# Tactile, force-aware and humanoid VLA

Area: [Vision-language-action models](https://mlsanity.com/vla/index.md). HTML: https://mlsanity.com/vla/tactile-force-aware-and-humanoid-vla/

## Key facts

- Tactile, force-aware and humanoid VLA: 50 papers on arXiv since 2025 (data through 7 Oct 2026).
- 24 of its 50 mapped papers (48%) cite “ForceVLA: Enhancing VLA Models with a Force-aware MoE for Contact-rich Manipulation” (2025, arXiv 2505.22159).
- 18 of its 50 mapped papers (36%) cite “Tactile-VLA: Unlocking Vision-Language-Action Model's Physical Knowledge for Tactile Generalization” (2025, arXiv 2507.09160).
- 11 new papers 17 Sep–7 Oct.

## Most cited here

- [ForceVLA: Enhancing VLA Models with a Force-aware MoE for Contact-rich Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22159/) (2025), cited by 24 papers here
- [Tactile-VLA: Unlocking Vision-Language-Action Model's Physical Knowledge for Tactile Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.09160/) (2025), cited by 18 papers here
- [VLA-Touch: Enhancing Vision-Language-Action Models with Dual-Level Tactile Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.17294/) (2025), cited by 12 papers here
- [OmniVTLA: Vision-Tactile-Language-Action Models with Semantic-Aligned Tactile Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.08706/) (2025), cited by 11 papers here
- [TA-VLA: Elucidating the Design Space of Torque-aware Vision-Language-Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.07962/) (2025), cited by 9 papers here
- [LeVERB: Humanoid Whole-Body Control with Latent Vision-Language Instruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.13751/) (2025), cited by 6 papers here
- [Learning to Feel the Future: DreamTacVLA for Contact-Rich Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.23864/) (2025), cited by 5 papers here
- [FD-VLA: Force-Distilled Vision-Language-Action Model for Contact-Rich Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.02142/) (2026), cited by 5 papers here
- [FAVLA: A Force-Adaptive Fast-Slow VLA model for Contact-Rich Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.23648/) (2026), cited by 5 papers here
- [TacVLA: Contact-Aware Tactile Fusion for Robust Vision-Language-Action Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.12665/) (2026), cited by 5 papers here

## New (17 Sep–7 Oct)

- [MIM-VLA: Learning Physical Interaction Representations from Gripper Motor Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.08425/) (2026-10-06)
- [AgenticTactileVLA: Contact-Guided Execution-Time Supervision for Generalizable Dexterous Manipulation without VLA Retraining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.04391/) (2026-10-03)
- [ManiPhysicsBench: Physics-Based Assessment of Object Preservation in VLA Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.02802/) (2026-10-02)
- [SimpleTouch: Can Vision-Language-Action Models Master Contact-Rich Manipulation Without Tactile Policy Pretraining?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.02784/) (2026-10-02)
- [Uni-VLaT: Whole-Body Tactile Adaptation of VLA Policies for Humanoid Loco-Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.35450/) (2026-09-30)
- [RawVLA: Embodied Neural Image Signal Processor For Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.37530/) (2026-09-29)
- [Humanoid Loco-Manipulation With Discrete VLA Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.35709/) (2026-09-28)
- [Opt2VLA: Force-Aware Vision-Language-Action for Contact-Rich Humanoid Whole-Body Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.23968/) (2026-09-21)
- [CompVLA: A Variable Compliance Vision-Language-Action Model for Contact-rich Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.23614/) (2026-09-20)
- [VT-Bridge: Bridging Pretrained Foundation VLAs to VTLAs via Lightweight Residual Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.22606/) (2026-09-18)
- [ForeTac-VLA: A Forecasting-Based Tactile-Vision-Language-Action Model for Contact-Rich Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.20980/) (2026-09-17)