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Robbyant Open-Sources LingBot-VLA as a “Universal Brain” for Robots

Business

Robbyant Open-Sources LingBot-VLA as a “Universal Brain” for Robots
Business

Business

Robbyant Open-Sources LingBot-VLA as a “Universal Brain” for Robots

2026-01-28 16:18 Last Updated At:16:42

SHANGHAI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan 28, 2026--

Robbyant, an embodied AI company within Ant Group, today announced the open-source release of LingBot-VLA, a vision-language-action (VLA) model designed to serve as a “universal brain” for real-world robotics, which helps reduce post-training costs and accelerate the path to scalable deployment.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260127455032/en/

So far, LingBot-VLA has been successfully adapted to robots from leading manufacturers, including Galaxea Dynamics and AgileX Robotics, demonstrating strong cross-morphology transfer capabilities across diverse robot platforms.

The model’s performance was evaluated on the GM-100 benchmark, a comprehensive evaluation suite open-sourced by Shanghai Jiao Tong University that comprises 100 real-world tasks. In tests conducted across three distinct physical robot platforms, LingBot-VLA achieved higher task success rates than other evaluated models. Notably, when depth information was included, the model’s spatial perception improved significantly, setting a new record on task success rate.

Additionally, on the RoboTwin 2.0 simulation benchmark, which features 50 challenging tasks under intense environmental randomization, including varying lighting, clutter, and height perturbations, LingBot-VLA leveraged its learnable query alignment mechanism to integrate depth cues effectively and achieved a higher task success rate in complex scenarios, demonstrating robust performance on both simulation and real-world deployment.

To date, the deployment of embodied AI has been hampered by cross-platform generalization challenges stemming from differences in robot morphology, task definitions and operating environments. Developers are often forced to repeatedly collect data, retrain models, and fine-tune parameters for each new deployment, leading to high costs, low reusability, and limited scalability.

To address these challenges, LingBot-VLA was pre-trained on over 20,000 hours of large-scale real-world interaction data, covering nine mainstream dual-arm robot configurations, including AgileX, Galaxea R1Pro, RILite, and AgiBot G1. This enables a single model, or a universal brain, to be deployed across a wide range of robotic morphologies, including single-arm, dual-arm, and humanoid platforms, while maintaining high success rates and robustness despite variations in tasks, environments, or hardware configurations.

Beyond generalization, LingBot-VLA also demonstrates strong data and computational efficiency. With comprehensive optimizations to its underlying codebase, LingBot-VLA achieves a 1.5x to 2.8x improvement in training speed compared with other frameworks such as StarVLA and OpenPI.

Notably, this open-source release includes not only the model weights but also a complete, production-ready codebase, featuring tools for data processing, efficient fine-tuning, and automated evaluation. This toolchain can help shorten training cycles and reduces both compute requirements and time cost to commercial deployment, allowing developers to rapidly adapt LingBot-VLA to their own robots and use cases with minimal overhead.

Zhu Xing, CEO of Robbyant, said: “For embodied intelligence to achieve large-scale adoption, we need highly capable and cost-effective foundation models that work reliably on real hardware. With LingBot-VLA, we aim to push the limits of reusable, verifiable, and scalable embodied AI for real-world deployment. Our goal is to accelerate the integration of AI into the physical world so it can serve everyone sooner.”

“LingBot-VLA is Ant Group’s first open-source embodied AI model and marks another milestone in our efforts toward Artificial General Intelligence (AGI),” Zhu added. “Ant Group is committed to advancing AGI through an open and collaborative approach. To this end, we’ve launched InclusionAI, a comprehensive technological ecosystem spanning foundational models, multimodal intelligence, reasoning, novel architectures, and embodied AI. The open-sourcing of LingBot-VLA is a key step in this initiative. We look forward to working with developers worldwide to accelerate the development and large-scale adoption of embodied intelligence and help advance progress toward AGI.”

The announcement was made as part of Robbyant’s “Evolution of Embodied AI Week” initiative. On January 27, Robbyant unveiled LingBot-Depth, a high-precision spatial perception model. When paired with LingBot-Depth, LingBot-VLA can leverage higher-quality depth representations, effectively upgrading the system’s “vision” and enabling robots to “see more clearly and act more intelligently”.

To learn more about LingBot-VLA, please visit:

About Robbyant

Robbyant is an embodied intelligence company within Ant Group, dedicated to advancing embodied intelligence through cutting-edge software and hardware technologies. Robbyant independently develops foundational large models for embodied AI and actively explores next-generation intelligent devices, aiming to create robotic companions and caregivers that truly understand and enhance people’s everyday lives and deliver reliable intelligent services across key use cases, such as elderly care, medical assistance, and household tasks.

To learn more about Robbyant, please visit: www.robbyant.com

On the RoboTwin 2.0 simulation benchmark, LingBot-VLA outperformed other models in cross-task generalization

On the RoboTwin 2.0 simulation benchmark, LingBot-VLA outperformed other models in cross-task generalization

On the GM-100 real-robot benchmark, LingBot-VLA outperformed other models in cross-morphology generalization

On the GM-100 real-robot benchmark, LingBot-VLA outperformed other models in cross-morphology generalization

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — A pair of NBA head coaches defended Memphis and its culture Friday following criticism by Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James that the Grizzlies should just relocate to Nashville.

Current Grizzlies coach Tuomas Iisalo and Raptors coach Darko Rajakovic, an assistant in Memphis before taking over as head coach of Toronto, said their experiences did not match the comments by James in a "Bob Does Sports” YouTube video earlier this week.

James criticized Memphis and indicated the NBA would be better off if the Grizzlies moved 200 miles east to Nashville where Tennessee's capital city has Vanderbilt University, NASCAR and even the NHL's Predators. He even said he might have opted to say he wouldn't play in Memphis if the Grizzlies had the first pick in the 2003 draft.

“I can say from my own perspective that I have the complete opposite — 180-degree perspective on that,” Iisalo said. “The Memphis where we have arrived less than two years ago has been very warm. Very welcoming.”

Rajakovic added: “I don't care what the rest of the world thinks. I love the people of Memphis. I love the food. I love every single time I come over here.”

James' criticism included NBA players having nothing to do when teams arrive in Memphis for games.

“In Memphis on a (expletive) random (expletive) Thursday," James said. "I’m not even the first guy to talk about it in the NBA, like, ‘You guys have to move. Go over to Nashville.’”

The Raptors arrived in Memphis a day before Friday night's game and visited St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, which treats childhood cancer patients at no charge to families. Rajakovic called the visit inspiring with his players thanking him for taking them to the hospital to meet patients.

The coaches of the Grizzlies and Raptors have short ties to Memphis with Iisalo in just his second season and first as head coach. Iisalo said Memphis features one of the NBA's most passionate fan bases with the city rallying behind its team.

"All I can say is Memphis is the right place for the Grizzlies,” Iisalo said.

AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA

Toronto Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic directs his team against the Detroit Pistons during the first half of an NBA basketball game Tuesday, March 31, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Duane Burleson)

Toronto Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic directs his team against the Detroit Pistons during the first half of an NBA basketball game Tuesday, March 31, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Duane Burleson)

Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James, left, talks to guard Bronny James during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Tuesday, March 31, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James, left, talks to guard Bronny James during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Tuesday, March 31, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Memphis Grizzlies head coach Tuomas Iisalo watches play against the Atlanta Hawks during the first half of an NBA basketball game, Monday, March 23, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Memphis Grizzlies head coach Tuomas Iisalo watches play against the Atlanta Hawks during the first half of an NBA basketball game, Monday, March 23, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

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