RoboTTT: Context Scaling for Robot Policies
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Abstract (arXiv)
Recent robot foundation models operate with single-step or short-history visuomotor context. We introduce Test-Time-Training Robot Policies (RoboTTT), a robot model and training recipe that scale visuomotor context to 8K timesteps, three orders of magnitude beyond state-of-the-art policies, without growing inference latency. At this context length, we unlock new robot capabilities: one-shot in-context imitation from human video demonstrations, on-the-fly policy improvement, robustness to perturbations, and stronger performance on multi-stage, long-horizon tasks. We also observe, for the first time, steady gains in closed-loop performance as pretraining context length scales. At its core, RoboTTT integrates Test-Time Training into robot foundation models such as Vision-Language-Action policies, yielding a sequence model whose recurrent state consists of fast weights, parameters updated by gradient descent during both training and inference, compressing histories into weight space and retrieving contextual information for long-context conditioning. To scale training context length, the recipe combines sequence action forcing with truncated backpropagation through time. On challenging real-robot manipulation tasks, RoboTTT improves overall performance by 87% over the single-step context baseline and fully completes a five-minute, ten-stage assembly task, which no baseline ever does. RoboTTT trained with 8K-timestep context outperforms the same model pretrained with 1K timesteps by 62%, suggesting context length as a new scaling axis for robot foundation models. Videos are available at https://research.nvidia.com/labs/gear/robottt/
Key facts. Cited by 19 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 54 of its 83 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 16 Jul 2026.
Builds on
54 of 83 references.
References · 54
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- 2025It's All Connected: A Journey Through Test-Time Memorization, Attentional Bias, Retention, and Online Optimizationcited by 64
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- 2026On-the-Fly VLA Adaptation via Test-Time Reinforcement Learningcited by 14
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 19.
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- 2026Zero-WAM: In-Context World-Action Modeling from Human Videos for Open-Ended Task Generalizationcited by 13
- 2026An Unexpected Robot Policy: Early Evaluations of GPT-6 Astra on RoboDojo and Beyondcited by 11
- 2026StellaVLA: In-Context Structured Demonstration for Generalizable Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 4
- 2026A Survey on Self-Improving Test-Time Intelligence: Feedback-Driven Adapting, Learning, and Scaling at Inferencecited by 3
- 2026PonderPounce: A Pretrained MLLM as an Episode Context Engine for Robot Controlcited by 1
- 2026TraceFlow: Guiding Frozen Flow-Matching Robot Policies with Success and Failure Tracescited by 1
- 2026Self-Adaptive VLA for Robust Robot Deploymentcited by 1
- 2026In-Context Learning for Robots: Methods and Applicationscited by 1
- 2026Long-WAM: Scaling the Context of World-Action Modelscited by 1
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- 2026PredVLA: Predictive Sensorimotor Modeling for Sub-Million-Parameter Robot Manipulationcited by 0
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- 2026World-T3: Test-Time Training as Persistent Memory for Real-Time Video World Modelscited by 0
- 2026VLRLA: Deployment-Time Adaptation of Vision-Language-Action Models through In-Context Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
- 2026VLRLA: Deployment-Time Adaptation of Vision-Language-Action Models through In-Context Reinforcement Learning14 Oct 2026
- 2026World-T3: Test-Time Training as Persistent Memory for Real-Time Video World Models12 Oct 2026
- 2026Dual-Stream Memory for Vision-Language-Action Policies9 Oct 2026
- 2026Long-WAM: Scaling the Context of World-Action Models7 Oct 2026
- 2026Juno: Taming Predictive Latents for Vision-Language-Action Models7 Oct 2026
- 2026In-Context Learning for Robots: Methods and Applications28 Sep 2026
