Topic

World models

Learned simulators that predict future observations, so a policy can plan or train inside imagination instead of on hardware.

88papers in 2026-07

7.55%of all cs.RO that month

+2.85ppshare change, last 6 vs prior 12 months

24-month volume

arXiv query: cat:cs.RO AND (abs:"world model" OR abs:"latent dynamics" OR abs:"video prediction")

Presented at reading clubs

These already have a slide kit, so they are the fastest ones to pick up and present.

2026-03-24

VTAM: Video-Tactile-Action Models for Complex Physical Interaction Beyond VLAs

Haoran Yuan, Weigang Yi, Zhenyu Zhang +9 · 12 citations

clubWorld models Tactile & force sensing

2026-02-06

DreamDojo: A Generalist Robot World Model from Large-Scale Human Videos

Shenyuan Gao, William Liang, Kaiyuan Zheng +27 · 96 citations

clubWorld models Dexterous manipulation

2025-09-29

Training Agents Inside of Scalable World Models

Danijar Hafner, Wilson Yan, Timothy Lillicrap · 117 citations

clubWorld models Reinforcement learning & control

2025-07-25

Back to the Features: DINO as a Foundation for Video World Models

Federico Baldassarre, Marc Szafraniec, Basile Terver +6 · 56 citations

clubWorld models

2023-07-31

Learning to Model the World with Language

Jessy Lin, Yuqing Du, Olivia Watkins +4 · 88 citations

clubICMLWorld models

2023-01-10

Mastering Diverse Domains through World Models

Danijar Hafner, Jurgis Pasukonis, Jimmy Ba +1 · 1,333 citations

clubWorld models Reinforcement learning & control

2022-06-28

DayDreamer: World Models for Physical Robot Learning

Philipp Wu, Alejandro Escontrela, Danijar Hafner +2 · 553 citations

clubCoRLWorld models Humanoids & locomotion

2022-06-08

Deep Hierarchical Planning from Pixels

Danijar Hafner, Kuang-Huei Lee, Ian Fischer +1 · 145 citations

clubNeurIPSWorld models Humanoids & locomotion

2020-10-05

Mastering Atari with Discrete World Models

Danijar Hafner, Timothy Lillicrap, Mohammad Norouzi +1 · 1,321 citations

clubICLRWorld models Humanoids & locomotion

2019-12-03

Dream to Control: Learning Behaviors by Latent Imagination

Danijar Hafner, Timothy Lillicrap, Jimmy Ba +1 · 2,186 citations

clubICLRWorld models Reinforcement learning & control

2018-11-12

Learning Latent Dynamics for Planning from Pixels

Danijar Hafner, Timothy Lillicrap, Ian Fischer +4 · 2,029 citations

clubICMLWorld models

2018-03-27

World Models

David Ha, Jürgen Schmidhuber · 1,987 citations

clubWorld models Reinforcement learning & control

Recent work

2026-08-27

SpatialCrafter: Single Image World Modeling with Generative 3D Proxies

Chuan Fang, Lingteng Qiu, Yixun Liang +8

World models 3D & spatial reasoning

2026-08-27

Decoupling Planning and Control for Instructable Agents

Zineng Tang, Kelsey R. Allen, Sjoerd van Steenkiste +2

World models Vision-language-action

2026-08-26

WALL-SS: Scaling Long-horizon World Models via Next-Scale Autoregression

Maeve Zhang, Rain Sun, Xiang Wang +22

World models Safety & evaluation

2026-08-26

Opportunities of Self Supervised Learning for GNSS: Evaluation of a Deep Learning-Enhanced PVT Algorithm

Thomas Barbero, Bertrand Ekambi

World models Navigation & mobility

2026-08-26

PRISM: Projection-Integrated Sampling-Based MPC with Bayesian Cost Tuning for Bimanual Manipulation

Alinjar Dan, Iryna Hurova, Karl Kruusamäe +1

World models Tactile & force sensing

2026-08-26

GaussianDream++: Efficient 3D Gaussian World Modeling for Robotic Manipulation

Yuqing Jiang, Zijian Zhang, Weitao Zhou +8

World models Vision-language-action

2026-08-26

ConfAL-WM: Confidence-Guided Active Learning for Action-Conditioned World Models

Xiang Liu, Sen Cui, Changshui Zhang

World models

2026-08-25

Do Robotic World Models Really Follow Actions? Diagnosing and Aligning Action-Conditioned Generation for Policy Learning

Sixiang Chen, Jiaming Liu, Jixian Wu +7

World models Simulation, sim-to-real & benchmarks

2026-08-25

NVIDIA Cosmos-H-Dreams: Real-Time Generative Physics Simulation for Surgical Robotics

Javier Gamazo Tejero, Lukas Zbinden, Keyur Sheth +7

World models Simulation, sim-to-real & benchmarks

2026-08-25

TrAct: Bridging Robot Control and Visual Prediction with Visual Tracks

Zhi Cao, Howard Ji, Kevin Zhang +4

World models Vision-language-action

2026-08-24

DreamLedger: Where to Refuse World-Model Imagination Using Execution-Settled Credit

Xianyao Li, Ruitong Tian, Rui Min +2

World models Safety & evaluation

2026-08-24

GeoWAM: Visual Geometry World Action Models for Autonomous Driving

Yiren Lu, Xin Ye, Jiaming Liu +10

World models 3D & spatial reasoning

2026-08-24

Reward-Free Continual Adaptation for Resilient Space Robots

Andrej Orsula, Miguel Olivares-Mendez, Carol Martinez

World models Reinforcement learning & control

2026-08-23

LD4WAM: Learning Latent Dynamics from Human Videos for World Action Models

Zhenhao Shen, Jiaqi Liang, Jasper Lu +11

World models Dexterous manipulation

2026-08-23

Beyond Instance Slots: Semantically Rich World Models for Physical Interaction Planning

