# ATI-VLA: Action-Centric Predictive Vision-Language-Action Models via Actionable Alignment Then Adaptive Injection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.01741 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.01741/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in World model-based VLA, one of 13 directions in Vision-language-action models.
- Builds on 64 of its 73 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Oct 2026.

## Placed in

- Vision-language-action models / [World model-based VLA](https://mlsanity.com/vla/world-model-based-vla/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 64)

- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [BLIP-2: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training with Frozen Image Encoders and Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12597/) (2023)
- [Flamingo: a Visual Language Model for Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.14198/) (2022)
- [Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.06261/) (2025)
- [RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15818/) (2023)
- [OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09246/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04137/) (2023)
- [π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.24164/) (2024)
- [π0.5: a Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.16054/) (2025)
- [Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardware](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13705/) (2023)
- [LIBERO: Benchmarking Knowledge Transfer for Lifelong Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03310/) (2023)
- [Fine-Tuning Vision-Language-Action Models: Optimizing Speed and Success](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.19645/) (2025)
- [RDT-1B: a Diffusion Foundation Model for Bimanual Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.07864/) (2024)
- [Learning Universal Policies via Text-Guided Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00111/) (2023)
- [RoboTwin 2.0: A Scalable Data Generator and Benchmark with Strong Domain Randomization for Robust Bimanual Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.18088/) (2025)
- [Qwen3-Omni Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17765/) (2025)
- [CoT-VLA: Visual Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Vision-Language-Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.22020/) (2025)
- [UniVLA: Learning to Act Anywhere with Task-centric Latent Actions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.06111/) (2025)
- [WorldVLA: Towards Autoregressive Action World Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.21539/) (2025)
- [Latent Action Pretraining from Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.11758/) (2024)
- [Video Prediction Policy: A Generalist Robot Policy with Predictive Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.14803/) (2024)
- [Zero-Shot Robotic Manipulation with Pretrained Image-Editing Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10639/) (2023)
- [Unified World Models: Coupling Video and Action Diffusion for Pretraining on Large Robotic Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02792/) (2025)
- [Any-point Trajectory Modeling for Policy Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.00025/) (2023)
- [DreamVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model Dreamed with Comprehensive World Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.04447/) (2025)
- [Unified Video Action Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.00200/) (2025)
- [DexVLA: Vision-Language Model with Plug-In Diffusion Expert for General Robot Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.05855/) (2025)
- [HybridVLA: Collaborative Diffusion and Autoregression in a Unified Vision-Language-Action Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10631/) (2025)
- [The Lipschitz Constant of Self-Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.04710/) (2020)
- [Predictive Inverse Dynamics Models are Scalable Learners for Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15109/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Predictive Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models aim to improve robotic manipulation via future observation or world dynamics forecasting. However, existing approaches often fail to realize this potential and underperform direct action prediction models. We argue that these limitations stem from modality misalignment between observations and actions, together with joint optimization conflicts that drive learning away from an action-centric objective. To this end, we introduce ATI-VLA, an Action-Centric Predictive Vision-Language-Action framework via Actionable Alignment Then Adaptive Injection. Specifically, it follows a two-step design: 1) Actionable Representation Alignment via a Shared Codebook. It aligns predictive observation and action representations by mapping both modalities into a shared discrete latent space via a unified codebook, making predictive observation latents readily usable for action generation and mitigating modality misalignment. 2) Action-Centric Adaptive Injection of Predictive Latents. Building upon this, it then injects predictive observation latents into action decoding as explicit predictive priors via a lightweight adaptive side-path, enabling adaptive predictive guidance under a single action-centric objective. Extensive experiments on both simulation and real-world robotic tasks demonstrate that ATI-VLA achieves state-of-the-art performance with faster convergence.