- 2026EvolvingAvatar: Interactive 3D Head Generation That Adapts as Conversations Unfold28 Sep 2026
- 2026ReCAT: Remember, Count, and Time: Structured Recurrent Memory for Robot Manipulation28 Sep 2026
- 2026DRAM: Delta-rule Recurrent Associative Memory for Robot Manipulation Policies26 Sep 2026
- 2026Self-Adaptive VLA for Robust Robot Deployment24 Sep 2026
- 2026An Unexpected Robot Policy: Early Evaluations of GPT-6 Astra on RoboDojo and Beyond21 Sep 2026
- 2026TraceFlow: Guiding Frozen Flow-Matching Robot Policies with Success and Failure Traces17 Sep 2026
7 more
- 2026From Rollout to Reset: A Graph-Based Harness for Autonomous Long-Horizon Manipulation Evaluation16 Sep 2026
- 2026A Survey on Self-Improving Test-Time Intelligence: Feedback-Driven Adapting, Learning, and Scaling at Inference1 Sep 2026
- 2026PredVLA: Predictive Sensorimotor Modeling for Sub-Million-Parameter Robot Manipulation27 Aug 2026
- 2026Zero-WAM: In-Context World-Action Modeling from Human Videos for Open-Ended Task Generalization26 Aug 2026
- 2026PonderPounce: A Pretrained MLLM as an Episode Context Engine for Robot Control25 Aug 2026
- 2026StellaVLA: In-Context Structured Demonstration for Generalizable Vision-Language-Action Models12 Aug 2026
- 2026Towards Trustworthy Physical Intelligence: From Theory to Practice Across Life Cycle24 Jul 2026
- 2026StellaVLA: In-Context Structured Demonstration for Generalizable Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 4
- 2026Self-Adaptive VLA for Robust Robot Deploymentcited by 1
- 2026PredVLA: Predictive Sensorimotor Modeling for Sub-Million-Parameter Robot Manipulationcited by 0
- 2026Juno: Taming Predictive Latents for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 0
- 2026Dual-Stream Memory for Vision-Language-Action Policiescited by 0
- 2026VLRLA: Deployment-Time Adaptation of Vision-Language-Action Models through In-Context Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
- 2026VLRLA: Deployment-Time Adaptation of Vision-Language-Action Models through In-Context Reinforcement Learning14 Oct 2026
- 2026Dual-Stream Memory for Vision-Language-Action Policies9 Oct 2026
- 2026Juno: Taming Predictive Latents for Vision-Language-Action Models7 Oct 2026
- 2026Self-Adaptive VLA for Robust Robot Deployment24 Sep 2026
- 2026PredVLA: Predictive Sensorimotor Modeling for Sub-Million-Parameter Robot Manipulation27 Aug 2026
- 2026StellaVLA: In-Context Structured Demonstration for Generalizable Vision-Language-Action Models12 Aug 2026
- 2026An Unexpected Robot Policy: Early Evaluations of GPT-6 Astra on RoboDojo and Beyondcited by 11
- 2026A Survey on Self-Improving Test-Time Intelligence: Feedback-Driven Adapting, Learning, and Scaling at Inferencecited by 3
- 2026In-Context Learning for Robots: Methods and Applicationscited by 1
- 2026Towards Trustworthy Physical Intelligence: From Theory to Practice Across Life Cyclecited by 0
- 2026From Rollout to Reset: A Graph-Based Harness for Autonomous Long-Horizon Manipulation Evaluationcited by 0
- 2026DRAM: Delta-rule Recurrent Associative Memory for Robot Manipulation Policiescited by 0
- 2026ReCAT: Remember, Count, and Time: Structured Recurrent Memory for Robot Manipulationcited by 0
- 2026EvolvingAvatar: Interactive 3D Head Generation That Adapts as Conversations Unfoldcited by 0
- 2026In-Context Learning for Robots: Methods and Applications28 Sep 2026
- 2026EvolvingAvatar: Interactive 3D Head Generation That Adapts as Conversations Unfold28 Sep 2026
- 2026ReCAT: Remember, Count, and Time: Structured Recurrent Memory for Robot Manipulation28 Sep 2026
- 2026DRAM: Delta-rule Recurrent Associative Memory for Robot Manipulation Policies26 Sep 2026
- 2026An Unexpected Robot Policy: Early Evaluations of GPT-6 Astra on RoboDojo and Beyond21 Sep 2026
- 2026From Rollout to Reset: A Graph-Based Harness for Autonomous Long-Horizon Manipulation Evaluation16 Sep 2026
- 2026A Survey on Self-Improving Test-Time Intelligence: Feedback-Driven Adapting, Learning, and Scaling at Inference1 Sep 2026
- 2026Towards Trustworthy Physical Intelligence: From Theory to Practice Across Life Cycle24 Jul 2026
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