# Recompose and Refine Latent Reasoning Flows for Vision-Language-Action Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.12090 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.12090/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (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 9 of its 27 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Oct 2026.

## Placed in

- Vision-language-action models / [Reasoning and chain-of-thought in VLA](https://mlsanity.com/vla/reasoning-and-chain-of-thought-in-vla/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [Robotic Control via Embodied Chain-of-Thought Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08693/) (2024)
- [SAM2Act: Integrating Visual Foundation Model with A Memory Architecture for Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.18564/) (2025)
- [ReMem-VLA: Empowering Vision-Language-Action Model with Memory via Dual-Level Recurrent Queries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.12942/) (2026)
- [Recurrent-Depth VLA: Implicit Test-Time Compute Scaling of Vision-Language-Action Models via Latent Iterative Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.07845/) (2026)
- [MemoryVLA++: Temporal Modeling via Memory and Imagination in Vision-Language-Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.09827/) (2026)
- [μVLA: On Recurrent Memory for Partially Observable Manipulation in VLA Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.12497/) (2026)
- [Dual Latent Memory in Vision-Language-Action Models for Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.07608/) (2026)
- [WeaveLA: Event Driven Cross-Subtask Latent Memory Weaving for Repetitive Robot Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.17463/) (2026)
- [TFP: Temporally Conditioned Memory-Fusion Policies for Visuomotor Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.08283/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Latent reasoning enables vision-language-action (VLA) models to transform multimodal observations into task-relevant internal states before generating continuous robot actions. While existing methods learn to generate or refine such states for each policy query, they discard successful reasoning after execution and therefore reconstruct similar computation from scratch. We present Reasoning and Flow Memory (FLOWMEM), a unified VLA model that turns successful latent computation into reusable reasoning experience. Rather than appending a fixed retrieved context, FLOWMEM dynamically retrieves and recomposes compatible latent fragments as the embodied context evolves, forming a reasoning route that follows the temporal structure and progress of successful computation. The route is then refined using current visual and proprioceptive evidence before it conditions action generation. Experiments on RoboMME and LIBERO-Plus show that FLOWMEM attains 48.0% and 77.3% success, outperforming memory-free policies by 1.7 and 4.1 percentage points, respectively. These results demonstrate the value of reusing successful latent computation for closed-loop VLA control.
