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arXiv · 2603.22991

Training-Free Interaction-Aligned Visual Token Pruning for Efficient Embodied Manipulation

Jintao Cheng·Weibin Li·Haozhe Wang·Gang Wang·Yipu Zhang·Xiaoyu Tang·Jin Wu·Xieyuanli Chen·Yunhui Liu·Wei Zhang
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Abstract

Efficient visual representation is a central image-processing challenge in embodied manipulation, where policies repeatedly process dense visual-token sequences during closed-loop control. Existing methods rank or prune tokens using semantic relevance, VLM attention, cross-frame redundancy, or motion in the action space. These signals may discard task-relevant regions when instruction-related appearance and observed image motion are not yet spatially aligned. We introduce Interaction-Aligned Pruning (IAprune), a training-free method that treats per-frame budget setting and within-budget token selection as two linked decisions. Semantic--motion spatial agreement guides the choice between Conservative and Aggressive coverage, and the resulting region size is mapped to a calibrated dynamic budget. Continuous semantic and motion responses rank the existing tokens, while geometric residual correction redirects fixed selection slots toward under-represented boundaries without increasing the sequence length. Across four embodied manipulation policies, three simulation benchmarks, and a real-robot platform, IAprune provides a favorable accuracy--efficiency trade-off, matching the unpruned policy on LIBERO with a \(1.54\times\) speedup and reaching \(1.48\times\) acceleration on a real robot. Phase-wise analysis shows that retention gains are largest under tight budgets early in an episode, while fixed-budget analysis confirms that geometry replaces low-priority tokens with boundary and contact-region evidence rather than retaining more tokens. Our project website is: \href{https://chengjt1999.github.io/VLA-IAP.github.io/}{IAprune.com}.

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Jintao Cheng, Weibin Li, Haozhe Wang, Gang Wang, Yipu Zhang, Xiaoyu Tang, Jin Wu, Xieyuanli Chen, Yunhui Liu, Wei Zhang. 2026-03-24. Training-Free Interaction-Aligned Visual Token Pruning for Efficient Embodied Manipulation. https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.22991

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