# From Single Images to Motion Policies via Video-Generation Environment Representations

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.19306 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19306/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 20 of its 38 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 May 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Neural Ordinary Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.07366/) (2018)
- [Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03458/) (2022)
- [Implicit Neural Representations with Periodic Activation Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09661/) (2020)
- [DUSt3R: Geometric 3D Vision Made Easy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14132/) (2023)
- [VGGT: Visual Geometry Grounded Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11651/) (2025)
- [Depth Anything V2](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09414/) (2024)
- [Depth Anything: Unleashing the Power of Large-Scale Unlabeled Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10891/) (2024)
- [Grounding Image Matching in 3D with MASt3R](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09756/) (2024)
- [ORB-SLAM2: an Open-Source SLAM System for Monocular, Stereo and RGB-D Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.06475/) (2016)
- [SplaTAM: Splat, Track & Map 3D Gaussians for Dense RGB-D SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02126/) (2023)
- [Repurposing Diffusion-Based Image Generators for Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02145/) (2023)
- [StyleGAN-V: A Continuous Video Generator with the Price, Image Quality and Perks of StyleGAN2](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.14683/) (2021)
- [Stable Virtual Camera: Generative View Synthesis with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14489/) (2025)
- [Riemannian Motion Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.02854/) (2018)
- [Geometric Fabrics: Generalizing Classical Mechanics to Capture the Physics of Behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.10443/) (2021)
- [Mesh Manifold based Riemannian Motion Planning for Omnidirectional Micro Aerial Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.10313/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Cross-Modal Instructions for Robot Motion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.21107/) (2025)
- [Efficient Construction of Implicit Surface Models From a Single Image for Motion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.20681/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Autonomous robots typically need to construct representations of their surroundings and adapt their motions to the geometry of their environment. Here, we tackle the problem of constructing a policy model for collision-free motion generation, consistent with the environment, from a single input RGB image. Extracting 3D structures from a single image often involves monocular depth estimation. Developments in depth estimation have given rise to large pre-trained models such as DepthAnything. However, using outputs of these models for downstream motion generation is challenging due to frustum-shaped errors that arise. Instead, we propose a framework known as Video-Generation Environment Representation (VGER), which leverages the advances of large-scale video generation models to generate a moving camera video conditioned on the input image. Frames of this video, which form a multiview dataset, are then input into a pre-trained 3D foundation model to produce a dense point cloud. We then introduce a multi-scale noise approach to train an implicit representation of the environment structure and build a motion generation model that complies with the geometry of the representation. We extensively evaluate VGER over a diverse set of indoor and outdoor environments. We demonstrate its ability to produce smooth motions that account for the captured geometry of a scene, all from a single RGB input image.