Retrieve in Time, Correct in Frequency
On the map: Vision-language-action models → Reasoning and chain-of-thought in VLA
Abstract (arXiv)
Frozen vision-language-action (VLA) policies generate temporally extended action chunks, but long-horizon manipulation remains vulnerable to accumulated execution error and visual aliasing across task stages. Successful rollouts provide useful corrective evidence, yet current frame retrieval can return progress-misaligned actions,while direct replay or time-domain fusion can overwrite the reactive structure of the policy proposal. We introduce Retrieve in Time, Correct in Frequency (RTCF), a training-free test-time correction framework that improves frozen VLA performance with low model-side overhead.RTCF separates which experience to retrieve from which part of its action to transfer. Progressive Memory Alignment (PMA) causally aligns the growing visual execution history with complete successful trajectories through incrementally updated monotonic frontiers, jointly identifying a relevant memory and the current aligned memory position without stage labels. From the aligned action chunk,RTCF transfers a coefficient-wise-clipped low-frequency residual on motion channels. Higher-frequency components and gripper decisions remain inherited from the frozen policy. Across four LIBERO suites and 2,000 episodes per condition, RTCF raises aggregate success from 86.4% to 88.4% and improves LIBERO-Long from 61.6% to 68.6%.These gains require no parameter updates, repeated VLA inference, or additional GPU resources: correction can be performed on the client CPU after a single policy invocation, and the median latencies sum to only 10.99 ms per action chunk
Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Reasoning and chain-of-thought in VLA, one of 13 directions in Vision-language-action models. Builds on 28 of its 32 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 5 Aug 2026.
Builds on
28 of 32 references.
Closest ancestors · 2
Same direction, newest first
- 2026VLA-Pro: Cross-Task Procedural Memory Transfer for Vision-Language-Action Models28 May
- 2025MemoryVLA: Perceptual-Cognitive Memory in Vision-Language-Action Models for Robotic Manipulation26 Aug
Other references · 26
- 2023Sigmoid Loss for Language Image Pre-Trainingcited by 3,109
- 2023RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Controlcited by 3,080
- 2015Neural Machine Translation of Rare Words with Subword Unitscited by 2,918
- 2024OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 2,887
- 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusioncited by 2,838
- 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,407
- 2023Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardwarecited by 1,568
- 2024Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policycited by 1,484
- 2023LIBERO: Benchmarking Knowledge Transfer for Lifelong Robot Learningcited by 1,410
- 2022R3M: A Universal Visual Representation for Robot Manipulationcited by 694
- 2021The Surprising Effectiveness of Representation Learning for Visual Imitationcited by 154
- 2023Behavior Retrieval: Few-Shot Imitation Learning by Querying Unlabeled Datasetscited by 58
14 more
- 2024RAM: Retrieval-Based Affordance Transfer for Generalizable Zero-Shot Robotic Manipulationcited by 58
- 2024DINOBot: Robot Manipulation via Retrieval and Alignment with Vision Foundation Modelscited by 44
- 2024STRAP: Robot Sub-Trajectory Retrieval for Augmented Policy Learningcited by 44
- 2026Global Prior Meets Local Consistency: Dual-Memory Augmented Vision-Language-Action Model for Efficient Robotic Manipulationcited by 20
- 2023On the Effectiveness of Retrieval, Alignment, and Replay in Manipulationcited by 15
- 2024Offline Imitation Learning Through Graph Search and Retrievalcited by 14
- 2024Zero-shot Imitation Policy via Search in Demonstration Datasetcited by 13
- 2025HAND Me the Data: Fast Robot Adaptation via Hand Path Retrievalcited by 10
- 2025FreqPolicy: Frequency Autoregressive Visuomotor Policy with Continuous Tokenscited by 9
- 2026Retrieve-then-Steer: Online Success Memory for Test-Time Adaptation of Generative VLAscited by 5
- 2026Retrieve, Don't Retrain: Extending Vision Language Action Models to New Tasks at Test Timecited by 5
- 2025Dejavu: Towards Experience Feedback Learning for Embodied Intelligencecited by 3
- 2026Hyper-DP3: Frequency-Aware Right-Sizing of 3D Diffusion Policies for Visuomotor Controlcited by 3
- 2026ReGIL: Retrieval-Guided Imitation Learning from a Single Demonstrationcited by 1
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.
1 paper.
- 2026In-Context Learning for Robots: Methods and Applicationscited by 1
- 2026In-Context Learning for Robots: Methods and Applications28 Sep 2026
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- 2026SimpleMemVLA: A Simple but Effective Native-Video Memory for Vision-Language-Action Models
- 2026TempoFit: Plug-and-Play Layer-Wise Temporal KV Memory for Long-Horizon Vision-Language-Action Manipulation
- 2026HELM: Harness-Enhanced Long-horizon Memory for Vision-Language-Action Manipulation
- 2026DAM-VLA: Decoupled Asynchronous Multimodal Vision Language Action model
- 2025Leave No Observation Behind: Real-time Correction for VLA Action Chunks
- 2026ChainVLA: Chaining Vision-Language-Action Queries through a Unified Execution State for Long-Horizon Manipulation
- 2026D2-VLA: Dual-Memory Dual-Frequency Vision-Language-Action Model For Long Dynamic Manipulation
- 2026Does a Learned Corrector Beat a Simple Retreat? Evidence from a Frozen VLA