NovaPlan: Zero-Shot Long-Horizon Manipulation via Closed-Loop Video Language Planning

Abstract

Solving complex long-horizon robotic tasks requires joint reasoning over abstract task structure and low-level physical interaction. While combining Vision-Language Models (VLMs) and video generation models offers a promising path for zero-shot planning, their individual tendencies to hallucinate physics or violate geometric consistency often compound over time, preventing reliable real-world execution. We introduce NovaPlan, a hierarchical framework that enables robust, zero-shot long-horizon manipulation by systematically proposing, verifying, and repairing visual plans. At the high level, a VLM planner decomposes tasks and filters out dynamically inconsistent futures by verifying multiple candidate video rollouts. To translate these imagined futures into reliable physical actions, NovaPlan utilizes a hybrid geometric representation that adaptively switches between object-centric flow and human hand flow. Finally, NovaPlan closes the loop by continuously monitoring execution to verify outcomes and synthesize local, non-prehensile corrective behaviors, such as fingertip poking, when failures occur. Across diverse multi-stage tasks, NovaPlan substantially outperforms prior zero-shot systems, achieving complex assembly and dexterous error recovery entirely without task-specific training or demonstrations. Please visit our project website for additional results: https://nova-plan.github.io/