Active Inference

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Overview

Active inference models agents as maintaining beliefs about hidden states and choosing actions that both meet preferred outcomes and reduce uncertainty. Common approaches use probabilistic generative models, variational message passing, and expected-free-energy planning, with extensions for hierarchical control, learned world models, and allocation of sensory precision. Researchers apply these ideas to robotics, navigation, social interaction, health, and biological behavior, evaluating them in tasks such as mazes, control simulations, and real-world systems. A central open tension is how to define and calibrate epistemic value so information seeking supports reliable goal achievement without excessive exploration, while keeping inference scalable and models testable.

Latest papers

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42 papers9 papers in the last four weeks, up 200% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. Parameter Learning in Active Inference via Variational Message Passing

    Oct 22, 2026Benedikt WaldeckActive InferenceModel-Based Planning

    University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy

  2. JAXbounce: A Continuous-Control Pong-Like Benchmark for Active Inference Beyond Low Dimensional Environments

    Oct 20, 2026Chaitanya Kaul, Markus Klar, Sebastian Stein +3Active InferenceContinuous Control

    University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, UK

  3. One Agent per Zone: Decentralised Active Inference under Partial Observability for Multi-Zone HVAC Control on Edge Hardware

    Oct 14, 2026Panagiotis Kasnesis, Lazaros Toumanidis, Christos Chatzigeorgiou +2Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning ControlBuilding Energy Management

    Waldiez P.C., Maroussi, Greece · ThinGenious P.C., Maroussi, Greece · PRAESC AI, Biel, Switzerland

  4. What Information Buys in Active Inference

    Oct 13, 2026Melih Kandemir, Mustafa Mert ÇelikokRL ExplorationActive Inference

    Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Southern Denmark

  5. Two Routes to Interoceptive Prioritisation: Dissociating Likelihood Precision and Preference Reweighting in Active Inference

    Oct 13, 2026St John Grimbly, Nicolas Kuske, Evert A. Boonstra +6Active Inference

    Dept. of Mathematics & Applied Mathematics, Univ. of Cape Town, South Africa · Neuroscience Institute, Univ. of Cape Town, South Africa · Delft University of Technology, Dept. of Cognitive Robotics +3

  6. Benchmarking Generative Trajectory Models for Active-Inference Control

    Oct 5, 2026Yulin Li, Mohsen A. Jafari, Andrea MattaActive InferenceGenerative Modeling

    Rutgers University–New Brunswick, Piscataway NJ 08854, USA · Politecnico di Milano, Via La Masa 1, 20156 Milano, Italy

  7. Evidence and Intervention: A Coupled Active-Inference Extension of Rational Speech Act Models

    Oct 3, 2026Yonghyeon Gwon, Elliot Murphy, Chun Kee ChungPragmatic Reasoning in Language ModelsActive Inference

    Neuroscience Research Institute, Medical Research Center, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea. · Vivian L. Smith Department of Neurosurgery, McGovern Medical School, UTHealth, Houston, TX, USA · Texas Institute for Restorative Neurotechnologies, UTHealth, Houston, TX, USA

  8. Belief-Based Maximum Occupancy Principle and Active Inference

    Sep 30, 2026Manolis Mylonas, Rubén Moreno BoteBelief-Space PlanningIntrinsic Reward Methods

    Center for Brain and Cognition & Department of Engineering Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona, Spain

  9. Embodiment-aware control by inference over the operator: a simulation study

    Sep 29, 2026Sara FalconeActive InferenceRobot Teleoperation

    Department of Computer Science, Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems, Pace University, New York, USA

  10. Partner-Specific Affective Precision in Social Active Inference

    Sep 21, 2026Harshil Shah, Andrew PasheaActive Inference

    Mission San Jose High School, Fremont, CA, USA · Division of the Social Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

  11. Exact Fusion and Coordinated Exploration in Multi-Robot Active Inference

    Sep 15, 2026Peng Wu, Mohsen Imani, Amidu Kamara +3Active InferenceMulti-Robot Exploration

    Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA. · University of California, Irvine, CA, USA. · U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Washington, DC, USA. +1

  12. Sensory Precision Inference for Multimodal Arbitration under Uncertainty

    Sep 14, 2026Tin Mišić, Takato HoriiMultimodal RobustnessActive Inference

    The University of Osaka, Japan · IRCN, The University of Tokyo, Japan

  13. Expected free energy as an information constraint on the Bethe Lagrangian

    Aug 17, 2026Wouter M. KouwActive InferenceExpected Free Energy

    TU Eindhoven, Eindhoven, Netherlands

  14. Renormalising Generative Models for Active Inference: Foundations, Derivations, and Verification

    Aug 10, 2026Karim Zaghw, Andrew Pashea, Marc Pritsch +3Active InferenceGenerative Modeling

    University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany · Division of the Social Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA · Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany +3

  15. Interoceptive Attention as Dynamic Homeostatic Prioritization in a Foraging Agent

    Aug 4, 2026St John Grimbly, Nicolas Kuske, Evert A. Boonstra +7Adaptive InferenceActive Inference

