# Humanoid World Models: Open World Foundation Models for Humanoid Robotics

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.01182 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.01182/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Humanoid and legged locomotion world models, one of 11 directions in World models.
- Builds on 30 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Jun 2025.

## Placed in

- World models / [Humanoid and legged locomotion world models](https://mlsanity.com/wm/humanoid-and-legged-locomotion-world-models/)

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

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Neural Discrete Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00937/) (2017)
- [RoFormer: Enhanced Transformer with Rotary Position Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.09864/) (2021)
- [Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12092/) (2021)
- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09246/) (2024)
- [π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.24164/) (2024)
- [Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardware](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13705/) (2023)
- [World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.10122/) (2018)
- [MaskGIT: Masked Generative Image Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.04200/) (2022)
- [Stochastic Interpolants: A Unifying Framework for Flows and Diffusions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08797/) (2023)
- [Genie: Generative Interactive Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.15391/) (2024)
- [Eyes Wide Shut? Exploring the Visual Shortcomings of Multimodal LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.06209/) (2024)
- [Sora: A Review on Background, Technology, Limitations, and Opportunities of Large Vision Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17177/) (2024)
- [Learning Interactive Real-World Simulators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06114/) (2023)
- [Lumiere: A Space-Time Diffusion Model for Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.12945/) (2024)
- [Pyramidal Flow Matching for Efficient Video Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05954/) (2024)
- [A Survey on Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10647/) (2023)
- [iVideoGPT: Interactive VideoGPTs are Scalable World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.15223/) (2024)
- [AHA: A Vision-Language-Model for Detecting and Reasoning Over Failures in Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.00371/) (2024)
- [Copilot4D: Learning Unsupervised World Models for Autonomous Driving via Discrete Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.01017/) (2023)
- [IRASim: A Fine-Grained World Model for Robot Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.14540/) (2024)
- [Video as the New Language for Real-World Decision Making](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17139/) (2024)
- [Conditional Image Generation by Conditioning Variational Auto-Encoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12037/) (2021)
- [LLM-enhanced Scene Graph Learning for Household Rearrangement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.12093/) (2024)
- [Perceptions of Humanoid Robots in Caregiving: A Study of Skilled Nursing Home and Long Term Care Administrators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02105/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [A Survey: Learning Embodied Intelligence from Physical Simulators and World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.00917/) (2025)
- [A Step Toward World Models: A Survey on Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.02097/) (2025)
- [Physion-Eval: Evaluating Physical Realism in Generated Video via Human Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.19607/) (2026)
- [Self-Evolving AI for Humanoids: Mechanisms, Safety, and Evaluation of Post-Deployment Self-Improvement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.13236/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Humanoid robots, with their human-like form, are uniquely suited for interacting in environments built for people. However, enabling humanoids to reason, plan, and act in complex open-world settings remains a challenge. World models, models that predict the future outcome of a given action, can support these capabilities by serving as a dynamics model in long-horizon planning and generating synthetic data for policy learning. We introduce Humanoid World Models (HWM), a family of lightweight, open-source models that forecast future egocentric video conditioned on humanoid control tokens. We train two types of generative models, Masked Transformers and Flow-Matching, on 100 hours of humanoid demonstrations. Additionally, we explore architectural variants with different attention mechanisms and parameter-sharing strategies. Our parameter-sharing techniques reduce model size by 33-53% with minimal impact on performance or visual fidelity. HWMs are designed to be trained and deployed in practical academic and small-lab settings, such as 1-2 GPUs.