mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Colosseum V2: Benchmarking Generalization for Vision-Language-Action Models

arXiv 2605.27759 ↗First posted 26 May 2026cs.ROcited by 4

On the map: Vision-language-action models → Generalist VLA models and benchmarks

Abstract (arXiv)

Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models demonstrate promising generalization in robotic manipulation, driven by advances in large-scale vision and language pre-training. This progress can be misleading. Despite the zero-shot perception and language capabilities of VLAs, their overall task performance often degrades under distribution shifts, revealing gaps in how these systems translate high-level understanding into robust behavior. To systematically study this gap, we introduce Colosseum V2, a large-scale simulation benchmark for evaluating VLA generalization in robot learning across diverse conditions. The benchmark comprises 28 tasks spanning 13 task categories and two robot morphologies, covering a wide range of manipulation primitives and long-horizon behaviors. Built on the ManiSkill simulator, Colosseum V2 enables fast, GPU-parallelized evaluation and supports both in-domain and out-of-domain testing at scale. We evaluate state-of-the-art methods, including Action Chunking Transformers (ACT) and Pi0.5, and reveal limitations in both base performance and generalization. We demonstrate strong correlations between simulation and real-world metrics that support the ecological validity of the benchmark. By standardizing tasks, metrics, and evaluation protocols within a unified benchmark, Colosseum V2 enables reproducible and fair comparisons, reduced evaluation overhead, and accelerated progress toward general-purpose robot policies.

Key facts. Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Generalist VLA models and benchmarks, one of 13 directions in Vision-language-action models. Builds on 32 of its 44 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 26 May 2026.

Builds on

32 of 44 references.

Closest ancestors · 3

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025π0.5: a Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Generalization22 Apr
  2. 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Control31 Oct
  3. 2023RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Control28 Jul

Other references · 29

  1. 2015Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognitioncited by 52,096
  2. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,744
  3. 2023Sigmoid Loss for Language Image Pre-Trainingcited by 3,109
  4. 2024SAM 2: Segment Anything in Images and Videoscited by 2,863
  5. 2023PaLM-E: An Embodied Multimodal Language Modelcited by 2,071
  6. 2023LIBERO: Benchmarking Knowledge Transfer for Lifelong Robot Learningcited by 1,410
  7. 2023VoxPoser: Composable 3D Value Maps for Robotic Manipulation with Language Modelscited by 750
  8. 2022R3M: A Universal Visual Representation for Robot Manipulationcited by 694
  9. 2019RLBench: The Robot Learning Benchmark & Learning Environmentcited by 689
  10. 2021CLIPort: What and Where Pathways for Robotic Manipulationcited by 622
  11. 2021CALVIN: A Benchmark for Language-Conditioned Policy Learning for Long-Horizon Robot Manipulation Taskscited by 584
  12. 2020robosuite: A Modular Simulation Framework and Benchmark for Robot Learningcited by 511
17 more
  1. 2022VIMA: General Robot Manipulation with Multimodal Promptscited by 407
  2. 2022VIP: Towards Universal Visual Reward and Representation via Value-Implicit Pre-Trainingcited by 395
  3. 2024Video Prediction Policy: A Generalist Robot Policy with Predictive Visual Representationscited by 289
  4. 2025Unified World Models: Coupling Video and Action Diffusion for Pretraining on Large Robotic Datasetscited by 240
  5. 2024ManiSkill3: GPU Parallelized Robotics Simulation and Rendering for Generalizable Embodied AIcited by 229
  6. 2025Unified Video Action Modelcited by 205
  7. 2025MolmoAct: Action Reasoning Models that can Reason in Spacecited by 197
  8. 2024VLABench: A Large-Scale Benchmark for Language-Conditioned Robotics Manipulation with Long-Horizon Reasoning Taskscited by 175
  9. 2024THE COLOSSEUM: A Benchmark for Evaluating Generalization for Robotic Manipulationcited by 133
  10. 2026DiT4DiT: Jointly Modeling Video Dynamics and Actions for Generalizable Robot Controlcited by 76
  11. 2022VLMbench: A Compositional Benchmark for Vision-and-Language Manipulationcited by 68
  12. 2025RoboArena: Distributed Real-World Evaluation of Generalist Robot Policiescited by 64
  13. 2019PyRep: Bringing V-REP to Deep Robot Learningcited by 44
  14. 2024Learning an Actionable Discrete Diffusion Policy via Large-Scale Actionless Video Pre-Trainingcited by 26
  15. 2025ManipBench: Benchmarking Vision-Language Models for Low-Level Robot Manipulationcited by 24
  16. 2026LIBERO-Para: A Diagnostic Benchmark and Metrics for Paraphrase Robustness in VLA Modelscited by 11
  17. 2024Contrast Sets for Evaluating Language-Guided Robot Policiescited by 7

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 4.

4 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025REALM: A Real-to-Sim Validated Benchmark for Generalization in Robotic Manipulation
  2. 2024Benchmarking Vision, Language, & Action Models on Robotic Learning Tasks
  3. 2025Exploring the Limits of Vision-Language-Action Manipulations in Cross-task Generalization
  4. 2025From Intention to Execution: Probing the Generalization Boundaries of Vision-Language-Action Models
  5. 2025Experiences from Benchmarking Vision-Language-Action Models for Robotic Manipulation
  6. 2025Benchmarking Vision, Language, & Action Models in Procedurally Generated, Open Ended Action Environments
  7. 2024CogACT: A Foundational Vision-Language-Action Model for Synergizing Cognition and Action in Robotic Manipulation
  8. 2026VLA-REPLICA: A Low-Cost, Reproducible Benchmark for Real-World Evaluation of Vision-Language-Action Models