arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 22

Beyond Appearance Shifts: Task-Semantic Action Calibration for VLA Models

The paper introduces BAS‑VLA, a task‑semantic action calibration framework for vision‑language‑action models that addresses two failure modes: unnecessary action drift under appearance changes and insufficient behavioral change under semantic alterations. BAS‑VLA uses a breaking‑centered calibration core and a selective evidence‑gated preserving auxiliary to maintain performance on clean and semantics‑preserving conditions while suppressing stale‑task behavior. Experiments on OpenPI‑pi0.5 and LIBERO‑Object Milk‑Swap show high success rates on clean and preserved tasks, a dramatic drop under target‑object swaps, and improved robustness to style shifts from 42% to 70% without harming clean performance.

By Shuaijun Liu, Feiyang You, Chengyu Wu, Shuyang Hao, Chenglong Zhang, Jingyao Cai, Xingwei Chen, Ningxin Su
arXiv AI
Sep 2

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

EmbodiedSkills is a unified framework that treats each skill decision as an execution proposal, checking prerequisites and verifying outcomes during long‑horizon vision‑language‑action tasks. It connects high‑level skill selection, bounded low‑level VLA execution, and post‑action verification through a fixed executable‑skill interface, enabling easy replacement of low‑level policies and recording of structured trajectories for supervision and adaptation. Instantiated with Qwen3‑VL and OpenPI/pi0.5 on RoboTwin 2.0 and LIBERO, the framework achieves high success rates (86.20% and 97.40% respectively) and demonstrates effective memory‑dependent task performance.

By Wei Wang, Wenqiao Zhang, Yutong Lin, Yuqian Yuan, Tianwei Lin, Jinhao Mao, Zhenxuan Fan, Mingjian Gao, Yang Dai, Wentong Li, Zheqi Lv, Zheng Dong, Yingjie Niu, Jiaqi Zhu, Jun Xiao, Chao Li, Yueting Zhuang
arXiv Computer Vision
3d ago

When Vision Overrides Language: Evaluating and Mitigating Counterfactual Failures in VLAs

Vision‑Language‑Action models (VLAs) often fail to follow language instructions because they rely on vision shortcuts learned from biased datasets. The authors introduce LIBERO‑CF, a counterfactual benchmark that tests language following by providing alternative task instructions for the same scene layouts, revealing widespread counterfactual failures. They propose Counterfactual Action Guidance (CAG), a dual‑branch inference scheme that amplifies language conditioning, which consistently improves language grounding and task success across diverse VLAs without requiring extra data or architectural changes.

By Yu Fang, Yuchun Feng, Dong Jing, Jiaqi Liu, Yue Yang, Zhenyu Wei, Daniel Szafir, Mingyu Ding
arXiv AI
Sep 1

VLA-Trace: Diagnosing Vision-Language-Action Models through Representation and Behavior Tracing

arXiv:2605.30117v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Understanding how Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models transform multimodal knowledge into embodied control remains an open challenge. We present VL...

By Haoyuan Shi, Xiancong Ren, Yingji Zhang, Qinfan Zhang, Jiayu Hu, Haozhe Shan, Han Dong, Jinpeng Lu, Yinda Chen, Yi Zhang, Yong Dai, Xiaozhu Ju