mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Learning Massively Multitask World Models for Continuous Control

arXiv 2511.19584 ↗First posted 24 Nov 2025cs.LG cs.CV cs.ROcited by 12

On the map: World models → Latent dynamics models and model-based RL

also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)

General-purpose control demands agents that act across many tasks and embodiments, yet research on reinforcement learning (RL) for continuous control remains dominated by single-task or offline regimes, reinforcing a view that online RL does not scale. Inspired by the foundation model recipe (large-scale pretraining followed by light RL) we ask whether a single agent can be trained on hundreds of tasks with online interaction. To accelerate research in this direction, we introduce a new benchmark with 200 diverse tasks spanning many domains and embodiments, each with language instructions, demonstrations, and optionally image observations. We then present Newt, a language-conditioned multitask world model that is first pretrained on demonstrations to acquire task-aware representations and action priors, and then jointly optimized with online interaction across all tasks. Experiments show that Newt yields better multitask performance and data-efficiency than a set of strong baselines, exhibits strong open-loop control, and enables rapid adaptation to unseen tasks. We release our environments, demonstrations, code for training and evaluation, as well as 200+ checkpoints.

Key facts. Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Latent dynamics models and model-based RL, one of 11 directions in World models. Builds on 74 of its 97 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 24 Nov 2025.

Builds on

74 of 97 references.

Closest ancestors · 5

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023TD-MPC2: Scalable, Robust World Models for Continuous Control25 Oct
  2. 2023Finetuning Offline World Models in the Real World24 Oct
  3. 2023A Generalist Dynamics Model for Control18 May
  4. 2023Mastering Diverse Domains through World Models10 Jan
  5. 2020Planning to Explore via Self-Supervised World Models12 May

Other references · 69

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 60,361
  2. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,744
  3. 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 15,215
  4. 2023DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervisioncited by 7,974
  5. 2025DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learningcited by 6,330
  6. 2016Layer Normalizationcited by 5,669
  7. 2020Bootstrap your own latent: A new approach to self-supervised Learningcited by 4,750
  8. 2017Neural Discrete Representation Learningcited by 4,712
  9. 2015Continuous control with deep reinforcement learningcited by 3,407
  10. 2023RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Controlcited by 3,080
  11. 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusioncited by 2,838
  12. 2018Addressing Function Approximation Error in Actor-Critic Methodscited by 2,417
38 more
  1. 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,407
  2. 2016Generative Adversarial Imitation Learningcited by 1,597
  3. 2024Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policycited by 1,484
  4. 2023LIBERO: Benchmarking Knowledge Transfer for Lifelong Robot Learningcited by 1,410
  5. 2019Mastering Atari, Go, Chess and Shogi by Planning with a Learned Modelcited by 1,353
  6. 2018Learning Latent Dynamics for Planning from Pixelscited by 1,264
  7. 2019Meta-World: A Benchmark and Evaluation for Multi-Task and Meta Reinforcement Learningcited by 1,204
  8. 2017Curiosity-driven Exploration by Self-supervised Predictioncited by 1,194
  9. 2019Habitat: A Platform for Embodied AI Researchcited by 1,191
  10. 2019Dota 2 with Large Scale Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 1,103
  11. 2017AI2-THOR: An Interactive 3D Environment for Visual AIcited by 869
  12. 2022A Generalist Agentcited by 808
  13. 2019Advantage-Weighted Regression: Simple and Scalable Off-Policy Reinforcement Learningcited by 782
  14. 2017A Distributional Perspective on Reinforcement Learningcited by 765
  15. 2020CURL: Contrastive Unsupervised Representations for Reinforcement Learningcited by 760
  16. 2017Learning Complex Dexterous Manipulation with Deep Reinforcement Learning and Demonstrationscited by 715
  17. 2016Unifying Count-Based Exploration and Intrinsic Motivationcited by 639
  18. 2020Image Augmentation Is All You Need: Regularizing Deep Reinforcement Learning from Pixelscited by 585
  19. 2022BC-Z: Zero-Shot Task Generalization with Robotic Imitation Learningcited by 523
  20. 2019Leveraging Procedural Generation to Benchmark Reinforcement Learningcited by 483
  21. 2017Robust Adversarial Reinforcement Learningcited by 451
  22. 2022Temporal Difference Learning for Model Predictive Controlcited by 397
  23. 2021Mastering Visual Continuous Control: Improved Data-Augmented Reinforcement Learningcited by 372
  24. 2023Efficient Online Reinforcement Learning with Offline Datacited by 363
  25. 2022Video PreTraining (VPT): Learning to Act by Watching Unlabeled Online Videoscited by 345
  26. 2017Leveraging Demonstrations for Deep Reinforcement Learning on Robotics Problems with Sparse Rewardscited by 319
  27. 2021Randomized Ensembled Double Q-Learning: Learning Fast Without a Modelcited by 288
  28. 2020First return, then explorecited by 266
  29. 2024OGBench: Benchmarking Offline Goal-Conditioned RLcited by 238
  30. 2017One-Shot Imitation Learningcited by 233
  31. 2021MT-Opt: Continuous Multi-Task Robotic Reinforcement Learning at Scalecited by 229
  32. 2024ManiSkill3: GPU Parallelized Robotics Simulation and Rendering for Generalizable Embodied AIcited by 229
  33. 2022Multi-Game Decision Transformerscited by 214
  34. 2025VLA-RL: Towards Masterful and General Robotic Manipulation with Scalable Reinforcement Learningcited by 176
  35. 2021A Survey of Zero-shot Generalisation in Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 170
  36. 2022Exploration in Deep Reinforcement Learning: A Surveycited by 166
  37. 2023Extreme Parkour with Legged Robotscited by 164
  38. 2025Crossing the Reward Bridge: Expanding RL with Verifiable Rewards Across Diverse Domainscited by 156

50 most cited of 69 All 69 (JSON)

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 12.

12 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2024PWM: Policy Learning with Multi-Task World Models
  2. 2024LIMT: Language-Informed Multi-Task Visual World Models
  3. 2026From Pretraining to Proficiency: Real-World Subtask RL for Long-Horizon Manipulation with Minimal Human Intervention
  4. 2022On the Feasibility of Cross-Task Transfer with Model-Based Reinforcement Learning
  5. 2025Multi-Task Reinforcement Learning Enables Parameter Scaling
  6. 2025Continual Reinforcement Learning by Planning with Online World Models
  7. 2025ImagineBench: Evaluating Reinforcement Learning with Large Language Model Rollouts
  8. 2024Overcoming Slow Decision Frequencies in Continuous Control: Model-Based Sequence Reinforcement Learning for Model-Free Control