mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Key-Gram: Extensible World Knowledge for Embodied Manipulation

arXiv 2605.18556 ↗First posted 18 May 2026cs.RO cs.AIcited by 0

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Abstract (arXiv)

Embodied control increasingly requires models to follow compositional language instructions while reasoning over dynamic visual states. However, current vision-language-action policies and world-action models often couple linguistic knowledge with visual computation in a shared backbone or conditioning pathway, leading to modality competition and making knowledge extension dependent on backbone updates. In this paper, we introduce Key-Gram, a conditional-memory framework that separates language-derived world knowledge from visual-state reasoning for embodied control. At its core is a memory module that decomposes an instruction into task-specific key-grams, retrieves static linguistic priors through deterministic hashed lookup, and injects the retrieved entries into selected hidden layers through context-aware gating and lightweight convolutional fusion. This design allows the backbone to devote its main capacity to visual reasoning and action inference, while reusable instruction knowledge is stored in an extensible external memory. The logical memory table can be conveniently partitioned during training and, due to its O(1) lookup pattern, efficiently placed on host memory during inference. Across RoboTwin2.0, LIBERO/LIBERO-Plus, and real-world dual-arm manipulation, Key-Gram consistently improves both π0 and π0.5 backbones, with average relative gains of 29.5%/9.9% on RoboTwin2.0, 35.8%/4.5% on LIBERO-Plus transfer without target-domain fine-tuning, and 15.4%/8.1% on real-world long-horizon tasks. These results demonstrate that externalized linguistic memory provides an effective and extensible mechanism for improving compositional grounding, transfer, and real-world manipulation.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 28 of its 34 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 18 May 2026.

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28 of 34 references.

References · 28

  1. 2020Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Taskscited by 9,297
  2. 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 6,054
  3. 2023RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Controlcited by 3,080
  4. 2024OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 2,887
  5. 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusioncited by 2,838
  6. 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,407
  7. 2017FiLM: Visual Reasoning with a General Conditioning Layercited by 2,333
  8. 2020REALM: Retrieval-Augmented Language Model Pre-Trainingcited by 2,141
  9. 2025π0.5: a Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Generalizationcited by 1,761
  10. 2023LIBERO: Benchmarking Knowledge Transfer for Lifelong Robot Learningcited by 1,410
  11. 2021Improving language models by retrieving from trillions of tokenscited by 1,293
  12. 2025GR00T N1: An Open Foundation Model for Generalist Humanoid Robotscited by 1,225
16 more
  1. 2025Fine-Tuning Vision-Language-Action Models: Optimizing Speed and Successcited by 883
  2. 2024RDT-1B: a Diffusion Foundation Model for Bimanual Manipulationcited by 691
  3. 2025RoboTwin 2.0: A Scalable Data Generator and Benchmark with Strong Domain Randomization for Robust Bimanual Robotic Manipulationcited by 518
  4. 2026World Action Models are Zero-shot Policiescited by 465
  5. 2026Causal World Modeling for Robot Controlcited by 321
  6. 2025X-VLA: Soft-Prompted Transformer as Scalable Cross-Embodiment Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 303
  7. 2025LIBERO-Plus: In-depth Robustness Analysis of Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 303
  8. 2024GR-2: A Generative Video-Language-Action Model with Web-Scale Knowledge for Robot Manipulationcited by 296
  9. 2023Augmenting Language Models with Long-Term Memorycited by 189
  10. 2019Large Memory Layers with Product Keyscited by 124
  11. 2026Conditional Memory via Scalable Lookup: A New Axis of Sparsity for Large Language Modelscited by 86
  12. 2024The Ingredients for Robotic Diffusion Transformerscited by 73
  13. 2025EnerVerse: Envisioning Embodied Future Space for Robotics Manipulationcited by 61
  14. 2025GWM: Towards Scalable Gaussian World Models for Robotic Manipulationcited by 39
  15. 2026Scaling Embeddings Outperforms Scaling Experts in Language Modelscited by 15
  16. 2026MeKi: Memory-based Expert Knowledge Injection for Efficient LLM Scalingcited by 7

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  1. 2026Revisiting Embodied Chain-of-Thought for Generalizable Robot Manipulation
  2. 2025Efficient Vision-Language-Action Models for Embodied Manipulation: A Systematic Survey
  3. 2025Igniting VLMs toward the Embodied Space
  4. 2026Steerable Vision-Language-Action Policies for Embodied Reasoning and Hierarchical Control
  5. 2026Grounded Semantic Re-Binding for Robust Instruction Generalization in Vision-Language-Action Models
  6. 2025From Seeing to Doing: Bridging Reasoning and Decision for Robotic Manipulation
  7. 2026Guava: Distilling Frontier VLMs into a Compact Agent through a Robotic Manipulation Harness
  8. 2026HiMe: Hierarchical Embodied Memory for Long-Horizon Vision-Language-Action Control