Robot Learning from a Physical World Model
On the map: World models → Embodied and robot world models
Abstract (arXiv)
We introduce PhysWorld, a framework that enables robot learning from video generation through physical world modeling. Recent video generation models can synthesize photorealistic visual demonstrations from language commands and images, offering a powerful yet underexplored source of training signals for robotics. However, directly retargeting pixel motions from generated videos to robots neglects physics, often resulting in inaccurate manipulations. PhysWorld addresses this limitation by coupling video generation with physical world reconstruction. Given a single image and a task command, our method generates task-conditioned videos and reconstructs the underlying physical world from the videos, and the generated video motions are grounded into physically accurate actions through object-centric residual reinforcement learning with the physical world model. This synergy transforms implicit visual guidance into physically executable robotic trajectories, eliminating the need for real robot data collection and enabling zero-shot generalizable robotic manipulation. Experiments on diverse real-world tasks demonstrate that PhysWorld substantially improves manipulation accuracy compared to previous approaches. Visit hrefhttps://pointscoder.github.io/PhysWorldWeb/the project webpage for details.
Key facts. Cited by 20 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 67 of its 71 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 10 Nov 2025.
Builds on
67 of 71 references.
Closest ancestors · 4
Same direction, newest first
- 2025TesserAct: Learning 4D Embodied World Models29 Apr
- 2024Predictive Inverse Dynamics Models are Scalable Learners for Robotic Manipulation19 Dec
- 2023Structured World Models from Human Videos21 Aug
- 2022BC-Z: Zero-Shot Task Generalization with Robotic Imitation Learning4 Feb
Other references · 63
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- 2023BundleSDF: Neural 6-DoF Tracking and 3D Reconstruction of Unknown Objectscited by 148
- 2024Reconciling Reality through Simulation: A Real-to-Sim-to-Real Approach for Robust Manipulationcited by 144
- 2024Flow as the Cross-Domain Manipulation Interfacecited by 132
- 2024Track2Act: Predicting Point Tracks from Internet Videos enables Generalizable Robot Manipulationcited by 124
- 2019AVID: Learning Multi-Stage Tasks via Pixel-Level Translation of Human Videoscited by 105
- 2024Automated Creation of Digital Cousins for Robust Policy Learningcited by 91
- 2021Learning by Watching: Physical Imitation of Manipulation Skills from Human Videoscited by 87
- 2024Dreamitate: Real-World Visuomotor Policy Learning via Video Generationcited by 87
- 2020Learning from Suboptimal Demonstration via Self-Supervised Reward Regressioncited by 84
- 2022You Only Demonstrate Once: Category-Level Manipulation from Single Visual Demonstrationcited by 81
- 2018Multiple Interactions Made Easy (MIME): Large Scale Demonstrations Data for Imitationcited by 76
- 2023XSkill: Cross Embodiment Skill Discoverycited by 75
- 2019Third-Person Visual Imitation Learning via Decoupled Hierarchical Controllercited by 73
- 2025Phantom: Training Robots Without Robots Using Only Human Videoscited by 70
- 2025Visual Imitation Enables Contextual Humanoid Controlcited by 68
- 2025Motion Tracks: A Unified Representation for Human-Robot Transfer in Few-Shot Imitation Learningcited by 59
- 2024Robot See Robot Do: Imitating Articulated Object Manipulation with Monocular 4D Reconstructioncited by 54
- 2024RoboGSim: A Real2Sim2Real Robotic Gaussian Splatting Simulatorcited by 53
- 2024Vid2Robot: End-to-end Video-conditioned Policy Learning with Cross-Attention Transformerscited by 52
- 2023Zero-Shot Robot Manipulation from Passive Human Videoscited by 51
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- 2024DITTO: Demonstration Imitation by Trajectory Transformationcited by 30
50 most cited of 63 All 63 (JSON)
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Citing papers per year: 2025: 1; 2026: 19.
