DWMP: Leveraging Dual World Models for Humanoid Obstacle Traversal

Visual world models have shown great potential in learning complex system dynamics. Recent advancements leverage these models as transition functions within Model Predictive Control (MPC) frameworks to solve various control tasks. When applied to robotics, however, they are limited to single-stage tasks such as reaching or grasping, and struggle with multi-stage ones that demand complex sequential planning. In this work, we introduce WorldDP, a world model framework designed for multi-stage robotic manipulation. Our hierarchical approach utilizes a high-level world model as a transition function to optimize for feasible subgoals during runtime, which are subsequently reached by a low-level Diffusion Policy. To further aid in learning dynamics and planning, we incorporate object-centric representations that decouple environmental entities and enable us to plan sequentially with respect to each. Evaluated across several robotics benchmarks, WorldDP consistently outperforms existing baselines, validating that coupling the world model's physically grounded planning with diffusion policy's efficient execution yields superior multi-stage performance.

Learning predictive models of the world enables robotic control through planning, potentially allowing robots to improvise solutions on new tasks. However, large video-based dynamics models lack explicit 3D spatial structure and suffer from geometrically inconsistent long-term rollouts with compounding errors. Emerging 3D dynamics models based on partial point clouds improve geometric consistency but remain sensitive to occlusions and accumulated prediction drift. To address these challenges, we present 3D Point World Models (3DPWM) - a task-agnostic world model that operates entirely in 3D space by first completing partial point clouds and then learning action-conditioned dynamics in this completed 3D scene. By operating on completed geometry, 3DPWM enables reliable long-horizon rollouts and more accurate cost evaluation for model-based planning while supporting adaptation to new tasks. Experiments across different robotic embodiments and tabletop manipulation benchmarks demonstrate that 3DPWM achieves significantly more reliable long-horizon rollouts (100-300+ steps), supports both open-loop and closed-loop planning, and enables successful sim-to-real transfer.

World models, which are predictive representations of how environments evolve under actions, have become a central component of robot learning. They support policy learning, planning, simulation, evaluation, data generation, and have advanced rapidly with the rise of foundation models and large-scale video generation. However, the literature remains fragmented across architectures, functional roles, and embodied application domains. To address this gap, we present a comprehensive review of world models from a robot-learning perspective. We examine how world models are coupled with robot policies, how they serve as learned simulators for reinforcement learning and evaluation, and how robotic video world models have progressed from imagination-based generation to controllable, structured, and foundation-scale formulations. We further connect these ideas to navigation and autonomous driving, and summarize representative datasets, benchmarks, and evaluation protocols. Overall, this survey systematically reviews the rapidly growing literature on world models for robot learning, clarifies key paradigms and applications, and highlights major challenges and future directions for predictive modeling in embodied agents. To facilitate continued access to newly emerging works, benchmarks, and resources, we will maintain and regularly update the accompanying GitHub repository alongside this survey.