Newest papers

GPT-6-Astra Understands Touch and Outperform Vision--Tactile--Language--Action Models

Ziyong Wang, Yue Lin, Runxuan Huang, Liang Lin, Dongyu Zhang, Guangrun Wang · 2026 · arXiv (Cornell University)

DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2610.28457 · cited by 0 works (OpenAlex) · open-access PDF

Abstract

General-purpose multimodal models have shown promise as direct robot action policies, yet whether they grasp the physics underlying real-world interactions and can apply that understanding to guide action remains underexplored. We investigate this question using contact-rich manipulation as a representative testbed, examining tactile understanding as a concrete instance of this broader capability. Contact-rich manipulation requires interpreting tactile feedback and adjusting actions after obstruction. Existing learned tactile policies acquire these capabilities through specialized pretraining and per-task optimization, with substantial data and training costs. We present GPT-as-Tactile-Policy, which summarizes expert demonstrations into task guidance and tactile references for contact assessment and corrective action. GPT-6-Astra combines this context with multimodal observations and interaction history to generate control commands and adjust actions through contact feedback. Without additional robotics-specific pretraining or per-task policy fine-tuning, our method achieves 93.8\% mean success across five UniVTAC tasks. Overall performance is comparable to state-of-the-art policies, with higher success on selected tasks. On Insert Hole, tactile feedback improves success from 31\% to 99\%. Execution analysis further demonstrates contact-guided probing and correction, supporting manipulation progress through explicit expert experience and online feedback.

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Topics: Task (project management), GRASP, Action (physics), Computer science, Human–computer interaction, Context (archaeology)

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