Goal2Skill: Long-Horizon Manipulation with Adaptive Planning and Reflection
On the map: Vision-language-action models → Reasoning and chain-of-thought in VLA
Abstract (arXiv)
Recent vision-language-action (VLA) systems have demonstrated strong capabilities in embodied manipulation. However, most existing VLA policies rely on limited observation windows and end-to-end action prediction, which makes them brittle in long-horizon, memory-dependent tasks with partial observability, occlusions, and multi-stage dependencies. Such tasks require not only precise visuomotor control, but also persistent memory, adaptive task decomposition, and explicit recovery from execution failures. To address these limitations, we propose a dual-system framework for long-horizon embodied manipulation. Our framework explicitly separates high-level semantic reasoning from low-level motor execution. A high-level planner, implemented as a VLM-based agentic module, maintains structured task memory and performs goal decomposition, outcome verification, and error-driven correction. A low-level executor, instantiated as a VLA-based visuomotor controller, carries out each sub-task through diffusion-based action generation conditioned on geometry-preserving filtered observations. Together, the two systems form a closed loop between planning and execution, enabling memory-aware reasoning, adaptive replanning, and robust online recovery. Experiments on representative RMBench tasks show that the proposed framework substantially outperforms representative baselines, achieving a 32.4% average success rate compared with 9.8% for the strongest baseline. Ablation studies further confirm the importance of structured memory and closed-loop recovery for long-horizon manipulation.
Key facts. Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Reasoning and chain-of-thought in VLA, one of 13 directions in Vision-language-action models. Builds on 37 of its 40 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 15 Apr 2026.
Builds on
37 of 40 references.
Closest ancestors · 5
Same direction, newest first
- 2026ReMem-VLA: Empowering Vision-Language-Action Model with Memory via Dual-Level Recurrent Queries13 Mar
- 2026MEM: Multi-Scale Embodied Memory for Vision Language Action Models4 Mar
- 2025MAP-VLA: Memory-Augmented Prompting for Vision-Language-Action Model in Robotic Manipulation12 Nov
- 2025MemoryVLA: Perceptual-Cognitive Memory in Vision-Language-Action Models for Robotic Manipulation26 Aug
- 2025ThinkAct: Vision-Language-Action Reasoning via Reinforced Visual Latent Planning22 Jul
Other references · 32
- 2023RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Controlcited by 2,993
- 2024OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 2,777
- 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusioncited by 2,730
- 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,297
- 2023Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardwarecited by 1,490
- 2024RDT-1B: a Diffusion Foundation Model for Bimanual Manipulationcited by 670
- 2026World Action Models are Zero-shot Policiescited by 411
- 2025X-VLA: Soft-Prompted Transformer as Scalable Cross-Embodiment Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 285
- 2024A Survey on Vision-Language-Action Models for Embodied AIcited by 274
- 2025HybridVLA: Collaborative Diffusion and Autoregression in a Unified Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 176
- 2025GraspVLA: a Grasping Foundation Model Pre-trained on Billion-scale Synthetic Action Datacited by 120
- 2025NORA: A Small Open-Sourced Generalist Vision Language Action Model for Embodied Taskscited by 119
20 more
- 2024DeeR-VLA: Dynamic Inference of Multimodal Large Language Models for Efficient Robot Executioncited by 116
- 2026A Pragmatic VLA Foundation Modelcited by 97
- 2026ABot-M0: VLA Foundation Model for Robotic Manipulation with Action Manifold Learningcited by 94
- 2025Vision-Language-Action Models for Robotics: A Review Towards Real-World Applicationscited by 82
- 2025A Survey on Vision-Language-Action Models for Autonomous Drivingcited by 72
- 2025MoLe-VLA: Dynamic Layer-skipping Vision Language Action Model via Mixture-of-Layers for Efficient Robot Manipulationcited by 69
- 2025MemOS: An Operating System for Memory-Augmented Generation (MAG) in Large Language Modelscited by 68
- 2024ReMEmbR: Building and Reasoning Over Long-Horizon Spatio-Temporal Memory for Robot Navigationcited by 67
- 2025MemER: Scaling Up Memory for Robot Control via Experience Retrievalcited by 64
- 2026RMBench: Memory-Dependent Robotic Manipulation Benchmark with Insights into Policy Designcited by 40
- 2025Vision Language Action Models in Robotic Manipulation: A Systematic Reviewcited by 38
- 2026VLM4VLA: Revisiting Vision-Language-Models in Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 38
- 2026RoboClaw: An Agentic Framework for Scalable Long-Horizon Robotic Taskscited by 30
- 2025NORA-1.5: A Vision-Language-Action Model Trained using World Model- and Action-based Preference Rewardscited by 26
- 2026LangForce: Bayesian Decomposition of Vision Language Action Models via Latent Action Queriescited by 24
- 2025Parallels Between VLA Model Post-Training and Human Motor Learning: Progress, Challenges, and Trendscited by 17
- 2026DM0: An Embodied-Native Vision-Language-Action Model towards Physical AIcited by 12
- 2025Praxis-VLM: Vision-Grounded Decision Making via Text-Driven Reinforcement Learningcited by 9
- 2025Meta-Memory: Retrieving and Integrating Semantic-Spatial Memories for Robot Spatial Reasoningcited by 9
- 2026Critic in the Loop: A Tri-System VLA Framework for Robust Long-Horizon Manipulationcited by 4
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 9.
