mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Qwen-VLA: Unifying Vision-Language-Action Modeling across Tasks, Environments, and Robot Embodiments

arXiv 2605.30280 ↗First posted 28 May 2026cs.RO cs.AI cs.CLcited by 44

On the map: Vision-language-action models → Human-video and latent-action pretraining

Abstract (arXiv)

Embodied intelligence is often studied through specialized models for individual tasks such as manipulation or navigation, resulting in fragmented capabilities and limited generalization across tasks, environments, and robot embodiments. In this work, we study whether heterogeneous embodied decision-making problems can be unified within a single vision-language-action model. We present Qwen-VLA, a unified embodied foundation model that extends Qwen's vision-language modeling stack from perception, understanding, and reasoning to continuous action and trajectory generation through a DiT-based action decoder. Qwen-VLA is trained with a large-scale joint pretraining recipe over diverse data sources, including robotics manipulation trajectories, human egocentric demonstrations, synthetic simulation data, vision-and-language navigation data, trajectory-centric supervision, and auxiliary vision-language data. To support multiple robot platforms, we introduce embodiment-aware prompt conditioning, where robot-specific textual descriptions specify the current embodiment and control convention. We further cast manipulation, navigation, and trajectory prediction into a unified action-and-trajectory prediction framework, enabling transferable visual grounding, spatial reasoning, and continuous action generation across robot morphologies, task families, and environments. Experiments on manipulation, navigation, and trajectory-centric benchmarks show consistent multi-task performance and out-of-distribution generalization under variations in scene layout, background, lighting, object configuration, and robot embodiment. Qwen-VLA-Instruct achieves 97.9% on LIBERO, 73.7% on Simpler-WidowX, 86.1%/87.2% on RoboTwin-Easy/Hard, 69.0% OSR on R2R, 59.6% SR on RxR, 76.9% average OOD success in real-world ALOHA experiments, and 26.6% zero-shot success on DOMINO dynamic manipulation.

Key facts. Cited by 44 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Human-video and latent-action pretraining, one of 13 directions in Vision-language-action models. Builds on 78 of its 90 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 28 May 2026.

Builds on

78 of 90 references.

Closest ancestors · 3

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026Being-H0.5: Scaling Human-Centric Robot Learning for Cross-Embodiment Generalization19 Jan
  2. 2025Scalable Vision-Language-Action Model Pretraining for Robotic Manipulation with Real-Life Human Activity Videos24 Oct
  3. 2025Being-H0: Vision-Language-Action Pretraining from Large-Scale Human Videos21 Jul

