# Vela: Scaling Vision-Language-Action Models with Adaptive Action Curve Parametrization

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.05230 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.05230/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Generalist VLA models and benchmarks, one of 13 directions in Vision-language-action models.
- Builds on 35 of its 40 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Oct 2026.

## Placed in

- Vision-language-action models / [Generalist VLA models and benchmarks](https://mlsanity.com/vla/generalist-vla-models-and-benchmarks/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [Qwen3-VL Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.21631/) (2025)
- [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)
- [Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12213/) (2024)
- [GR00T N1: An Open Foundation Model for Generalist Humanoid Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14734/) (2025)
- [Fine-Tuning Vision-Language-Action Models: Optimizing Speed and Success](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.19645/) (2025)
- [PaliGemma: A versatile 3B VLM for transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07726/) (2024)
- [Fast-WAM: Do World Action Models Need Test-time Future Imagination?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.16666/) (2026)
- [X-VLA: Soft-Prompted Transformer as Scalable Cross-Embodiment Vision-Language-Action Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.10274/) (2025)
- [Cosmos 3: Omnimodal World Models for Physical AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.02800/) (2026)
- [π0.7: a Steerable Generalist Robotic Foundation Model with Emergent Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.15483/) (2026)
- [Neural Dynamic Policies for End-to-End Sensorimotor Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02788/) (2020)
- [InternVLA-A1: Unifying Understanding, Generation and Action for Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.02456/) (2026)
- [Qwen-RobotManip Technical Report: Alignment Unlocks Scale for Robotic Manipulation Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.17846/) (2026)
- [Xiaomi-Robotics-0: An Open-Sourced Vision-Language-Action Model with Real-Time Execution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.12684/) (2026)
- [Adaptive Action Chunking at Inference-time for Vision-Language-Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.04161/) (2026)
- [BEAST: Efficient Tokenization of B-Splines Encoded Action Sequences for Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06072/) (2025)
- [τ0-WM: A Unified Video-Action World Model for Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.01027/) (2026)
- [LIBERO-X: Robustness Litmus for Vision-Language-Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.06556/) (2026)
- [OpenWAM: An Open, Modular Exploration Towards Systematic World-Action Model Pretraining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.07398/) (2026)
- [Mixture of Horizons in Action Chunking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.19433/) (2025)
- [InternVLA-A1.5: Unifying Understanding, Latent Foresight, and Action for Compositional Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.04988/) (2026)
- [MVISTA-4D: View-Consistent 4D World Model with Test-Time Action Inference for Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.09878/) (2026)
- [Reinforcement Learning with Generalizable Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07950/) (2024)
- [ABPolicy: Asynchronous B-Spline Flow Policy for Real-Time and Smooth Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.23901/) (2026)
- [Unified Lexical Representation for Interpretable Visual-Language Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17827/) (2024)
- [GigaBrain-0.7: Scaling Embodied Foundation Models to Emergent Capabilities with a Three-System Architecture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.15875/) (2026)
- [DiffTORI: Differentiable Trajectory Optimization for Deep Reinforcement and Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05421/) (2024)
- [Spline Policy: A Structured Representation for Robot Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.07386/) (2026)
- [B-spline Policy: Accelerating Manipulation Policies via B-spline Action Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.09648/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Most vision-language-action models represent future motion as fixed-rate action chunks, tying temporal resolution and prediction horizon to a fixed output budget. This pointwise representation wastes capacity on highly correlated neighboring actions, leaves temporal continuity and smoothness to be learned implicitly, and forces a tradeoff between long-horizon coverage and the local precision required for contact-rich manipulation. To address these limitations, we introduce Vela, a vision-language-action foundation model that represents future robot behavior as continuous trajectories. Vela combines a compact spline-based action representation with motion-dependent temporal support and a shared action interface for heterogeneous embodiments, allowing a fixed output budget to adapt its temporal resolution across motions. We pretrain Vela on large-scale multi-embodiment robot data and evaluate it on LIBERO-X, EBench, and two real-world long-horizon tasks, egg-cake cooking and potato shredding, obtaining promising results across simulation and physical manipulation. These results highlight the potential of continuous action representations as a foundation for future embodied foundation models. Project page and more results: https://clementine24.github.io/Vela/ .