    Dept. of Mathematics & Applied Mathematics, Univ. of Cape Town, South Africa · Neuroscience Institute, Univ. of Cape Town, South Africa · MIND Institute and CSAM, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa +3

  16. The Bayesian Reflex: A Predictive Coding Engine for Artificial Intelligence

    Aug 1, 2026Sourabh BhattacharyaAdaptive InferencePredictive Coding

    Interdisciplinary Statistical Research Unit Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata

  17. Perspective Latents as an Architectural Condition for Causal Emergence in Active Inference Agents

    Jul 22, 2026Hongju PaeActive Inference

    Active Inference Institute, Crescent City, CA, USA

  18. Active Inference as a Convex Markov Decision Process

    Jul 22, 2026Nikola Milosevic, Nicolás Hinrichs, Nico ScherfMarkov Decision ProcessesReinforcement Learning

    Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Stephanstraße. 1A, 04103 Leipzig, Germany

  19. Sophisticated Policies from Epistemic Priors

    Jul 21, 2026Wouter W. L. Nuijten, Bert de VriesActive InferenceFeedback Control

    Eindhoven University of Technology, 5612 AP Eindhoven, the Netherlands · Lazy Dynamics, Utrecht, the Netherlands

  20. Expected Free Energy as Belief-Dependent Utility for rho-POMDPs

    Jul 18, 2026Patrick Cooper, Alvaro VelasquezFree Energy CalculationActive Inference

    Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

  21. The SIGReg Objective as Variational Free Energy: A Theoretical Active-Inference Account of JEPA World Models

    Jul 15, 2026Fabio Arnez, Alexandra Gomez-VillaWorld Model LearningActive Inference

    Université Paris-Saclay, CEA, List F-91120, Palaiseau, France · Computer Vision Center Barcelona, Spain

  22. Active Inference as the Test-Time Scaling Law for Physical AI Agents

    Jun 22, 2026Omar Hashash, Christo Kurisummoottil Thomas, Walid Saad +3Active InferenceInference-Time Scaling

    Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Institute for Advanced Computing, Virginia Tech, Alexandria, VA, USA · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA · Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi 127788, United Arab Emirates +4

  23. Free Energy Heuristics: Fast-And-Frugal Cognition as Active Inference Under Uncertain Precision

    Jun 14, 2026Alex BogdanCognitive ModelingActive Inference

    Evolutionairy AI Toronto, Canada

  24. Expected Free Energy-based Planning as Variational Inference

    Jun 9, 2026Wouter W. L. Nuijten, Thijs van de Laar, Bert de VriesFree Energy CalculationActive Inference

    Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, the Netherlands · Lazy Dynamics B.V., the Netherlands

  25. Belief-Space Control for Personalized Cancer Treatment via Active Inference

    Jun 9, 2026Deniz Sargun, H. Bugra Tulay, C. Emre KoksalBelief-Space PlanningHealthcare

    Amazon.com Inc. Palo Alto, CA · HP Inc. Denver, CO · The Ohio State University Columbus, OH

  26. What Type of Inference is Active Inference?

    Jun 3, 2026Wouter W. L. Nuijten, Mykola Lukashchuk, Thijs van de Laar +1Active InferenceFree Energy Principle

    Department of Electrical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, the Netherlands · Lazy Dynamics, Utrecht, the Netherlands

  27. Active Inference for Adaptive Traffic Signal Control in Noisy Nonstationary IoT Environments

    May 31, 2026Dénes Toth, George Ambroladze, Edwin Sundberg +2Intelligent Transportation SystemsActive Inference

    Department of Computer Systems and Sciences, Stockholm University, Stockholm 164 25, Sweden

  28. Learning U-Statistics with Active Inference

    May 12, 2026Xiaoning Wang, Yuyang Huo, Liuhua Peng +1Active InferenceU-Statistics

    School of Statistics and Data Sciences, LPMC, KLM-DASR and LEBPS, Nankai University, Tianjin, China · School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

  29. Dynamic Representational Synchrony through Collective Predictive Coding: A Computational Model of Parent-Infant Homeostatic Co-Regulation

    May 8, 2026Yushi Tsubamoto, Takato HoriiComputational Cognitive ModelingPredictive Coding

    Graduate School of Medicine The University of Osaka 565-0871, Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka · Graduate School of Engineering Science The University of Osaka 560-0043, Machikaneyama, Toyonaka Osaka

  30. Flying by Inference: Active Inference World Models for Adaptive UAV Swarms

    Apr 30, 2026Kaleem Arshid, Ali Krayani, Lucio Marcenaro +2Multi-Robot Motion PlanningWorld Models for Robotics

    Department of Engineering and Naval Architecture (DITEN), University of Genoa, 16145 Genoa, Italy · Intelligent Systems Laboratory, Department of Systems Engineering and Automation, Carlos III University of Madrid, 28911 Legan´es, Spain