Blackout vs. Freeze: Analyzing Physical Failure Modes of VLAs under Camera Faults
Camera blackouts and freezes cause distinct hazardous motions in pi0.5 and GR00T robot policies.
Researchers compare vision-language-action models pi0.5 and GR00T under camera blackouts and frozen frames. Freezing produces more extreme joint behavior, while blackout after gripper closure causes more object drops, especially without proprioception. Proprioception reduces non-target contact but does not restore success when wrist-view object information is removed. Camera-blackout training and training-free embedding replacement improve selected success rates yet can increase unintended contact, including in real-robot trials.
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