mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

EmbodiedSkills: A Unified Framework for Orchestrating, Training, and Deploying VLA Agents

arXiv 2609.01281 ↗First posted 1 Sep 2026cs.RO cs.AIcited by 2

On the map: Vision-language-action models → Failure recovery and robustness

Abstract (arXiv)

Vision-language-action (VLA) models map visual observations and language instructions directly to robot actions, but long-horizon tasks require more than action prediction. An agent must coordinate perception, planning, execution, progress verification, and recovery as the physical state evolves. An action prediction or a model-generated skill decision does not, by itself, guarantee that the proposed operation is valid in the current state or that its outcome will be verified. We propose EmbodiedSkills, a unified framework that treats each skill decision as an execution proposal: the runtime checks its prerequisites before execution and verifies the outcome afterward. A shared executable-skill interface connects high-level skill selection, bounded low-level VLA execution, and post-action verification within a single agent loop. Because this interface remains fixed, low-level VLA policies can be replaced or adapted without changing the agent loop. The interface also records planning, execution, verification, and recovery events as structured trajectories, which provide supervision for individual components and can support optional online adaptation when interactive feedback is available. We instantiate EmbodiedSkills with Qwen3-VL and OpenPI/pi0.5 on RoboTwin 2.0 and LIBERO. Task-adapted low-level VLA policies achieve an average success rate of 86.20% across 50 RoboTwin 2.0 tasks and 97.40% across the four LIBERO suites. These results establish the execution performance of the task-adapted low-level VLA policies used in EmbodiedSkills. On four memory-dependent RMBench tasks, the same task-adapted execution approach achieves 12.5% average success. The framework provides a trainable and inspectable agent layer for turning these policies into closed-loop embodied systems.

Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Failure recovery and robustness, one of 13 directions in Vision-language-action models. Builds on 35 of its 48 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 1 Sep 2026.

Builds on

35 of 48 references.

Closest ancestors · 1

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025SAFE: Multitask Failure Detection for Vision-Language-Action Models11 Jun

Other references · 34

  1. 2023RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Controlcited by 2,993
  2. 2024OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 2,777
  3. 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusioncited by 2,730
  4. 2023PaLM-E: An Embodied Multimodal Language Modelcited by 2,037
  5. 2022RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scalecited by 2,007
  6. 2025π0.5: a Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Generalizationcited by 1,653
  7. 2023Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardwarecited by 1,490
  8. 2024Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policycited by 1,427
  9. 2023LIBERO: Benchmarking Knowledge Transfer for Lifelong Robot Learningcited by 1,338
  10. 2018QT-Opt: Scalable Deep Reinforcement Learning for Vision-Based Robotic Manipulationcited by 730
  11. 2019RLBench: The Robot Learning Benchmark & Learning Environmentcited by 669
  12. 2020AWAC: Accelerating Online Reinforcement Learning with Offline Datasetscited by 647
22 more
  1. 2021CALVIN: A Benchmark for Language-Conditioned Policy Learning for Long-Horizon Robot Manipulation Taskscited by 564
  2. 2024Evaluating Real-World Robot Manipulation Policies in Simulationcited by 484
  3. 2016The Option-Critic Architecturecited by 433
  4. 2019Relay Policy Learning: Solving Long-Horizon Tasks via Imitation and Reinforcement Learningcited by 380
  5. 2026Fast-WAM: Do World Action Models Need Test-time Future Imagination?cited by 311
  6. 2026Causal World Modeling for Robot Controlcited by 289
  7. 2025π*0.6: a VLA That Learns From Experiencecited by 280
  8. 2025DexVLA: Vision-Language Model with Plug-In Diffusion Expert for General Robot Controlcited by 191
  9. 2023REFLECT: Summarizing Robot Experiences for Failure Explanation and Correctioncited by 171
  10. 2023ManipLLM: Embodied Multimodal Large Language Model for Object-Centric Robotic Manipulationcited by 157
  11. 2025RoboTwin: Dual-Arm Robot Benchmark with Generative Digital Twinscited by 117
  12. 2024Sparse Diffusion Policy: A Sparse, Reusable, and Flexible Policy for Robot Learningcited by 56
  13. 2020A Survey of Behavior Trees in Robotics and AIcited by 53
  14. 2021Adversarial Skill Chaining for Long-Horizon Robot Manipulation via Terminal State Regularizationcited by 44
  15. 2024Automating Robot Failure Recovery Using Vision-Language Models With Optimized Promptscited by 16
  16. 2026AtomicVLA: Unlocking the Potential of Atomic Skill Learning in Robotscited by 15
  17. 2025MoE-DP: An MoE-Enhanced Diffusion Policy for Robust Long-Horizon Robotic Manipulation with Skill Decomposition and Failure Recoverycited by 9
  18. 2026Abstracting Robot Manipulation Skills via Mixture-of-Experts Diffusion Policiescited by 8
  19. 2021Using Visual Anomaly Detection for Task Execution Monitoringcited by 7
  20. 2026PLanAR: Planning-Language-Grounded Agentic Reasoning for Robot Manipulationcited by 6
  21. 2025MoIRA: Modular Instruction Routing Architecture for Multi-Task Roboticscited by 4
  22. 2026VeriSpace: Spatially Grounded Action Verification for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 1

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 2.

2 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Towards Long-horizon Embodied Agents with Tool-Aligned Vision-Language-Action Models
  2. 2026CoRE-VLA: Towards Scalable and Robust Vision-Language-Action Modeling via Conditional Routing of Experts
  3. 2025EVOLVE-VLA: Test-Time Training from Environment Feedback for Vision-Language-Action Models
  4. 2026StarVLA: A Lego-like Codebase for Vision-Language-Action Model Developing
  5. 2025Towards Deploying VLA without Fine-Tuning: Plug-and-Play Inference-Time VLA Policy Steering via Embodied Evolutionary Diffusion
  6. 2025An Anatomy of Vision-Language-Action Models: From Modules to Milestones and Challenges
  7. 2025LoHoVLA: A Unified Vision-Language-Action Model for Long-Horizon Embodied Tasks
  8. 2025Efficient Vision-Language-Action Models for Embodied Manipulation: A Systematic Survey