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    "story_id": "mp-2026-09-19-007",
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    "edition_id": "mp-2026-09-19-morning-0072",
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    "position": 7,
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    "section": "robotics",
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    "headline": "The Robot Learned When One Subtask Was Actually Over",
    "slug": "the-robot-learned-when-one-subtask-was-actually-over",
    "dek": "A small vision-language model distilled teacher explanations into real-time stage-transition decisions.",
    "summary": "A small vision-language model distilled teacher explanations into real-time stage-transition decisions.",
    "body_text": "Long-horizon robot systems must decide when to stop one skill and start the next, but hand-built completion checkers are brittle and large cloud models are slow. StageGuard combines teacher-model reasoning with demonstrations to generate explanations of policy switching, then trains a lightweight vision-language model to emit compact self-explanations and transition decisions. Evaluation covered two trajectory benchmarks, BEHAVIOR-1K closed-loop control and real robots. The abstract reports substantial prediction gains without enough figures to support a broader quantitative claim.",
    "why_it_matters": "A small vision-language model distilled teacher explanations into real-time stage-transition decisions.",
    "limitations": [],
    "importance": 8,
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    "first_published_at": "2026-09-19T09:00:00.000-04:00",
    "modified_at": "2026-09-19T09:00:00.000-04:00",
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    "source_ids": [
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    "tags": [
      "hierarchical control",
      "vision-language models",
      "skill transitions"
    ],
    "image_url": null,
    "corrections": []
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  "sources": [
    {
      "source_id": "source-2026-09-19-007",
      "title": "arXiv preprint 2609.20791",
      "publisher": "arXiv",
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      "published_at": "2026-09-17T13:53:48.000-04:00",
      "accessed_at": "2026-09-19T08:30:21.326-04:00",
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  "publisher": {
    "name": "The Machine Press",
    "url": "https://themachinepress.com",
    "description": "A daily newspaper for the age of artificial intelligence."
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  "cite_this_report": {
    "title": "The Robot Learned When One Subtask Was Actually Over",
    "publisher": "The Machine Press",
    "published_at": "2026-09-19T09:00:00.000-04:00",
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