Noise Space Learning for VLA Adaptation

Abstract

Pretrained vision-language-action (VLA) models encode broad manipulation priors, yet adapting them to specific tasks requires balancing limited robot interaction, computational resources, and safety constraints. Noise space learning (NSL) adapts flow-matching-based VLAs by learning a context-conditioned distribution over noise while keeping the pretrained VLA fixed. Building on prior noise-steering methods, we formulate NSL as an interface for VLA adaptation that accommodates different learning algorithms and instantiate it with PPO, SAC, and AWR. Theoretically, we provide an information-theoretic analysis of how NSL enables efficient adaptation. Empirically, we study these NSL algorithms on LIBERO, RoboTwin, and four real-robot manipulation tasks under interaction, computation, and execution constraints. Across these settings, we develop a suite of effective NSL variants and derive practical recommendations for choosing among them under different resource and deployment regimes.