World Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.15937/) (2025)
- [Agentic Robot: A Brain-Inspired Framework for Vision-Language-Action Models in Embodied Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23450/) (2025)
- [CyberDemo: Augmenting Simulated Human Demonstration for Real-World Dexterous Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14795/) (2024)
- [RoboCopilot: Human-in-the-loop Interactive Imitation Learning for Robot Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07771/) (2025)
- [GenH2R: Learning Generalizable Human-to-Robot Handover via Scalable Simulation, Demonstration, and Imitation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.00929/) (2024)
- [HumanoidGen: Data Generation for Bimanual Dexterous Manipulation via LLM Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.00833/) (2025)
- [Genie Centurion: Accelerating Scalable Real-World Robot Training with Human Rewind-and-Refine Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.18793/) (2025)
- [Learning Affordances at Inference-Time for Vision-Language-Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.19752/) (2025)
- [FieldGen: From Teleoperated Pre-Manipulation Trajectories to Field-Guided Data Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.20774/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 33)

- [ASPIRE: Agentic /Skills Discovery for Robotics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.00272/) (2026)
- [Harness VLA: Steering Frozen VLAs into Reliable Manipulation Primitives via Memory-Guided Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.08448/) (2026)
- [Show-Harness: Just a VLM Agent Can Play Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.10522/) (2026)
- [Goal2Skill: Long-Horizon Manipulation with Adaptive Planning and Reflection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.13942/) (2026)
- [AutoResearch AI: Towards AI-Powered Research Automation for Scientific Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.23204/) (2026)
- [Towards the Harness of Embodied Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.11246/) (2026)
- [Agent as Policy for Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.12541/) (2026)
- [Cortex: A Bidirectionally Aligned Embodied Agent Framework for Long-horizon Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.05377/) (2026)
- [HarnessVLN: Unifying Training-Free Embodied Navigation through an Agent Harness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.15195/) (2026)
- [RACaP: Agentic Reasoning, Acting, and Coding as Policies for Evolvable Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.29394/) (2026)
- [2AM: Grounding Agent-Side Memory as Guidance for Steerable Action Models in Long-Horizon Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.11308/) (2026)
- [RAPID: Robot Agentic Programming from Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.30249/) (2026)
- [ROSClaw: A Hierarchical Semantic-Physical Framework for Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.04664/) (2026)
- [Diagnosing Semantic Handoff Failures in Agent-Orchestrated Vision-Language-Action Skill Composition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.06256/) (2026)
- [Weights or Skills? A Survey of Robot-Learning Techniques: from Action-Predicting Weights to Robots that Write their Own Skills](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.01851/) (2026)
- [ARSTAG: An Agentic Real2Sim2Real System for Task-Specific Robot Data Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.24563/) (2026)
- [RoboFoundry: System-as-Policy Evolution for Self-Learning Embodied Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.32862/) (2026)
- [In-Context Learning for Robots: Methods and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.36012/) (2026)
- [Agentic RSR: Real-to-Sim-to-Real through Scene Reconstruction and Execution-Grounded Robot Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.10479/) (2026)
- [Octopus Protocol: One-Shot Hardware Discovery and Control for AI Agents via Infrastructure-as-Prompts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.09055/) (2026)
- [MindHelper: Closed-Loop Embodied Mental-State Reasoning for Precision Intervention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.01063/) (2026)
- [A Glimpse into Long-term Physical Coexistence with Intelligent Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.11377/) (2026)
- [Contract-Grounded Behavior Tree Synthesis via Coding Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.12220/) (2026)
- [verdi: retrieval is not transfer for continual world model optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.09537/) (2026)
- [Task-Specified Active Metrological Inspection with Measurement-Steered VLA Manipulation and Deterministic Evidence Gating](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.14219/) (2026)
- [From Passive Execution to Active Exploration: Agentic Embodied Manipulation in Realistic Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.29091/) (2026)
- [SEES: A Self-Evolving Embodied System via Failure-Guided VLA Policy Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.32698/) (2026)
- [CogWAM: Aligning Semantic Cognition with World Action Modeling via Event-Driven Interfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.37721/) (2026)
- [Explore, Execute, Evolve: A Skill Acquisition and Reuse Loop for Embodied Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.37810/) (2026)
- [Skill-Space Shooting for Autonomous Robot Policy Improvement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.38178/) (2026)

## 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%.