AdaHVLA: Adaptive Harnesses for Long-Horizon Vision-Language-Action Execution

Abstract:Vision-language-action (VLA) models offer strong local control and instruction following but often struggle with long-horizon tasks requiring persistent memory and planning. Task harnesses provide persistent context for agent reasoning by retaining task history and tracking progress across execution stages. To bring these complementary capabilities together, we introduce AdaHVLA, an adaptive harness that refines code-based coordination policies through robot experience to better align agent reasoning and memory with VLA execution. Its decoupled multiagent adaptation process separates evidence analysis, harness revision, and behavioral assessment into distinct working contexts, using testable coordination hypotheses to guide revisions and subsequent rollouts to assess their predicted effects. A stateful revision graph links execution evidence, hypotheses, revisions, and observed effects, preserving alternative harnesses and adaptation memory to guide refinement across repeated attempts and continued adaptation across tasks and environments. In simulation, AdaHVLA raises mean test success on NaVILA-LH from 22.5\% to as high as 57.5\% and improves manipulation test success across three VLA backbones by up to 30.8 percentage points over the initial harness. Real-world deployment further illustrates how the adapted policies support stable execution across task stages.

Robotics (cs.RO)

arXiv:2609.29204 [cs.RO]

(or arXiv:2609.29204v1 [cs.RO] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.29204 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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