Other references · 75

  1. 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 15,215
  2. 2020Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 9,122
  3. 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 6,054
  4. 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,702
  5. 2024Qwen2-VL: Enhancing Vision-Language Model's Perception of the World at Any Resolutioncited by 4,234
  6. 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,181
  7. 2023RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Controlcited by 3,080
  8. 2024OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 2,887
  9. 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusioncited by 2,838
  10. 2025Qwen3-VL Technical Reportcited by 2,793
  11. 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,407
  12. 2022RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scalecited by 2,061
38 more
  1. 2015High-Dimensional Continuous Control Using Generalized Advantage Estimationcited by 2,026
  2. 2021Ego4D: Around the World in 3,000 Hours of Egocentric Videocited by 1,556
  3. 2023LIBERO: Benchmarking Knowledge Transfer for Lifelong Robot Learningcited by 1,410
  4. 2022Planning with Diffusion for Flexible Behavior Synthesiscited by 1,061
  5. 2025Fine-Tuning Vision-Language-Action Models: Optimizing Speed and Successcited by 883
  6. 2023Open X-Embodiment: Robotic Learning Datasets and RT-X Modelscited by 862
  7. 2024RDT-1B: a Diffusion Foundation Model for Bimanual Manipulationcited by 691
  8. 2025FAST: Efficient Action Tokenization for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 665
  9. 2020Rescaling Egocentric Visioncited by 540
  10. 2023DriveLM: Driving with Graph Visual Question Answeringcited by 536
  11. 2024Evaluating Real-World Robot Manipulation Policies in Simulationcited by 495
  12. 2023DriveGPT4: Interpretable End-to-end Autonomous Driving via Large Language Modelcited by 461
  13. 2020Beyond the Nav-Graph: Vision-and-Language Navigation in Continuous Environmentscited by 441
  14. 2020Room-Across-Room: Multilingual Vision-and-Language Navigation with Dense Spatiotemporal Groundingcited by 414
  15. 2024RoboCasa: Large-Scale Simulation of Everyday Tasks for Generalist Robotscited by 407
  16. 2024Mobile ALOHA: Learning Bimanual Mobile Manipulation with Low-Cost Whole-Body Teleoperationcited by 391
  17. 2026Causal World Modeling for Robot Controlcited by 321
  18. 2025X-VLA: Soft-Prompted Transformer as Scalable Cross-Embodiment Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 303
  19. 2023NuScenes-QA: A Multi-modal Visual Question Answering Benchmark for Autonomous Driving Scenariocited by 262
  20. 2024NaVid: Video-based VLM Plans the Next Step for Vision-and-Language Navigationcited by 233
  21. 2024NaVILA: Legged Robot Vision-Language-Action Model for Navigationcited by 211
  22. 2025EgoDex: Learning Dexterous Manipulation from Large-Scale Egocentric Videocited by 211
  23. 2025ReCogDrive: A Reinforced Cognitive Framework for End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 198
  24. 2023RH20T: A Comprehensive Robotic Dataset for Learning Diverse Skills in One-Shotcited by 183
  25. 2024EgoMimic: Scaling Imitation Learning via Egocentric Videocited by 175
  26. 2024RoboMIND: Benchmark on Multi-embodiment Intelligence Normative Data for Robot Manipulationcited by 175
  27. 2023RoboAgent: Generalization and Efficiency in Robot Manipulation via Semantic Augmentations and Action Chunkingcited by 169
  28. 2024Senna: Bridging Large Vision-Language Models and End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 156
  29. 2024Uni-NaVid: A Video-based Vision-Language-Action Model for Unifying Embodied Navigation Taskscited by 156
  30. 2023AdaptDiffuser: Diffusion Models as Adaptive Self-evolving Plannerscited by 149
  31. 2023LingoQA: Visual Question Answering for Autonomous Drivingcited by 145
  32. 2025VLA-Adapter: An Effective Paradigm for Tiny-Scale Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 145
  33. 2025OmniDrive: A Holistic Vision-Language Dataset for Autonomous Driving with Counterfactual Reasoningcited by 143
  34. 2019Talk2Car: Taking Control of Your Self-Driving Carcited by 142
  35. 2026π0.7: a Steerable Generalist Robotic Foundation Model with Emergent Capabilitiescited by 138
  36. 2025StreamVLN: Streaming Vision-and-Language Navigation via SlowFast Context Modelingcited by 118
  37. 2026StarVLA: A Lego-like Codebase for Vision-Language-Action Model Developingcited by 112
  38. 2026A Pragmatic VLA Foundation Modelcited by 103

50 most cited of 75 All 75 (JSON)

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 44.

44 papers.