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- 2026World Action Models: The Next Frontier in Embodied AIcited by 50
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- 2026MVISTA-4D: View-Consistent 4D World Model with Test-Time Action Inference for Robotic Manipulationcited by 17
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- 2026Robot Learning from Human Videos: A Survey30 Apr 2026
- 20263D Generation for Embodied AI and Robotic Simulation: A Survey29 Apr 2026
8 more
- 2026OpenWorldLib: A Unified Codebase and Definition of Advanced World Models6 Apr 2026
- 2026CRAFT: Video Diffusion for Bimanual Robot Data Generation4 Apr 2026
- 2026DreamPlan: Efficient Reinforcement Fine-Tuning of Vision-Language Planners via Video World Models17 Mar 2026
- 2026Large Reward Models: Generalizable Online Robot Reward Generation with Vision-Language Models17 Mar 2026
- 2026SimToolReal: An Object-Centric Policy for Zero-Shot Dexterous Tool Manipulation18 Feb 2026
- 2026FlowHOI: Flow-based Semantics-Grounded Generation of Hand-Object Interactions for Dexterous Robot Manipulation13 Feb 2026
- 2026MVISTA-4D: View-Consistent 4D World Model with Test-Time Action Inference for Robotic Manipulation10 Feb 2026
- 2025WorldPack: Dynamic Frame Compression for Long-context Video World Modeling2 Dec 2025
- 2026World Action Models: The Next Frontier in Embodied AIcited by 50
- 2026World Model for Robot Learning: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 46
- 2026MVISTA-4D: View-Consistent 4D World Model with Test-Time Action Inference for Robotic Manipulationcited by 17
- 2026World Action Models: A Surveycited by 12
- 2025WorldPack: Dynamic Frame Compression for Long-context Video World Modelingcited by 8
- 2026RoboAlign-R1: Distilled Multimodal Reward Alignment for Robot Video World Modelscited by 8
- 2026DreamPlan: Efficient Reinforcement Fine-Tuning of Vision-Language Planners via Video World Modelscited by 5
- 2026OpenWorldLib: A Unified Codebase and Definition of Advanced World Modelscited by 3
- 2026ChronoAgentic: A Code-based Multi-Agent World Simulator for Physically Grounded Simulation Constructioncited by 2
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- 2026World Models for Embodied Intelligence: From Plausible to Controllable to Actionable15 Sep 2026
- 2026Toward Unified Robot Learning: Bridging Representation, Vision-Language-Action, and World Models3 Sep 2026
- 2026World Action Models: A Survey18 Jun 2026
- 2026ChronoAgentic: A Code-based Multi-Agent World Simulator for Physically Grounded Simulation Construction14 May 2026
- 2026World Action Models: The Next Frontier in Embodied AI12 May 2026
- 2026RoboAlign-R1: Distilled Multimodal Reward Alignment for Robot Video World Models5 May 2026
- 2026World Model for Robot Learning: A Comprehensive Survey30 Apr 2026
- 2026OpenWorldLib: A Unified Codebase and Definition of Advanced World Models6 Apr 2026
- 2026DreamPlan: Efficient Reinforcement Fine-Tuning of Vision-Language Planners via Video World Models17 Mar 2026
- 2026MVISTA-4D: View-Consistent 4D World Model with Test-Time Action Inference for Robotic Manipulation10 Feb 2026
- 2025WorldPack: Dynamic Frame Compression for Long-context Video World Modeling2 Dec 2025
- 2026Vesta: A Generalist Embodied Reasoning Modelcited by 5
- 2026Vesta: A Generalist Embodied Reasoning Model18 Jun 2026
- 2026SimToolReal: An Object-Centric Policy for Zero-Shot Dexterous Tool Manipulationcited by 15
- 2026FlowHOI: Flow-based Semantics-Grounded Generation of Hand-Object Interactions for Dexterous Robot Manipulationcited by 7
- 2026Robot Learning from Human Videos: A Surveycited by 5
- 20263D Generation for Embodied AI and Robotic Simulation: A Surveycited by 1
- 2026PhysFlow: Physics-Aware Optical Flow for Motion Controllable Video Generationcited by 0
- 2026CASTER: Formalizing Zero-Shot Manipulation from Synthetic Videos as Constrained Optimizationcited by 0
- 2026CASTER: Formalizing Zero-Shot Manipulation from Synthetic Videos as Constrained Optimization8 Oct 2026
- 2026PhysFlow: Physics-Aware Optical Flow for Motion Controllable Video Generation8 Sep 2026
- 2026Robot Learning from Human Videos: A Survey30 Apr 2026
- 20263D Generation for Embodied AI and Robotic Simulation: A Survey29 Apr 2026
- 2026SimToolReal: An Object-Centric Policy for Zero-Shot Dexterous Tool Manipulation18 Feb 2026
- 2026FlowHOI: Flow-based Semantics-Grounded Generation of Hand-Object Interactions for Dexterous Robot Manipulation13 Feb 2026
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