World Models for Robotics

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Overview

World models learn to predict what will happen when a robot acts, giving it a way to plan ahead, learn from imagined experience, and reduce costly or risky real-world trials. Approaches range from latent-dynamics models such as JEPA and Dreamer, often paired with model-predictive control or reinforcement learning, to video-based world-action models that predict future observations alongside executable actions. Researchers also add structure—3D geometry, object-centric states, physics, memory, and tactile or force signals—to handle contact, navigation, and long-horizon tasks. A central challenge is that visually convincing predictions may not follow actions faithfully or support reliable control; balancing physical consistency, robustness, evaluation quality, and inference speed remains open.

Latest papers

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386 papers81 papers in the last four weeks, up 5% on the four weeks before. 0.5% of all new papers.

  1. OA-WAM: Object-Addressable World Action Model for Robust Robot Manipulation

    May 7, 2026Yushan Liu, Peibo Sun, Shoujie Li +7World Models for RoboticsAction-Conditioned World Models

    Tsinghua University · Shanghai Jiao Tong University · Nanyang Technological University

  2. Reconstruction or Semantics? What Makes a Latent Space Useful for Robotic World Models

    May 7, 2026Nilaksh, Saurav Jha, Artem Zholus +1World Model LearningWorld Models for Robotics

    Chandar Research Lab · Mila – Quebec AI Institute · Polytechnique Montréal +1

  3. When to Trust Imagination: Adaptive Action Execution for World Action Models

    May 7, 2026Rui Wang, Yue Zhang, Canyang Chen +3Long-Horizon Robotic ManipulationWorld Models for Robotics

    Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China · The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

  4. EA-WM: Event-Aware Generative World Model with Structured Kinematic-to-Visual Action Fields

    May 7, 2026Zhaoyang Yang, Yurun Jin, Lizhe Qi +2Action-Conditioned Video GenerationVideo Diffusion Models

    Fudan University · Zhongguancun Institute of Artificial Intelligence · University of Science and Technology of China +2

  5. World Model for Robot Learning: A Comprehensive Survey

    Apr 30, 2026Bohan Hou, Gen Li, Jindou Jia +15World Model LearningWorld Models for Robotics

    Nanyang Technological University · University of California, Berkeley · Stanford University +6

  6. 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

  7. Motubrain: An Advanced World Action Model for Robot Control

    Apr 30, 2026Motubrain Team, Chendong Xiang, Fan Bao +17Robotic ControlWorld Models for Robotics

    Motubrain Team

  8. STARRY: Spatial-Temporal Action-Centric World Modeling for Robotic Manipulation

    Apr 29, 2026Yuxuan Tian, Yurun Jin, Bin Yu +5World Models for RoboticsBimanual Robotic Manipulation

    Beijing Institute of Technology · Zhongguancun Academy · Zhongguancun Institute of Artificial Intelligence +4

  9. Unified 4D World Action Modeling from Video Priors with Asynchronous Denoising

    Apr 29, 2026Jun Guo, Qiwei Li, Peiyan Li +7Action-Conditioned Video GenerationVideo Diffusion Models

    Tsinghua University · Xiaomi Robotics · Peking University +1

  10. dWorldEval: Scalable Robotic Policy Evaluation via Discrete Diffusion World Model

    Apr 24, 2026Yaxuan Li, Zhongyi Zhou, Yefei Chen +2World Models for RoboticsRobotic Policy Evaluation

    Current Robotics · University of Toronto

  11. Hi-WM: Human-in-the-World-Model for Scalable Robot Post-Training

    Apr 23, 2026Yaxuan Li, Zhongyi Zhou, Yefei Chen +5Robot Policy LearningRobot Policy Adaptation

    Current Robotics · Tsinghua University · Peking University +1

  12. Open-H-Embodiment: A Large-Scale Dataset for Enabling Foundation Models in Medical Robotics

    Apr 22, 2026Open-H-Embodiment Consortium, :, Nigel Nelson +213Surgical RoboticsWorld Models for Robotics

  13. Cortex 2.0: Grounding World Models in Real-World Industrial Deployment

    Apr 22, 2026Adriana Aida, Walid Amer, Katarina Bankovic +25Long-Horizon Robotic ManipulationWorld Models for Robotics

    Sereact GmbH

  14. Toward Safe Autonomous Robotic Endovascular Interventions using World Models

    Apr 22, 2026Harry Robertshaw, Nikola Fischer, Han-Ru Wu +6World Models for RoboticsRobotic Endovascular Intervention

    Surgical & Interventional Engineering, School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences, King’s College London, UK · Department of Radiology, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taiwan · Department of Neuroradiology, King’s College Hospital, UK

  15. Mask World Model: Predicting What Matters for Robust Robot Policy Learning

    Apr 21, 2026Yunfan Lou, Xiaowei Chi, Xiaojie Zhang +9Robot Policy LearningVideo Diffusion Models

