# Dream to Manipulate: Compositional World Models Empowering Robot Imitation Learning with Imagination

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.14957 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.14957/

## Key facts

- Cited by 45 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Embodied and robot world models, one of 11 directions in World models.
- Builds on 73 of its 87 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Dec 2024.

## Placed in

- World models / [Embodied and robot world models](https://mlsanity.com/wm/embodied-and-robot-world-models/)
- Offline RL and imitation learning from data / [Robot manipulation imitation learning](https://mlsanity.com/offlinerl/robot-manipulation-imitation-learning/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 73)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [SAM 2: Segment Anything in Images and Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00714/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04137/) (2023)
- [Dream to Control: Learning Behaviors by Latent Imagination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01603/) (2019)
- [Objaverse: A Universe of Annotated 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08051/) (2022)
- [World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.10122/) (2018)
- [Mastering Diverse Domains through World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.04104/) (2023)
- [2D Gaussian Splatting for Geometrically Accurate Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17888/) (2024)
- [Mastering Atari with Discrete World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02193/) (2020)
- [Grounded SAM: Assembling Open-World Models for Diverse Visual Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.14159/) (2024)
- [Object-Centric Learning with Slot Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.15055/) (2020)
- [Genie: Generative Interactive Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.15391/) (2024)
- [Dynamic 3D Gaussians: Tracking by Persistent Dynamic View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09713/) (2023)
- [Open3D: A Modern Library for 3D Data Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.09847/) (2018)
- [RLBench: The Robot Learning Benchmark & Learning Environment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.12271/) (2019)
- [GAIA-1: A Generative World Model for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.17080/) (2023)
- [CLIPort: What and Where Pathways for Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.12098/) (2021)
- [SuGaR: Surface-Aligned Gaussian Splatting for Efficient 3D Mesh Reconstruction and High-Quality Mesh Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12775/) (2023)
- [Perceiver-Actor: A Multi-Task Transformer for Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.05451/) (2022)
- [TD-MPC2: Scalable, Robust World Models for Continuous Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.16828/) (2023)
- [Evaluating Real-World Robot Manipulation Policies in Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.05941/) (2024)
- [Reinforcement Learning with Augmented Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.14990/) (2020)
- [Learning Interactive Real-World Simulators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06114/) (2023)
- [DayDreamer: World Models for Physical Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.14176/) (2022)
- [PhysGaussian: Physics-Integrated 3D Gaussians for Generative Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12198/) (2023)
- [Transporter Networks: Rearranging the Visual World for Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.14406/) (2020)
- [MimicGen: A Data Generation System for Scalable Robot Learning using Human Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.17596/) (2023)
- [RVT: Robotic View Transformer for 3D Object Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.14896/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 45)

- [Causal World Modeling for Robot Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.21998/) (2026)
- [Unified Vision-Language-Action Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.19850/) (2025)
- [A Comprehensive Survey on World Models for Embodied AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.16732/) (2025)
- [A Survey: Learning Embodied Intelligence from Physical Simulators and World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.00917/) (2025)
- [World Action Models: The Next Frontier in Embodied AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.12090/) (2026)
- [Evaluating Newtonian Mechanics in Video Generative Models with Real Physical Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02918/) (2025)
- [World Model for Robot Learning: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.00080/) (2026)
- [RISE: Self-Improving Robot Policy with Compositional World Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.11075/) (2026)
- [Robotic Manipulation by Imitating Generated Videos Without Physical Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.00990/) (2025)
- [Exploring the Evolution of Physics Cognition in Video Generation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.21765/) (2025)
- [Real-to-Sim Robot Policy Evaluation with Gaussian Splatting Simulation of Soft-Body Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.04665/) (2025)
- [Generative Physical AI in Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.10928/) (2025)
- [A Step Toward World Models: A Survey on Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.02097/) (2025)
- [A Survey on Imitation Learning for Contact-Rich Tasks in Robotics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.13498/) (2025)
- [Agentic World Modeling: Foundations, Capabilities, Laws, and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.22748/) (2026)
- [When World Models Dream Wrong: Physical-Conditioned Adversarial Attacks against World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.18739/) (2026)
- [Unveiling the Potential of Vision-Language-Action Models with Open-Ended Multimodal Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.11214/) (2025)
- [DMWM: Dual-Mind World Model with Long-Term Imagination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.07591/) (2025)
- [How Should World Models Be Evaluated for Embodied Decision-Making? A Decision-Making-Centric Position](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.15032/) (2026)
- [Object-Centric Latent Action Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.09680/) (2025)
- [Learning 3D-Gaussian Simulators from RGB Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.24009/) (2025)
- [RoboAlign-R1: Distilled Multimodal Reward Alignment for Robot Video World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.03821/) (2026)
- [Reconstruction by Generation: 3D Multi-Object Scene Reconstruction from Sparse Observations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.27106/) (2026)
- [Is Single-View Mesh Reconstruction Ready for Robotics?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.17966/) (2025)
- [Visual Generation in the New Era: An Evolution from Atomic Mapping to Agentic World Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.28185/) (2026)
- [Examining the Source of Defects from a Mechanical Perspective for 3D Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.05901/) (2025)
- [Context and Diversity Matter: The Emergence of In-Context Learning in World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22353/) (2025)
- [World Models: A Comprehensive Survey of Architectures, Methodologies, Reasoning Paradigms, and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.00133/) (2026)
- [EV-WM: Event-Verified World Models for Long-Horizon Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.13053/) (2026)
- [Scan, Materialize, Simulate: A Generalizable Framework for Physically Grounded Robot Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14938/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

A world model provides an agent with a representation of its environment, enabling it to predict the causal consequences of its actions. Current world models typically cannot directly and explicitly imitate the actual environment in front of a robot, often resulting in unrealistic behaviors and hallucinations that make them unsuitable for real-world robotics applications. To overcome those challenges, we propose to rethink robot world models as learnable digital twins. We introduce DreMa, a new approach for constructing digital twins automatically using learned explicit representations of the real world and its dynamics, bridging the gap between traditional digital twins and world models. DreMa replicates the observed world and its structure by integrating Gaussian Splatting and physics simulators, allowing robots to imagine novel configurations of objects and to predict the future consequences of robot actions thanks to its compositionality. We leverage this capability to generate new data for imitation learning by applying equivariant transformations to a small set of demonstrations. Our evaluations across various settings demonstrate significant improvements in accuracy and robustness by incrementing actions and object distributions, reducing the data needed to learn a policy and improving the generalization of the agents. As a highlight, we show that a real Franka Emika Panda robot, powered by DreMa's imagination, can successfully learn novel physical tasks from just a single example per task variation (one-shot policy learning). Our project page can be found in: https://dreamtomanipulate.github.io/.