mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Agentic-VLA: Efficient Online Adaptation for Vision-Language-Action Models

arXiv 2605.22896 ↗First posted 21 May 2026cs.RO cs.AI cs.LGcited by 1

On the map: Vision-language-action models → Reinforcement learning and post-training

also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)

Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models have emerged as a promising paradigm for robotic manipulation by leveraging pre-trained vision-language representations. However, current VLA training methods suffer from two critical limitations: poor generalization to novel environments and low training efficiency requiring extensive demonstrations. We introduce Agentic-VLA, an agentic training framework that enables VLAs to efficiently adapt online through three key innovations: (1) Adaptive Reward Synthesis, which dynamically generates and adjusts reward functions based on the VLA's current capabilities and task complexity, decomposing complex tasks into learnable sub-goals for curriculum learning; (2) Language-Guided Exploration, where a critic model provides structured guidance for systematic exploration rather than random sampling; and (3) Experience Memory,which stores and retrieves task-relevant policy weights for warm-starting adaptation to similar tasks. We evaluate Agentic-VLA on the LIBERO benchmark, achieving substantial improvements: +12.3% on long-horizon tasks, +28.5% in 1-shot learning, and enabling cross-task transfer from 0% to 31.2% without task-specific demonstrations. Our framework also demonstrates 2.4x faster convergence compared to existing online adaptation methods. Beyond LIBERO, Agentic-VLA retains its advantage on the dual-arm RoboTwin 2.0 benchmark, including under its randomized Hard setting. These results establish Agentic-VLA as a significant step toward truly adaptive VLA systems capable of continuous learning in deployment.

Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Reinforcement learning and post-training, one of 13 directions in Vision-language-action models. Builds on 14 of its 20 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 21 May 2026.

Builds on

14 of 20 references.

Closest ancestors · 6

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025EVOLVE-VLA: Test-Time Training from Environment Feedback for Vision-Language-Action Models16 Dec
  2. 2025A Vision-Language-Action-Critic Model for Robotic Real-World Reinforcement Learning19 Sep
  3. 2025SimpleVLA-RL: Scaling VLA Training via Reinforcement Learning11 Sep
  4. 2025What Can RL Bring to VLA Generalization? An Empirical Study26 May
  5. 2025Improving Vision-Language-Action Model with Online Reinforcement Learning28 Jan
  6. 2024Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policy20 May

Other references · 8

  1. 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 8,851
  2. 2025Qwen3 Technical Reportcited by 8,195
  3. 2024OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 2,777
  4. 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,297
  5. 2022RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scalecited by 2,007
  6. 2023LIBERO: Benchmarking Knowledge Transfer for Lifelong Robot Learningcited by 1,338
  7. 2025Fine-Tuning Vision-Language-Action Models: Optimizing Speed and Successcited by 844
  8. 2023RoboCLIP: One Demonstration is Enough to Learn Robot Policiescited by 128

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.

1 paper.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026ROAD-VLA: Robust Online Adaptation via Self-Distillation for Vision-Language-Action Models
  2. 2025VLA-RL: Towards Masterful and General Robotic Manipulation with Scalable Reinforcement Learning
  3. 2026Find Something You Can't Do: Agentic Real-World Reinforcement Learning for Self-Improving VLA Models
  4. 2026RA-VLA: Retrieval-Augmented VLA for Test-Time Adaptation
  5. 2025VLA-Adapter: An Effective Paradigm for Tiny-Scale Vision-Language-Action Model
  6. 2026SynthDemo-RL: Breaking the Zero-Reward Barrier in VLA Adaptation with LLM-Guided Synthetic Demonstrations
  7. 2026AC^2-VLA: Action-Context-Aware Adaptive Computation in Vision-Language-Action Models for Efficient Robotic Manipulation
  8. 2026On-the-Fly VLA Adaptation via Test-Time Reinforcement Learning