mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

World-to-Wrist: Task-Conditioned Future Wrist Modeling for Fine-Grained Robot Manipulation

arXiv 2608.05369 ↗First posted 5 Aug 2026cs.RO cs.CVcited by 1

On the map: Vision-language-action models → Tactile, force-aware and humanoid VLA

Abstract (arXiv)

Vision-language-action (VLA) models often treat main-view and wrist-view observations as parallel visual inputs, overlooking their distinct roles in robot manipulation. Fine-grained manipulation, however, benefits from anticipating how wrist-local interactions may evolve under the global task context. To address this limitation, we present World-to-Wrist VLA (W2-VLA), a VLA model for fine-grained robot manipulation with task-conditioned future wrist modeling. Given current multi-view observations and a task instruction, W2-VLA contextualizes a set of latent modeling tokens as a compact interface between the vision-language model and the wrist predictor. Conditioned on this interface and the observed wrist history, the predictor forecasts future wrist latents, which are transformed into future-aware context for action prediction. In addition, we introduce W2-CoT, a synthesis pipeline that produces structured annotations describing manipulation progress, physical transition cues, and wrist-local evidence. These annotations provide auxiliary supervision that shapes the task-conditioned latent interface. Experiments on LIBERO, LIBERO-Plus, RoboTwin 2.0, and real-world manipulation tasks demonstrate improved fine-grained and contact-sensitive manipulation across single-arm and bimanual settings, while maintaining real-time action generation above 80~Hz.

Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Tactile, force-aware and humanoid VLA, one of 13 directions in Vision-language-action models. Builds on 35 of its 39 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 5 Aug 2026.

Builds on

35 of 39 references.

References · 35

  1. 2023RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Controlcited by 3,080
  2. 2024OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 2,887
  3. 2022RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scalecited by 2,061
  4. 2025π0.5: a Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Generalizationcited by 1,761
  5. 2024Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policycited by 1,484
  6. 2025GR00T N1: An Open Foundation Model for Generalist Humanoid Robotscited by 1,225
  7. 2025Fine-Tuning Vision-Language-Action Models: Optimizing Speed and Successcited by 883
  8. 2024RDT-1B: a Diffusion Foundation Model for Bimanual Manipulationcited by 691
  9. 2025SmolVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model for Affordable and Efficient Roboticscited by 530
  10. 2025SpatialVLA: Exploring Spatial Representations for Visual-Language-Action Modelcited by 519
  11. 2024Mobile ALOHA: Learning Bimanual Mobile Manipulation with Low-Cost Whole-Body Teleoperationcited by 391
  12. 2026Fast-WAM: Do World Action Models Need Test-time Future Imagination?cited by 349
23 more
  1. 2024TraceVLA: Visual Trace Prompting Enhances Spatial-Temporal Awareness for Generalist Robotic Policiescited by 304
  2. 2025X-VLA: Soft-Prompted Transformer as Scalable Cross-Embodiment Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 303
  3. 2025DreamVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model Dreamed with Comprehensive World Knowledgecited by 213
  4. 2025DexVLA: Vision-Language Model with Plug-In Diffusion Expert for General Robot Controlcited by 195
  5. 2025MemoryVLA: Perceptual-Cognitive Memory in Vision-Language-Action Models for Robotic Manipulationcited by 192
  6. 2025VLA-Adapter: An Effective Paradigm for Tiny-Scale Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 145
  7. 2025Spatial Forcing: Implicit Spatial Representation Alignment for Vision-language-action Modelcited by 134
  8. 2026VLA-JEPA: Enhancing Vision-Language-Action Model with Latent World Modelcited by 118
  9. 2026StarVLA: A Lego-like Codebase for Vision-Language-Action Model Developingcited by 112
  10. 2025UP-VLA: A Unified Understanding and Prediction Model for Embodied Agentcited by 102
  11. 2026Being-H0.7: A Latent World-Action Model from Egocentric Videoscited by 75
  12. 2022Look Closer: Bridging Egocentric and Third-Person Views with Transformers for Robotic Manipulationcited by 49
  13. 2026ImageWAM: Do World Action Models Really Need Video Generation, or Just Image Editing?cited by 38
  14. 2026World Guidance: World Modeling in Condition Space for Action Generationcited by 36
  15. 2025From Spatial to Actions: Grounding Vision-Language-Action Model in Spatial Foundation Priorscited by 28
  16. 2026Fast-ThinkAct: Efficient Vision-Language-Action Reasoning via Verbalizable Latent Planningcited by 24
  17. 2025WristWorld: Generating Wrist-Views via 4D World Models for Robotic Manipulationcited by 23
  18. 2025OmniVGGT: Omni-Modality Driven Visual Geometry Grounded Transformercited by 22
  19. 2025GraphCoT-VLA: A 3D Spatial-Aware Reasoning Vision-Language-Action Model for Robotic Manipulation with Ambiguous Instructionscited by 19
  20. 2026RoboInter: A Holistic Intermediate Representation Suite Towards Robotic Manipulationcited by 14
  21. 2025Mantis: A Versatile Vision-Language-Action Model with Disentangled Visual Foresightcited by 13
  22. 2025BFA: Best-Feature-Aware Fusion for Multi-View Fine-grained Manipulationcited by 10
  23. 2026HiVLA: A Visual-Grounded-Centric Hierarchical Embodied Manipulation Systemcited by 8

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.

1 paper.

Similar, not cited

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  1. 2026Cross-Hand Latent Representation for Vision-Language-Action Models
  2. 2026InDex: Empowering VLA Models with Intent-Conditioned Arm-Hand Coordination for Dexterous Manipulation
  3. 2026ForeTac-VLA: A Forecasting-Based Tactile-Vision-Language-Action Model for Contact-Rich Robotic Manipulation
  4. 2026PHR-VLA: Planning Horizon Reasoning for Vision-Language-Action Models
  5. 2026DAM-VLA: A Dynamic Action Model-Based Vision-Language-Action Framework for Robot Manipulation
  6. 2026WARP-VLA: Wrist-Camera Adaptation for View-Robust Policy Execution in Vision-Language-Action Models
  7. 2026FM-VLA: Force-based Memory for Vision-Language-Action Models in Contact-Rich Manipulation
  8. 2026GWM-VLA: Geometry-Aware Latent World Modeling for Vision-Language-Action Learning