# SG-VLA: Learning Spatially-Grounded Vision-Language-Action Models for Mobile Manipulation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.22760 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.22760/

## Key facts

- Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in 3D and spatial-aware VLA, one of 13 directions in Vision-language-action models.
- Builds on 33 of its 37 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Mar 2026.

## Placed in

- Vision-language-action models / [3D and spatial-aware VLA](https://mlsanity.com/vla/3d-and-spatial-aware-vla/)
- Offline RL and imitation learning from data / [Language-conditioned policies and VLAs](https://mlsanity.com/offlinerl/language-conditioned-policies-and-vlas/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 33)

- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [Flow Matching for Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02747/) (2022)
- [Qwen2.5 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15115/) (2024)
- [Soft Actor-Critic: Off-Policy Maximum Entropy Deep Reinforcement Learning with a Stochastic Actor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01290/) (2018)
- [Sigmoid Loss for Language Image Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15343/) (2023)
- [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)
- [RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06817/) (2022)
- [π0.5: a Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.16054/) (2025)
- [A Generalist Agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.06175/) (2022)
- [RDT-1B: a Diffusion Foundation Model for Bimanual Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.07864/) (2024)
- [Learning Dexterous In-Hand Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.00177/) (2018)
- [CLIPort: What and Where Pathways for Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.12098/) (2021)
- [CALVIN: A Benchmark for Language-Conditioned Policy Learning for Long-Horizon Robot Manipulation Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03227/) (2021)
- [SpatialVLA: Exploring Spatial Representations for Visual-Language-Action Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.15830/) (2025)
- [Habitat 2.0: Training Home Assistants to Rearrange their Habitat](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.14405/) (2021)
- [CogACT: A Foundational Vision-Language-Action Model for Synergizing Cognition and Action in Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.19650/) (2024)
- [Mobile ALOHA: Learning Bimanual Mobile Manipulation with Low-Cost Whole-Body Teleoperation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02117/) (2024)
- [Mastering Visual Continuous Control: Improved Data-Augmented Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.09645/) (2021)
- [Prismatic VLMs: Investigating the Design Space of Visually-Conditioned Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.07865/) (2024)
- [NaVid: Video-based VLM Plans the Next Step for Vision-and-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.15852/) (2024)
- [DreamVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model Dreamed with Comprehensive World Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.04447/) (2025)
- [NaVILA: Legged Robot Vision-Language-Action Model for Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04453/) (2024)
- [GraspVLA: a Grasping Foundation Model Pre-trained on Billion-scale Synthetic Action Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.03233/) (2025)
- [GPT-4V(ision) for Robotics: Multimodal Task Planning from Human Demonstration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12015/) (2023)
- [VQ-VLA: Improving Vision-Language-Action Models via Scaling Vector-Quantized Action Tokenizers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.01016/) (2025)
- [Mobile-TeleVision: Predictive Motion Priors for Humanoid Whole-Body Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.07773/) (2024)
- [BEHAVIOR Robot Suite: Streamlining Real-World Whole-Body Manipulation for Everyday Household Activities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.05652/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [WorldScape Policy 2.0: Empowering Steerable World Action Modeling with Reasoning-Augmented Memory and In-Context Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.18840/) (2026)
- [Learning Panorama-Aware VLA for Mobile Manipulation with Whole-Body Teleoperation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.02257/) (2026)
- [MobileWAM: Bridging World Action Models to Mobile Manipulation with Chain-of-Foresight](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.04657/) (2026)
- [GeoAlign: Beyond Semantics with State-Guided Spatial Alignment in VLA Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.03240/) (2026)
- [Learning Physical Interaction: A Survey of Tactile- and Force-aware Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.07558/) (2026)
- [FWBC-VLA: Force-Aware Whole-Body Compensation for Contact-Rich Loco-Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.03889/) (2026)
- [MoPA: Coordinated Mobile Manipulation via Subsystem-Specific Perception Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.12081/) (2026)
- [UniWAM Technical Report: Unified Mobile Manipulation via Mixed-Stream World-Action Modeling and Manipulation Anchor Pose Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.39388/) (2026)
- [GroundingPI: A Grounding Foundation Model towards Physical Intelligence with Visual Primitives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.39601/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models show promise for robotic control, yet performance in complex household environments remains sub-optimal. Mobile manipulation requires reasoning about global scene layout, fine-grained geometry, and high-dimensional continuous actions, making standard imitation learning insufficient. We introduce a framework for learning spatially-grounded VLA models that strengthens perception and representation through auxiliary task co-training and multi-modal input enhancement. Our method addresses the challenge of controlling a 13-dimensional action space involving coordinated base motion, arm articulation, and gripper actuation. To enrich spatial understanding, the model incorporates multi-view RGB observations, depth cues, and short temporal history, providing perspectives of both global scene structure and local manipulation context. To improve representation quality, we co-train auxiliary decoders that reconstruct interpretable intermediate signals - including global robot position, joint configurations, grasp affordances, target-object relative pose, and segmentation masks - from shared visual-language features. These objectives provide dense supervision that encourages the backbone to develop spatially grounded, manipulation-aware latent representations. Through extensive evaluation on home rearrangement tasks, our approach achieves consistent improvements across picking, placing, opening, and closing operations, substantially outperforming direct imitation learning. Our findings suggest that spatial grounding through auxiliary and multi-modal learning provides a strong direction for scaling VLA models toward general-purpose domestic robots.