    National University of Singapore, Singapore · Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, Beijing, China · The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China +3

  16. Grounded World Model: Latent Planning with Language Goals

    Apr 13, 2026Quanyi Li, Lan Feng, Haonan Zhang +4Language-Conditioned Robot PlanningWorld Models for Robotics

    EPFL · NUS

  17. WM-DAgger: Enabling Efficient Data Aggregation for Imitation Learning with World Models

    Apr 13, 2026Anlan Yu, Zaishu Chen, Peili Song +6Robot Imitation LearningData-Efficient Robot Learning

    Peking University, Beijing, China · JD Logistics, China · Nankai University, Tianjin, China +4

  18. DexWorldModel: Causal Latent World Modeling towards Automated Learning of Embodied Tasks

    Apr 13, 2026Yueci Deng, Guiliang Liu, Kui JiaWorld Models for RoboticsLatent World Models

    DexForce AI

  19. Morphology-Conditioned World Model for Cross-Embodiment Quadrupedal Locomotion

    Apr 9, 2026Mohamad H. Danesh, Chenhao Li, Amin Abyaneh +5World Models for RoboticsCross-Embodiment Robot Learning

    McGill University, Canada · Mila - Quebec AI Institute, Canada · ETH Zurich, Switzerland +1

  20. World Action Verifier: Self-Improving World Models via Forward-Inverse Asymmetry

    Apr 2, 2026Yuejiang Liu, Fan Feng, Lingjing Kong +6World Models for RoboticsAction-Conditioned World Models

    Stanford University · UC San Diego · Carnegie Mellon University +2

  21. DIAL: Decoupling Intent and Action via Latent World Modeling for End-to-End VLA

    Mar 31, 2026Yi Chen, Yuying Ge, Hui Zhou +3Vision-Language-Action ModelsRobotic Manipulation

    The University of Hong Kong · XPENG Robotics · University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  22. HCLSM: Hierarchical Causal Latent State Machines for Object-Centric World Modeling

    Mar 31, 2026Jaber Jaber, Osama JaberHierarchical World ModelsWorld Models

    RightNow AI

  23. Persistent Robot World Models: Stabilizing Multi-Step Rollouts via Reinforcement Learning

    Mar 26, 2026Jai Bardhan, Patrik Drozdik, Josef Sivic +1World Models for RoboticsWorld Models

    Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics, Czech Technical University in Prague

  24. VLGOR: Visual-Language Knowledge Guided Offline Reinforcement Learning for Generalizable Agents

    Mar 24, 2026Pengsen Liu, Maosen Zeng, Nan Tang +4Offline RLVLMs for Robotics

    National Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University, China & School of Artificial Intelligence, Nanjing University, China · Computational Intelligence Center (CIC), School of Computer and Artificial Intelligence, Shandong Jianzhu University, Jinan, 250101, China

  25. Dreaming the Unseen: World Model-regularized Diffusion Policy for Out-of-Distribution Robustness

    Mar 22, 2026Ziou Hu, Xiangtong Yao, Yuan Meng +2Diffusion PolicyOOD Generalization

    School of Computation, Information and Technology, Technical University of Munich, Garching, Germany · State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology and the School of Science and Technology, Nanjing University (Suzhou Campus), China

  26. Towards Practical World Model-based Reinforcement Learning for Vision-Language-Action Models

    Mar 21, 2026Zhilong Zhang, Haoxiang Ren, Yihao Sun +6RL for VLMsVision-Language-Action Models

    National Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China · School of Artificial Intelligence, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China · Mila - Quebec AI Institute +1

  27. IndoorR2X: Indoor Robot-to-Everything Coordination with LLM-Driven Planning

    Mar 20, 2026Fan Yang, Soumya Teotia, Shaunak A. Mehta +8World Models for RoboticsLarge Language Model-Based Robot Planning

    1Fujitsu Research · 2Carnegie Mellon University

  28. EVA: Aligning Video World Models with Executable Robot Actions via Inverse Dynamics Rewards

    Mar 18, 2026Ruixiang Wang, Qingming Liu, Yueci Deng +3World Models for RoboticsPhysical Consistency in Video Generation

    The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen · DexForce Technology Co., Ltd.

  29. Simulation Distillation: Pretraining World Models in Simulation for Rapid Real-World Adaptation

    Mar 16, 2026Jacob Levy, Tyler Westenbroek, Kevin Huang +6World Models for RoboticsRobot Policy Adaptation

    University of Texas at Austin · University of Washington · FieldAI

  30. NavThinker: Action-Conditioned World Models for Coupled Prediction and Planning in Social Navigation

    Mar 16, 2026Tianshuai Hu, Zeying Gong, Lingdong Kong +7Social Robot NavigationWorld Models for Robotics

    The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology · The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) · National University of Singapore +1