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arXiv AI By Inkyu Sa, Konstantin Stulov, Rajat Bhageria

ValueFormer: Stage-Aware Value Labels for Online Failure Detection and VLA Post-Training

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ValueFormer introduces stage‑aware, continuous value labels for online failure detection in vision‑language‑action policies. The method uses a 3.5 M‑parameter causal transformer over a frozen DINOv3 backbone to emit per‑frame smooth Monte‑Carlo values for advantage estimation and sharp binary signals for mistake detection. In experiments, reusing teleoperation intervention flags boosts detection AP from 0.38 to 0.82 and flags 95 % of mistakes early; on a bimanual sandwich station, per‑frame post‑training weighting raises task completion from 70 % to 85 % and eliminates a repeat‑pick failure mode.

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