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  1. 2026ImageWAM: Do World Action Models Really Need Video Generation, or Just Image Editing?cited by 38
  2. 2026ABot-M0.5: Unified Mobility-and-Manipulation World Action Modelcited by 30
  3. 2026From Foundation to Application: Improving VLA Models in Practicecited by 26
  4. 2026Hy-Embodied-0.5-VLA: From Vision-Language-Action Models to a Real-World Robot Learning Stackcited by 22
  5. 2026G0.5: One Autoregressive Stream for Robot Reasoning and Actioncited by 18
  6. 2026TurboVLA: Real-Time Vision-Language-Action Model at 32 Hz on an RTX 4090 with <1 GB VRAMcited by 10
  7. 2026Qwen-Drive-1.0: An Initial Step towards a Vision-Language Foundation Model for Autonomous Drivingcited by 9
  8. 2026Hy-Embodied-VLM-1.0: Efficient Physical-World Agentscited by 8
  9. 2026DreamWAM: Beyond RGB Future Prediction for World Action Modelscited by 8
  10. 2026LA4VLA: Learning to Act without Seeing via Language-Action Pretrainingcited by 6
  11. 2026ABot-N1: Toward a General Visual Language Navigation Foundation Modelcited by 6
  12. 2026WorldScape Policy 2.0: Empowering Steerable World Action Modeling with Reasoning-Augmented Memory and In-Context Learningcited by 6
32 more
  1. 2026Data Pyramid for Embodied Manipulation: A Surveycited by 6
  2. 2026ACE-Brain-0.5: A Unified Embodied Foundational Model for Physical Agentic AIcited by 5
  3. 2026HiFi-UMI: Learning Deployable Manipulation Policies from High-Fidelity UMI Data Alonecited by 4
  4. 2026Riemann-1.0: An Embodied World Action Model for Physical AIcited by 4
  5. 2026ZimaBlue: Evolving Generalizable World Action Models through Scalable Video Pre-trainingcited by 4
  6. 2026EmbodiedSWE: Coding Agents for Long Horizon Dexterous Roboticscited by 4
  7. 2026Robostral Navigatecited by 3
  8. 2026Continue or Replan? Bernoulli-Continuation Policy Learning for Adaptive Horizon Executioncited by 3
  9. 2026Bridge-WA: Predicting Where and How the World Changes for Robotic Actioncited by 2
  10. 2026TacPAC: Tactile Prediction and Real-Time Action Correction in World-Action Models for Contact-Rich Manipulationcited by 2
  11. 2026DLAM: Distributional Latent Actions with Temporal Constraintscited by 1
  12. 2026DyPES-VLA: Learning Shared Dynamics Priors and Embodiment-Specific Control for Cross-Embodiment Manipulationcited by 1
  13. 2026DELE-w0.5: Inferring Action from Future Latent State for Robotic Manipulationcited by 1
  14. 2026LightNav-0: Eliciting VLM Spatial Intelligence for Generalist Embodied Navigationcited by 1
  15. 2026Self-Adaptive VLA for Robust Robot Deploymentcited by 1
  16. 2026DynaWM: A Base-VLA-Guided World Foundation Model for Moving-Object Manipulationcited by 0
  17. 2026LeapBot-WA: World-Anchor Action Models via Predictive Latent Alignmentscited by 0
  18. 2026One Policy, Many Embodiments: Unified Camera-Centric Action Geometry Pre-training for Heterogeneous Embodied Manipulationcited by 0
  19. 2026TrapVLA: Trapping Vision-Language-Action Models in Configured Failure Modescited by 0
  20. 2026PhysBrain 1.5: From Vision-Language Models to Physical Foundation Modelscited by 0
  21. 2026CSWAM: Better Causal Semantic Representations for Out-of-Distribution Generalization in World Action Modelscited by 0
  22. 2026An Action Is Worth One Patch: Unified World-Action Modeling with PatchWAMcited by 0
  23. 2026Beyond Future Prediction: Denoising as Generative Adaptation for Robot Controlcited by 0
  24. 2026RAVEL: Asynchronous Rolling Inference for Flow-Based Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 0
  25. 2026The Low-Rank Structure of VLA Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
  26. 2026VCN-Bench: A Video-Contextualized Navigation Benchmark for Spatial Reasoning over Prior Visual Experiencecited by 0
  27. 2026FlowTool: Controlling Tool Parameter in Image Retouching via Flow Matchingcited by 0
  28. 2026Explore, Execute, Evolve: A Skill Acquisition and Reuse Loop for Embodied Agentscited by 0
  29. 2026EWAM: Emergent Depth-Wise Specialization in a Unified Embodied Model -- From Semantic Understanding through Visual Foresight to Actioncited by 0
  30. 2026WareFly-VLA: A Vision-Language-Action Framework for UAV Navigation and Human Tracking in Smart Warehousescited by 0
  31. 2026When Listening Becomes Easier: Scrubbing Visual Cues for Shortcut-Free VLAscited by 0
  32. 2026ADAPT: Audio-Depth Action Planning with Transition-Aware Rewards for Lights-Out Industrial Navigationcited by 0

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  1. 2026Qwen-RobotWorld Technical Report: Unifying Embodied World Modeling through Language-Conditioned Video Generation
  2. 2025Efficient Vision-Language-Action Models for Embodied Manipulation: A Systematic Survey
  3. 2026Vision-Language-Action in Robotics: A Survey of Datasets, Benchmarks, and Data Engines
  4. 2025Large VLM-based Vision-Language-Action Models for Robotic Manipulation: A Survey
  5. 2026EmbodiedMidtrain: Bridging the Gap between Vision-Language Models and Vision-Language-Action Models via Mid-training
  6. 2025XR-1: Towards Versatile Vision-Language-Action Models via Learning Unified Vision-Motion Representations
  7. 2025Unified Embodied VLM Reasoning with Robotic Action via Autoregressive Discretized Pre-training
  8. 2026EmbodiedSkills: A Unified Framework for Orchestrating, Training, and Deploying VLA Agents