CapVector: Learning Transferable Capability Vectors in Parametric Space for Vision-Language-Action Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Song, Wenxuan, Zhao, Han, Li, Fuhao, Zhou, Ziyang, Wang, Xi, Lyu, Jing, Ding, Pengxiang, Wang, Yan, Wang, Donglin, Li, Haoang
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Song, Wenxuan
Zhao, Han
Li, Fuhao
Zhou, Ziyang
Wang, Xi
Lyu, Jing
Ding, Pengxiang
Wang, Yan
Wang, Donglin
Li, Haoang
author_facet Song, Wenxuan
Zhao, Han
Li, Fuhao
Zhou, Ziyang
Wang, Xi
Lyu, Jing
Ding, Pengxiang
Wang, Yan
Wang, Donglin
Li, Haoang
contents This paper proposes a novel approach to address the challenge that pretrained VLA models often fail to effectively improve performance and reduce adaptation costs during standard supervised finetuning (SFT). Some advanced finetuning methods with auxiliary training objectives can improve performance and reduce the number of convergence steps. However, they typically incur significant computational overhead due to the additional losses from auxiliary objectives. To simultaneously achieve the enhanced capabilities of auxiliary training with the simplicity of standard SFT, we decouple the two objectives of auxiliary-objective SFT within the parameter space, namely, enhancing general capabilities and fitting task-specific action distributions. To deliver the goal, we only need to train the model to converge on a small-scale task set using two distinct training strategies, resulting in two finetuned models. The parameters' difference between the two models can then be interpreted as capability vectors provided by auxiliary objectives. These vectors are then merged with pretrained parameters to form a capability-enhanced meta model. Moreover, when standard SFT is augmented with a lightweight orthogonal regularization loss, the merged model attains performance comparable to auxiliary finetuned baselines with reduced computational overhead. Internal and external experiments demonstrate that our capability vectors (1) are effective and versatile across diverse models, (2) can generalize to novel environments and embodiments out of the box.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_10903
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle CapVector: Learning Transferable Capability Vectors in Parametric Space for Vision-Language-Action Models
Song, Wenxuan
Zhao, Han
Li, Fuhao
Zhou, Ziyang
Wang, Xi
Lyu, Jing
Ding, Pengxiang
Wang, Yan
Wang, Donglin
Li, Haoang
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Robotics
This paper proposes a novel approach to address the challenge that pretrained VLA models often fail to effectively improve performance and reduce adaptation costs during standard supervised finetuning (SFT). Some advanced finetuning methods with auxiliary training objectives can improve performance and reduce the number of convergence steps. However, they typically incur significant computational overhead due to the additional losses from auxiliary objectives. To simultaneously achieve the enhanced capabilities of auxiliary training with the simplicity of standard SFT, we decouple the two objectives of auxiliary-objective SFT within the parameter space, namely, enhancing general capabilities and fitting task-specific action distributions. To deliver the goal, we only need to train the model to converge on a small-scale task set using two distinct training strategies, resulting in two finetuned models. The parameters' difference between the two models can then be interpreted as capability vectors provided by auxiliary objectives. These vectors are then merged with pretrained parameters to form a capability-enhanced meta model. Moreover, when standard SFT is augmented with a lightweight orthogonal regularization loss, the merged model attains performance comparable to auxiliary finetuned baselines with reduced computational overhead. Internal and external experiments demonstrate that our capability vectors (1) are effective and versatile across diverse models, (2) can generalize to novel environments and embodiments out of the box.
title CapVector: Learning Transferable Capability Vectors in Parametric Space for Vision-Language-Action Models
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.10903