Juntao Cheng, Jingkai Wang, Yijun Shen +2

World models Dexterous manipulation

2026-08-23

DreamMimic: Learning Visuomotor Whole-Body Loco-Manipulation via World Model

Jie Yin, Xingyu Lai

World models Humanoids & locomotion

2026-08-22

DELE-w0.5: Inferring Action from Future Latent State for Robotic Manipulation

Fenghao Lei, Zhixiong Huang, Long Yang +5

World models Video & generative modeling

2026-08-21

Graph-Operator World Models for Morphology-Parameter Generalization in Continuous Control

Xu Yang, Yiqin Yang, Qianchuan Zhao

World models Hardware & morphology co-design

2026-08-21

IMU-Free Body-Frame State Estimation with Sparse Scene Flow for Quadcopters

Daniel Grønhaug, Sofie Markeset, Mathias Kolberg

World models 3D & spatial reasoning

2026-08-21

ForeTime-VLA: Causal Future-Token Distillation from a World Action Model for Conveyor-Belt Manipulation

Siyuan Ma, Yutian Zhang, Boshi Zhang +4

World models Vision-language-action

2026-08-20

DECOWAM: Decoupled Whole-Body World-Action Model for Legged Mobile Manipulation

Siyuan Ma, Boshi Zhang, Yutian Zhang +4

World models Humanoids & locomotion

2026-08-20

Planning-Oriented End-to-End Autonomous Driving: Architectures, Evaluation, and Emerging Paradigms

Yanchen Guan, Xingcheng Liu, Bin Rao +7

World models Vision-language-action

2026-08-20

World-Model-Grounded LLM Planning for AUV and ASV Navigation Near Offshore Wind Farms

Markus Buchholz, Ignacio Carlucho, Yvan R. Petillot

IROS 2026World models Reinforcement learning & control

2026-08-19

Beyond Multimodal Alignment: Certifying Physical Language through Response Substitution and Ordered Execution

Kaizhen Tan, Xin Xu, Siru Tao +4

World models

2026-08-19

DA-WAM: Decision-Aligned Future Latents for Driving World Models

Ruiguo Zhong, Benshan Ma, Xiaolong Chen +5

World models Navigation & mobility

2026-08-19

Progressive Experience Fusion for Multi-Task World Model Control in Endovascular Navigation

Harry Robertshaw, Maxence Boels, Nikola Fischer +4

World models Reinforcement learning & control

2026-08-19

Multimodal Rapport Estimation in Real-World HRI

Akihiro Sakuramoto, Takato Hayashi, Ryo Miyoshi +2

World models

2026-08-18

GigaBrain-WBC-0.5: A Behavior World Model for Robust Whole-Body Control with Environment Interaction

Ziyang Cheng, Tianshu Tang, Jinxin Lan +17

World models Humanoids & locomotion

2026-08-18

Hydra-0: Action Flow for Generalist World Modeling and Control

Hongyu Li, Bowen Wen, Xinghao Zhu +8

World models Egocentric & human data

2026-08-18

Calibrated Predictive Safety for Heterogeneous Robots: An Action-Conditioned JEPA Framework with Model-Based Safety Shields

Kaiming Zhong, Tianhua Liu, Yue Wang

World models Vision-language-action

2026-08-17

$τ_0$-VLA: a Hierarchical Robot Foundation Model with World-Model-Guided Test-Time Computation

Xiaowei Cai, Yunuo Cai, Bingao Chen +36

World models Vision-language-action

2026-08-17

Orbit-Planner: Towards Latent World Models for On-Orbit Obstacle Avoidance of Satellite Agents

Zhijian Li, Chao Ren, Peijin Wang +1

World models Navigation & mobility

2026-08-15

Low-Rank Dynamics-Effective Latent Carriers for Counterfactual Rollout in Learned World Models

Yang Liu, Yuming Chen

World models

2026-08-15

Evidence of Absence: Cross-Modal Abductive Risk Perception to Sustain World Models When Vision Fails

Cong Xu, Ravi Sankar

World models Safety & evaluation

2026-08-14

Ensuring Safe Physical AI in Urban Mobility via Hazard-Informed Synthesized Envelopes

Alexei Odinokov, Rostislav Yavorskiy

World models Human-robot interaction

2026-08-14

Ontology-Grounded World Models for Failure Diagnosis and Closed-Loop Repair in Physical AI Systems

Kailin Wang, Haoxiang Jie, Yaoyuan Yan +2

World models Simulation, sim-to-real & benchmarks

2026-08-13

hint$^2$: Hierarchical World Models for Inference-Time Temporal Logic Guidance

Moritz Zoellner, Anastasios Manganaris, Ahmed H. Qureshi +1

World models Safety & evaluation

2026-08-13

DreamX-Phi 1.0: Action-Conditioned Video World Model for Robotic Manipulation

DreamX Team, Rui Chen, Xiangxiang Chu +7

World models Dexterous manipulation

2026-08-13

ContactGuard: Pre-Contact Execution Monitoring with Action-Conditioned Latent World Models

Gehan Zheng, Matthew Johnson-Roberson, Weiming Zhi

World models Tactile & force sensing

2026-08-13

S2-HWM: Sparse Event-Structured Hierarchical World Model for Long-Horizon Surgical Robot Manipulation

Shuzhe Zhang, Xin Zhu, Yinling Qian +1

World models Reinforcement learning & control

242 papers in this corpus carry the world models tag. How tagging works.