2 September 2026

Robot control models show improved precision after three years of development

• Vision-language-action models, which let robots see and understand instructions, demonstrated better fine motor control and complex task performance since 2023.
• Physical Intelligence and other companies published research showing these improvements across their robotic systems.
• The model architecture used to control robots is becoming standardized in the industry, similar to how one AI architecture dominated chatbot development.

How it was covered

Understanding AITimothy B. Lee

Since RT-2's 2023 breakthrough, VLA-controlled robots achieved much better fine motor control and complex task capabilities through research published by Physical Intelligence and other companies. The newsletter frames this as an evolution pathway similar to GPT-3's transformation into modern AI agents, with VLA models becoming the industry standard architecture.