VLA Handover: Failure-Prediction-Based Switching from On-Robot to Server VLA Models
Overview
This research introduces VLA handover, a method where robots run small vision-language-action models locally and switch to large server-based models only when failure is predicted. Tested in simulation with SmolVLA and pi_0.5 across three of four LIBERO suites, the approach increased success rates by 11-22 percentage points compared to using small models alone, reduced server requests by 49-77% relative to server-only control (with a minor trade-off in success rate), and showed improved robustness to network latency.
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Environment: simulation
“a small VLA (S-VLA) and switches to a large VLA (L-VLA) on a server only when the S-VLA is likely to fail. We formulate the switching as minimizing the request cost under a required success probability and, since this problem cannot be solved directly, propose a heuristic framework that retrains neither VLA. In simulation with SmolVLA and $\pi_{0.5}$ on three of the four LIBERO suites, VLA handover raised the success”
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- arXiv Robotics — research abstractsSignalVLA Handover: Failure-Prediction-Based Switching from On-Robot to Server VLA Models
This research introduces VLA handover, a method where robots run small vision-language-action models locally and switch to large server-based models only when failure is predicted. Tested in simulation with SmolVLA and pi_0.5 across three of four LIBERO suites, the approach increased success rates by 11-22 percentage points compared to using small models alone, reduced server requests by 49-77% relative to server-only control (with a minor trade-off in success rate), and showed improved robustness to network latency.
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