mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Video2Act: A Dual-System Video Diffusion Policy with Robotic Spatio-Motional Modeling

arXiv 2512.03044 ↗First posted 2 Dec 2025cs.ROcited by 13

On the map: Diffusion models → Diffusion and flow policies for robotics

Abstract (arXiv)

Robust perception and dynamics modeling are fundamental to real-world robotic policy learning. Recent methods employ video diffusion models (VDMs) to enhance robotic policies, improving their understanding and modeling of the physical world. However, existing approaches overlook the coherent and physically consistent motion representations inherently encoded across frames in VDMs. To this end, we propose Video2Act, a framework that efficiently guides robotic action learning by explicitly integrating spatial and motion-aware representations. Building on the inherent representations of VDMs, we extract foreground boundaries and inter-frame motion variations while filtering out background noise and task-irrelevant biases. These refined representations are then used as additional conditioning inputs to a diffusion transformer (DiT) action head, enabling it to reason about what to manipulate and how to move. To mitigate inference inefficiency, we propose an asynchronous dual-system design, where the VDM functions as the slow System 2 and the DiT head as the fast System 1, working collaboratively to generate adaptive actions. By providing motion-aware conditions to System 1, Video2Act maintains stable manipulation even with low-frequency updates from the VDM. For evaluation, Video2Act surpasses previous state-of-the-art VLA methods by 7.7% in simulation and 21.7% in real-world tasks in terms of average success rate, further exhibiting strong generalization capabilities.

Key facts. Cited by 13 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Diffusion and flow policies for robotics, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 48 of its 73 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 2 Dec 2025.

Builds on

48 of 73 references.

Closest ancestors · 4

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Genie Envisioner: A Unified World Foundation Platform for Robotic Manipulation7 Aug
  2. 2024RDT-1B: a Diffusion Foundation Model for Bimanual Manipulation10 Oct
  3. 2024Learning an Actionable Discrete Diffusion Policy via Large-Scale Actionless Video Pre-Training22 Feb
  4. 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion7 Mar

Other references · 44

  1. 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,132
  2. 2019Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformercited by 14,491
  3. 2020Denoising Diffusion Implicit Modelscited by 9,655
  4. 2023DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervisioncited by 7,764
  5. 2016Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localizationcited by 6,690
  6. 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 5,931
  7. 2023Sigmoid Loss for Language Image Pre-Trainingcited by 3,048
  8. 2023RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Controlcited by 2,993
  9. 2024OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 2,777
  10. 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,297
  11. 2022Video Diffusion Modelscited by 2,280
  12. 2025π0.5: a Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Generalizationcited by 1,653
32 more
  1. 2024HunyuanVideo: A Systematic Framework For Large Video Generative Modelscited by 1,597
  2. 2023Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardwarecited by 1,490
  3. 2024Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policycited by 1,427
  4. 2025GR00T N1: An Open Foundation Model for Generalist Humanoid Robotscited by 1,167
  5. 2015End-to-End Training of Deep Visuomotor Policiescited by 847
  6. 2018QT-Opt: Scalable Deep Reinforcement Learning for Vision-Based Robotic Manipulationcited by 730
  7. 2024Genie: Generative Interactive Environmentscited by 706
  8. 2025FAST: Efficient Action Tokenization for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 643
  9. 2025RoboTwin 2.0: A Scalable Data Generator and Benchmark with Strong Domain Randomization for Robust Bimanual Robotic Manipulationcited by 477
  10. 2023Learning Interactive Real-World Simulatorscited by 440
  11. 2024Mobile ALOHA: Learning Bimanual Mobile Manipulation with Low-Cost Whole-Body Teleoperationcited by 377
  12. 2024TinyVLA: Towards Fast, Data-Efficient Vision-Language-Action Models for Robotic Manipulationcited by 331
  13. 2019Learning Latent Plans from Playcited by 310
  14. 2024Video Prediction Policy: A Generalist Robot Policy with Predictive Visual Representationscited by 279
  15. 2016Unsupervised Learning for Physical Interaction through Video Predictioncited by 256
  16. 2025Unified Video Action Modelcited by 195
  17. 2024RoboDreamer: Learning Compositional World Models for Robot Imaginationcited by 187
  18. 2025HybridVLA: Collaborative Diffusion and Autoregression in a Unified Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 176
  19. 2023Look Before You Leap: Unveiling the Power of GPT-4V in Robotic Vision-Language Planningcited by 161
  20. 2023Learning to Act from Actionless Videos through Dense Correspondencescited by 159
  21. 2023ManipLLM: Embodied Multimodal Large Language Model for Object-Centric Robotic Manipulationcited by 157
  22. 2025RoboTwin: Dual-Arm Robot Benchmark with Generative Digital Twinscited by 117
  23. 2025OneTwoVLA: A Unified Vision-Language-Action Model with Adaptive Reasoningcited by 105
  24. 2023Compositional Foundation Models for Hierarchical Planningcited by 92
  25. 2024HiRT: Enhancing Robotic Control with Hierarchical Robot Transformerscited by 72
  26. 2024Towards Synergistic, Generalized, and Efficient Dual-System for Robotic Manipulationcited by 71
  27. 2025WoW: Towards a World omniscient World model Through Embodied Interactioncited by 66
  28. 2024A Dual Process VLA: Efficient Robotic Manipulation Leveraging VLMcited by 44
  29. 2024Video Motion Transfer with Diffusion Transformerscited by 39
  30. 2024Grounding Video Models to Actions through Goal Conditioned Explorationcited by 25
  31. 2024Towards Efficient Visual-Language Alignment of the Q-Former for Visual Reasoning Taskscited by 9
  32. 2023Multi-directional Sobel operator kernel on GPUscited by 2

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 1; 2026: 12.

13 papers.

Sort:

By area:

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026DiT4DiT: Jointly Modeling Video Dynamics and Actions for Generalizable Robot Control
  2. 2025CoVAR: Co-generation of Video and Action for Robotic Manipulation via Multi-Modal Diffusion
  3. 2026Vid2WAM: Distilling Video Diffusion Priors into World Action Models
  4. 2025Robotic VLA Benefits from Joint Learning with Motion Image Diffusion
  5. 2025Pixel Motion Diffusion is What We Need for Robot Control
  6. 2026Causal World Modeling for Robot Control
  7. 2026DeVA: Decoupled Video-Action Model with physical guidance for robot policy learning
  8. 2026SpatialVAM:Spatial-Aware Multi-View Video Diffusion as a Data-Efficient Robot Policy