$M^2$-VLA: Boosting Vision-Language Models for Generalizable Manipulation via Layer Mixture and Meta-Skills

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2604.24182v1
• Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:44:12 GMT
• Title: $M^2$-VLA: Boosting Vision-Language Models for Generalizable Manipulation via Layer Mixture and Meta-Skills
• Abstract summary: Current Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models predominantly rely on end-to-end fine-tuning.<n>We propose $M2$-VLA, which demonstrates that a generalized VLM is able to serve as a powerful backbone for robotic manipulation directly.<n>To overcome this, we introduce the Mixture of Layers (MoL) strategy that selectively extracts task-critical information from dense semantic features.
• Score: 25.17452377052361
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Current Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models predominantly rely on end-to-end fine-tuning. While effective, this paradigm compromises the inherent generalization capabilities of Vision-Language Models (VLMs) and incurs catastrophic forgetting. To address these limitations, we propose $M^2$-VLA, which demonstrates that a generalized VLM is able to serve as a powerful backbone for robotic manipulation directly. However, it remains a key challenge to bridge the gap between the high-level semantic understanding of VLMs and the precise requirements of robotic control. To overcome this, we introduce the Mixture of Layers (MoL) strategy that selectively extracts task-critical information from dense semantic features. Furthermore, to facilitate efficient trajectory learning under constrained model capacity, we propose a Meta Skill Module (MSM) that integrates strong inductive biases. Extensive experiments in both simulated and real-world environments demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. Furthermore, generalization and ablation studies validate the architecture's zero-shot capabilities and confirm the contribution of each key component. Our code and pre-trained models will be made publicly available.

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