Publication Type
Conference Proceeding Article
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
4-2026
Abstract
Existing vision-language-action (VLA) models act in 3D real-world but are typically built on 2D encoders, leaving a spatial reasoning gap that limits generalization and adaptability. Recent 3D integration techniques for VLAs either require specialized sensors and transfer poorly across modalities, or inject weak cues that lack geometry and degrade vision-language alignment. In this work, we introduce FALCON (From Spatial to Action), a novel paradigm that injects rich 3D spatial tokens into the action head. FALCON leverages spatial foundation models to deliver strong geometric priors from RGB alone, and includes an Embodied Spatial Model that can optionally fuse depth, or pose for higher fidelity when available, without retraining or architectural changes. To preserve language reasoning, spatial tokens are consumed by a Spatial-Enhanced Action Head rather than being concatenated into the vision-language backbone. These designs enable FALCON to address limitations in spatial representation, modality transferability, and alignment. In comprehensive evaluations across three simulation benchmarks and eleven real-world tasks, our proposed FALCON achieves state-of-the-art performance, consistently surpasses competitive baselines, and remains robust under clutter, spatial-prompt conditioning, and variations in object scale and height. Project page: https://falcon-vla.github.io/
Discipline
Artificial Intelligence and Robotics | Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces
Research Areas
Intelligent Systems and Optimization
Areas of Excellence
Digital transformation
Publication
Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2026), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 23-27
First Page
1
Last Page
27
Publisher
ICLR
City or Country
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Citation
ZHANG, Zhengshen; LI, Hao; DAI, Yalun; ZHU, Zhengbang; ZHOU, Lei; LIU, Chenchen; WANG, Dong; TAY, Francis E. H.; CHEN, Sijin; LIU, Ziwei; LIU, Yuxiao; LI, Xinghang; and Pan ZHOU.
From spatial to actions: Grounding vision-language-action model in spatial foundation priors. (2026). Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2026), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 23-27. 1-27.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/11186
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://openreview.net/forum?id=fzmittHfq3
Included in
Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Commons, Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces Commons