# APIVOT: Adaptive Planning with Interleaved Vision-Language Thoughts

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.08024 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.08024/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 40 of its 51 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Jul 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 40)

- [Lost in the Middle: How Language Models Use Long Contexts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03172/) (2023)
- [Do As I Can, Not As I Say: Grounding Language in Robotic Affordances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.01691/) (2022)
- [Code as Policies: Language Model Programs for Embodied Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.07753/) (2022)
- [Inner Monologue: Embodied Reasoning through Planning with Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.05608/) (2022)
- [Language Models as Zero-Shot Planners: Extracting Actionable Knowledge for Embodied Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.07207/) (2022)
- [Emerging Properties in Unified Multimodal Pretraining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14683/) (2025)
- [LLM+P: Empowering Large Language Models with Optimal Planning Proficiency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.11477/) (2023)
- [LLM-Planner: Few-Shot Grounded Planning for Embodied Agents with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04088/) (2022)
- [CoT-VLA: Visual Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Vision-Language-Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.22020/) (2025)
- [Robotic Control via Embodied Chain-of-Thought Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08693/) (2024)
- [Integrated Task and Motion Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.01083/) (2020)
- [Pixel Reasoner: Incentivizing Pixel-Space Reasoning with Curiosity-Driven Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.15966/) (2025)
- [Show-o2: Improved Native Unified Multimodal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.15564/) (2025)
- [Imagine while Reasoning in Space: Multimodal Visualization-of-Thought](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.07542/) (2025)
- [Thinking with Images for Multimodal Reasoning: Foundations, Methods, and Future Frontiers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.23918/) (2025)
- [PDDLStream: Integrating Symbolic Planners and Blackbox Samplers via Optimistic Adaptive Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.08705/) (2018)
- [π0.7: a Steerable Generalist Robotic Foundation Model with Emergent Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.15483/) (2026)
- [Machine Mental Imagery: Empower Multimodal Reasoning with Latent Visual Tokens](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.17218/) (2025)
- [AdaCoT: Pareto-Optimal Adaptive Chain-of-Thought Triggering via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.11896/) (2025)
- [Embodied Task Planning with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01848/) (2023)
- [Zebra-CoT: A Dataset for Interleaved Vision Language Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.16746/) (2025)
- [Chain-of-Visual-Thought: Teaching VLMs to See and Think Better with Continuous Visual Tokens](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.19418/) (2025)
- [LLM3:Large Language Model-based Task and Motion Planning with Motion Failure Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11552/) (2024)
- [ThinkMorph: Emergent Properties in Multimodal Interleaved Chain-of-Thought Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.27492/) (2025)
- [Training Strategies for Efficient Embodied Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.08243/) (2025)
- [Guiding Long-Horizon Task and Motion Planning with Vision Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02193/) (2024)
- [Reflective Planning: Vision-Language Models for Multi-Stage Long-Horizon Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.16707/) (2025)
- [RePLan: Robotic Replanning with Perception and Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.04157/) (2024)
- [CoPAL: Corrective Planning of Robot Actions with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.07263/) (2023)
- [Beyond Language Modeling: An Exploration of Multimodal Pretraining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.03276/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Long-horizon robot planning requires jointly reasoning over semantic task structure and geometric feasibility. To successfully execute a task, a robot must decompose goals, select task-relevant objects, and sequence actions, while ensuring that plans satisfy spatial constraints such as limited free space and object collisions. In this work, we propose APIVOT, a VLM-based planner that adaptively interleaves language and visual thoughts for long-horizon planning. APIVOT learns to leverage language for semantic reasoning, while using visual thoughts as imagined future states for internal verification of geometric feasibility. On long-horizon kitchen tasks, APIVOT outperforms general-purpose VLMs and prior planning frameworks, achieving the largest gains in spatially constrained settings. We find that APIVOT learns meaningful modality selection behavior, demonstrating that adaptive interleaving of vision-language thoughts improves both planning success and reasoning efficiency.