The paper introduces a novel framework that combines vision‑language model (VLM) generated preferences with the Plackett‑Luce (PL) ranking model for reward learning in reinforcement learning. Unlike traditional pairwise Bradley‑Terry approaches, the PL formulation allows listwise rankings of multiple candidates, enabling the use of different ranking sizes (K = 3, 4, 5). Experiments on Meta‑World manipulation tasks show that PL‑based reward models train robotic policies as effectively as, or better than, pairwise, K‑wise, and RL‑VLM‑F baselines, achieving up to an 86% mean final success rate and matching the Oracle baseline on the Drawer Open task.
By Srivalli Katkuri, Maxwell Kawada, Juan Wachs
arXiv:2602. 19313v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: General-purpose robot learning requires dense, instruction-conditioned feedback that can distinguish meaningful task progress from stalled, failed, or partially completed behavior.
By Shirui Chen, Cole Harrison, Ying-Chun Lee, Angela Jin Yang, Zhongzheng Ren, Lillian J. Ratliff, Jiafei Duan, Dieter Fox, Ranjay Krishna
arXiv:2608. 09853v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: General-purpose reward models are increasingly the bottleneck for scaling robot learning, yet the recipe for learning value-related capabilities from large-scale heterogeneous corpora remains underexplored.
By Dongchi Huang, Hongyin Zhang, Bohan Hou, Siteng Huang, Zhian Su, Hang Guo, Tong Lu, Zhaofeng Xu, Jiahao Tang, Jianfei Yang, Donglin Wang, Peixi Peng, Mingxiu Chen, Deli Zhao, Xin Li
arXiv:2607. 28609v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Computer-using agents (CUAs) are advancing rapidly across the digital world.
By Qiushi Sun, Kanzhi Cheng, Yian Wang, Bowen Yang, Hang Yan, Liheng Chen, Fangzhi Xu, Zichen Ding, Nuo Chen, Jialin Cao, Xingdong Gong, Zehao Li, Kaiming Jin, Xinfeng Yuan, Zhoumianze Liu, Jingyang Gong, Zhangyue Yin, Jiahui Gao, Zhiyong Wu, Tianbao Xie, Jianbing Zhang, Ben Kao, Lingpeng Kong
WorldReward introduces a vision‑language model–based reward system for camera‑conditioned world models, combining action consistency and visual quality evaluation. It processes paired videos by splitting them into action‑aligned chunks, structuring visual evidence, and aggregating decisions through voting. The model is trained on a large, reasoning‑augmented preference dataset and outperforms GPT‑5.5 on a human‑annotated benchmark, improving both action execution and visual quality when applied to RL post‑training.
By Yibin Wang, Zehan Wang, Junshu Tang, Zhimin Li, Yujie Zhou, Jiazi Bu, Pengyang Ling, Feng Han, Zhixiong Zhang, Long Xing, Shengyuan Ding, Ziang Li, Cheng Jin, Yuhang Zang, Jiaqi Wang, Tianyu Pang
arXiv:2603.16065v3 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Reinforcement Learning (RL) has shown strong potential for improving robotic manipulation policies, yet its practical use remains bottlenecke...
By Yanru Wu, Weiduo Yuan, Esteban Martinez Licon, Ang Qi, Vitor Guizilini, Jiageng Mao, Yue Wang