9 papers.
- 2026μVLA: On Recurrent Memory for Partially Observable Manipulation in VLA Modelscited by 7
- 2026WorldScape Policy 2.0: Empowering Steerable World Action Modeling with Reasoning-Augmented Memory and In-Context Learningcited by 4
- 2026τ0-VLA: a Hierarchical Robot Foundation Model with World-Model-Guided Test-Time Computationcited by 3
- 2026ECHO: Continuous Hierarchical Memory for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 2
- 2026ChainVLA: Chaining Vision-Language-Action Queries through a Unified Execution State for Long-Horizon Manipulationcited by 2
- 20262AM: Grounding Agent-Side Memory as Guidance for Steerable Action Models in Long-Horizon Manipulationcited by 1
- 2026AR-WAM: A Visual-Conditioned Agent-Ready World Action Model for Robotic Manipulationcited by 0
- 2026DualManip: Agentic Dynamic Manipulation via Dual-Path Semantic Reasoning and Geometric Adaptationcited by 0
- 2026Vision-Language-Action Autonomous Driving Agent with Language-based Memorycited by 0
- 2026Vision-Language-Action Autonomous Driving Agent with Language-based Memory29 Sep 2026
- 2026DualManip: Agentic Dynamic Manipulation via Dual-Path Semantic Reasoning and Geometric Adaptation25 Sep 2026
- 2026AR-WAM: A Visual-Conditioned Agent-Ready World Action Model for Robotic Manipulation20 Sep 2026
- 20262AM: Grounding Agent-Side Memory as Guidance for Steerable Action Models in Long-Horizon Manipulation10 Sep 2026
- 2026τ0-VLA: a Hierarchical Robot Foundation Model with World-Model-Guided Test-Time Computation17 Aug 2026
- 2026ChainVLA: Chaining Vision-Language-Action Queries through a Unified Execution State for Long-Horizon Manipulation3 Aug 2026
- 2026WorldScape Policy 2.0: Empowering Steerable World Action Modeling with Reasoning-Augmented Memory and In-Context Learning21 Jul 2026
- 2026μVLA: On Recurrent Memory for Partially Observable Manipulation in VLA Models10 Jun 2026
- 2026ECHO: Continuous Hierarchical Memory for Vision-Language-Action Models9 May 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026Cortex: A Bidirectionally Aligned Embodied Agent Framework for Long-horizon Manipulation
- 2026AC^2-VLA: Action-Context-Aware Adaptive Computation in Vision-Language-Action Models for Efficient Robotic Manipulation
- 2026Long-Horizon Manipulation via Trace-Conditioned VLA Planning
- 2025EchoVLA: Robotic Vision-Language-Action Model with Synergistic Declarative Memory for Mobile Manipulation
- 2026D2-VLA: Dual-Memory Dual-Frequency Vision-Language-Action Model For Long Dynamic Manipulation
- 2025Reflective Planning: Vision-Language Models for Multi-Stage Long-Horizon Robotic Manipulation
- 2025Long-VLA: Unleashing Long-Horizon Capability of Vision Language Action Model for Robot Manipulation
- 2026Towards Neuro-Symbolic Procedural Reasoning for Long-Horizon Vision-Language-Action Manipulation