Continuous Reasoning for Vision-Language-Action
On the map: LLM reasoning → Spatial and embodied reasoning
also in 2 more
Abstract (arXiv)
Natural language is a powerful reasoning medium for language and vision-language models, but it is mismatched to the granularity of continuous control. Text and explicit subgoals operate at task-level granularity, whereas vision-language-action (VLA) policies must choose actions at a much finer temporal scale; a single reasoning step can therefore span many action chunks while remaining only weakly coupled to the action needed now. This suggests a different question for VLA: what should play the role of language? We argue that a useful VLA reasoning medium must be shareable across model instances, verifiable through downstream action improvement, and aligned with temporally extended control structure. Based on this view, we propose Continuous Reasoning for Vision-Language-Action. Our model first predicts continuous reasoning in the form of a structured set of continuous thoughts, then reuses them as shared context for chunk-structured action generation. Better action prediction alone does not certify good reasoning: if the same internal medium cannot be shared across model instances and independently verified through improved downstream control, the added latent may simply become a model-private shortcut that helps on seen behaviors without supporting generalizable control. We therefore instantiate continuous reasoning as a shared Gaussian latent interface and train it with a self-verification objective in which an exponential-moving-average teacher must successfully consume the student's reasoning when predicting target actions. Empirically, Continuous Reasoning improves LIBERO-PRO robustness and performs strongly on real robots, raising mean subtask success over π0.5 by 40.4% on TX-G2, an AgiBot G2-compatible variant, and 26.3% on HSR. This suggests that reasoning in VLA is less about extra tokens than about a shareable, verifiable internal language for action.
Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Spatial and embodied reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 46 of its 47 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 29 May 2026.
Builds on
46 of 47 references.
Closest ancestors · 14
Same direction, newest first
- 2026DualCoT-VLA: Visual-Linguistic Chain of Thought via Parallel Reasoning for Vision-Language-Action Models23 Mar
- 2026HALO: A Unified Vision-Language-Action Model for Embodied Multimodal Chain-of-Thought Reasoning24 Feb
- 2026Latent Reasoning VLA: Latent Thinking and Prediction for Vision-Language-Action Models1 Feb
- 2026ACoT-VLA: Action Chain-of-Thought for Vision-Language-Action Models16 Jan
- 2026LaST0: Latent Spatio-Temporal Chain-of-Thought for Robotic Vision-Language-Action Model8 Jan
- 2025DeepThinkVLA: Enhancing Reasoning Capability of Vision-Language-Action Models31 Oct
- 2025dVLA: Diffusion Vision-Language-Action Model with Multimodal Chain-of-Thought30 Sep
- 2025MolmoAct: Action Reasoning Models that can Reason in Space11 Aug
- 2025InstructVLA: Vision-Language-Action Instruction Tuning from Understanding to Manipulation23 Jul
- 2025ThinkAct: Vision-Language-Action Reasoning via Reinforced Visual Latent Planning22 Jul
- 2025ChatVLA-2: Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Embodied Reasoning from Pretrained Knowledge28 May
- 2025CoT-VLA: Visual Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Vision-Language-Action Models27 Mar
2 more
Other references · 32
- 2021Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformerscited by 6,893
- 2020Bootstrap your own latent: A new approach to self-supervised Learningcited by 4,712
- 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
- 2022Do As I Can, Not As I Say: Grounding Language in Robotic Affordancescited by 2,302
- 2023PaLM-E: An Embodied Multimodal Language Modelcited by 2,037
- 2022RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scalecited by 2,007
- 2025π0.5: a Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Generalizationcited by 1,653
- 2023Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardwarecited by 1,490
- 2024Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policycited by 1,427
- 2022Code as Policies: Language Model Programs for Embodied Controlcited by 1,172
20 more
- 2023VoxPoser: Composable 3D Value Maps for Robotic Manipulation with Language Modelscited by 733
- 2023Measuring Faithfulness in Chain-of-Thought Reasoningcited by 668
- 2025SpatialVLA: Exploring Spatial Representations for Visual-Language-Action Modelcited by 502
- 2017Mean teachers are better role models: Weight-averaged consistency targets improve semi-supervised deep learning resultscited by 470
- 2017Wasserstein Auto-Encoderscited by 371
- 2019Learning Latent Plans from Playcited by 310
- 2022Behavior Transformers: Cloning k modes with one stonecited by 299
- 2025X-VLA: Soft-Prompted Transformer as Scalable Cross-Embodiment Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 285
- 2025LIBERO-PRO: Towards Robust and Fair Evaluation of Vision-Language-Action Models Beyond Memorizationcited by 166
- 2024Behavior Generation with Latent Actionscited by 159
- 2025VLA-Adapter: An Effective Paradigm for Tiny-Scale Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 140
- 2024BAKU: An Efficient Transformer for Multi-Task Policy Learningcited by 80
- 2024Diffusion Transformer Policycited by 41
- 2026Fast-ThinkAct: Efficient Vision-Language-Action Reasoning via Verbalizable Latent Planningcited by 20
- 2025Goal-VLA: Image-Generative VLMs as Object-Centric World Models Empowering Zero-shot Robot Manipulationcited by 15
- 2024Subgoal Diffuser: Coarse-to-fine Subgoal Generation to Guide Model Predictive Control for Robot Manipulationcited by 10
- 2026Outcome Rewards Do Not Guarantee Verifiable or Causally Important Reasoningcited by 7
- 2025Evaluating GRPO and DPO for Faithful Chain-of-Thought Reasoning in LLMscited by 6
- 2026Guide, Think, Act: Interactive Embodied Reasoning in Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 3
- 2024FoAM: Foresight-Augmented Multi-Task Imitation Policy for Robotic Manipulationcited by 2
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 2.
2 papers.
- 2026Uni-LaDiR: Latent Diffusion Unifies Multimodal Reasoningcited by 0
- 2026Quantile Head for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 0
- 2026Quantile Head for Vision-Language-Action Models28 Sep 2026
- 2026Uni-LaDiR: Latent Diffusion Unifies Multimodal Reasoning17 Sep 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026In-Context VLA: Endowing Vision-Language-Action Models with Language via In-Context Post-Training and Agentic Tool Use
- 2026Reasoning as a Double-Edged Sword: Architecture and Cross-Stage Robustness in Vision-Language-Action Models
- 2025Do What You Say: Steering Vision-Language-Action Models via Runtime Reasoning-Action Alignment Verification
- 2026Explicit Language Memory for Long-Horizon Planning in Vision-Language-Action Models
- 2025A Survey on Vision-Language-Action Models: An Action Tokenization Perspective
- 2025Knowledge Insulating Vision-Language-Action Models: Train Fast, Run Fast, Generalize Better
- 2026Does VLA Even Know the Basics? Measuring Commonsense and World Knowledge Retention in Vision-Language-Action Models
- 2026VisualThink-VLA: Visual Intermediate Reasoning for Effective and Low-Latency Vision-Language-Action Policies