Learning from the Self-future: On-policy Self-distillation for dLLMs

On-policy self-distillation (OPSD) has proven effective for post-training large language models (LLMs), yet its application to diffusion LLMs (dLLMs) remains unexplored. Existing OPSD methods are inherently autoregressive-centric. They inject privileged information via left-to-right prefix conditioning with token-level divergence supervision, a design that fundamentally conflicts with the arbitraryorder generation of dLLMs. We introduce d-OPSD, the first OPSD framework tailored for dLLMs. Our approach makes two core contributions. First, we reframe self-teacher construction by using self-generated answers as suffix conditioning, enabling the student model to learn from "self future-experience" rather than privileged prefixes. Second, we shift supervision from token-level to step-level, aligning training with the iterative denoising process of dLLMs. Experiments across four reasoning benchmarks show that d-OPSD consistently outperforms RLVR and SFT baselines with superior sample efficiency, requiring only around 10% of the optimization steps by RLVR and opening a promising pathway for dLLM posttraining. The code is available at https://github.com/xingzhejun/d-OPSD.

Exploring Bottlenecks in VLM-LLM Navigation: How 3D Scene Understanding Capability Impacts Zero-Shot VLN

Zero-shot vision-and-language navigation (VLN) has gained significant attention due to its minimal data collection costs and inherent generalization. This paradigm is typically driven by the integration of pre-trained Vision-Language Models (VLMs) and Large Language Models (LLMs), where VLMs construct 3D scene graphs while LLMs handle high-level reasoning and decision-making. However, a critical bottleneck exists in this system: current 3D perception models prioritize pixel-level accuracy, directly conflicting with the strict computational limits and real-time efficiency demanded by embodied navigation. To address this gap, this paper quantifies the actual impact of 3D scene understanding capability on VLN performance. Based on typical VLM-LLM frameworks, we propose statistical success rate (SR) upper bounds for two core subsystems: 1) the slow LLM planner, which relies on topological mapping semantics, and 2) the fast reactive navigator, which utilizes spatial coordinates and bounding boxes to execute LLM decisions. Evaluations using state-of-the-art 3D scene understanding models validate our proposed bounds and reveal a perception saturation phenomenon, indicating that improvements in perception accuracy beyond a certain threshold yield diminishing returns in navigation success. Our findings suggest that 3D scene understanding for VLN should pivot away from strict pixel-level precision, prioritizing instead navigation-relevant core vocabularies and accurate bounding box proportions.

Enhancing Domain Generalization in 3D Human Pose Estimation through Controllable Generative Augmentation

Pedestrian motion, due to its causal nature, is strongly influenced by domain gaps arising from discrepancies between training and testing data distributions. Focusing on 3D human pose estimation, this work presents a controllable human pose generation framework that synthesizes diverse video data by systematically varying poses, backgrounds, and camera viewpoints. This generative augmentation enriches training datasets, enhances model generalization, and alleviates the limitations of existing methods in handling domain discrepancies. By leveraging both indoor/real-world and outdoor/virtual datasets, we perform cross-domain data fusion and controllable video generation to construct enriched training data, tailored to realistic deployment settings. Extensive experiments show that the augmented datasets significantly improve model performance on unseen scenarios and datasets, validating the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

SFCo-Nav: Efficient Zero-Shot Visual Language Navigation via Collaboration of Slow LLM and Fast Attributed Graph Alignment

Recent advances in large vision-language models (VLMs) and large language models (LLMs) have enabled zero-shot approaches to visual language navigation (VLN), where an agent follows natural language instructions using only ego perception and reasoning. However, existing zero-shot methods typically construct a naive observation graph and perform per-step VLM-LLM inference on it, resulting in high latency and computation costs that limit real-time deployment. To address this, we present SFCo-Nav, an efficient zero-shot VLN framework inspired by the principle of slow-fast cognitive collaboration. SFCo-Nav integrates three key modules: 1) a slow LLM-based planner that produces a strategic chain of subgoals, each linked to an imagined object graph; 2) a fast reactive navigator for real-time object graph construction and subgoal execution; and 3) a lightweight asynchronous slow-fast bridge aligns advanced structured, attributed imagined and perceived graphs to estimate navigation confidence, triggering the slow LLM planner only when necessary. To the best of our knowledge, SFCo-Nav is the first slow-fast collaboration zero-shot VLN system supporting asynchronous LLM triggering according to the internal confidence. Evaluated on the public R2R and REVERIE benchmarks, SFCo-Nav matches or exceeds prior state-of-the-art zero-shot VLN success rates while cutting total token consumption per trajectory by over 50% and running more than 3.5 times faster. Finally, we demonstrate SFCo-Nav on a legged robot in a hotel suite, showcasing its efficiency and practicality in indoor environments.

Examining Different Placement Strategies for Indoor Environmental Quality Sensors in Office Environments

Collecting Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) data from an occupant's immediate surroundings can provide personalized insights for healthy environmental conditions aligned with occupant preferences, but effective sensor placement for data accuracy and reliability has not been thoroughly explored. This paper explores various positioning of IEQ multi-sensing devices at individual workstations in typical office settings, aiming to identify sensor placements that most accurately reflect the environmental conditions experienced by occupants. We examined five unique positions close to an occupant (above and below the monitor, right side of the desk, ceiling, and chair backrest), two orientations, and three desk locations characterized by different lighting levels, thermal and airflow conditions. Data on temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide (CO2), particulate matters (PM1, PM2.5, PM10), illuminance, and sound were collected over a 2-week longitudinal experiment, followed by short-term experiments simulating common pollution events such as coughing and sneezing. Principal Component Analysis, Spearman's rank correlation, R2, and Mean Absolute Error were applied to identify the position and orientation that best captures the most information and matches breathing zone measurements. It was found that above the monitor position, facing the occupant, best captures the IEQ conditions experienced by the occupant.