Video2Act: A Dual-System Video Diffusion Policy with Robotic Spatio-Motional Modeling
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
- 2025Genie Envisioner: A Unified World Foundation Platform for Robotic Manipulation7 Aug
- 2024RDT-1B: a Diffusion Foundation Model for Bimanual Manipulation10 Oct
- 2024Learning an Actionable Discrete Diffusion Policy via Large-Scale Actionless Video Pre-Training22 Feb
- 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion7 Mar
Other references · 44
- 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,132
- 2019Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformercited by 14,491
- 2020Denoising Diffusion Implicit Modelscited by 9,655
- 2023DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervisioncited by 7,764
- 2016Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localizationcited by 6,690
- 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 5,931
- 2023Sigmoid Loss for Language Image Pre-Trainingcited by 3,048
- 2023RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Controlcited by 2,993
- 2024OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 2,777
- 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,297
- 2022Video Diffusion Modelscited by 2,280
- 2025π0.5: a Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Generalizationcited by 1,653
32 more
- 2024HunyuanVideo: A Systematic Framework For Large Video Generative Modelscited by 1,597
- 2023Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardwarecited by 1,490
- 2024Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policycited by 1,427
- 2025GR00T N1: An Open Foundation Model for Generalist Humanoid Robotscited by 1,167
- 2015End-to-End Training of Deep Visuomotor Policiescited by 847
- 2018QT-Opt: Scalable Deep Reinforcement Learning for Vision-Based Robotic Manipulationcited by 730
- 2024Genie: Generative Interactive Environmentscited by 706
- 2025FAST: Efficient Action Tokenization for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 643
- 2025RoboTwin 2.0: A Scalable Data Generator and Benchmark with Strong Domain Randomization for Robust Bimanual Robotic Manipulationcited by 477
- 2023Learning Interactive Real-World Simulatorscited by 440
- 2024Mobile ALOHA: Learning Bimanual Mobile Manipulation with Low-Cost Whole-Body Teleoperationcited by 377
- 2024TinyVLA: Towards Fast, Data-Efficient Vision-Language-Action Models for Robotic Manipulationcited by 331
- 2019Learning Latent Plans from Playcited by 310
- 2024Video Prediction Policy: A Generalist Robot Policy with Predictive Visual Representationscited by 279
- 2016Unsupervised Learning for Physical Interaction through Video Predictioncited by 256
- 2025Unified Video Action Modelcited by 195
- 2024RoboDreamer: Learning Compositional World Models for Robot Imaginationcited by 187
- 2025HybridVLA: Collaborative Diffusion and Autoregression in a Unified Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 176
- 2023Look Before You Leap: Unveiling the Power of GPT-4V in Robotic Vision-Language Planningcited by 161
- 2023Learning to Act from Actionless Videos through Dense Correspondencescited by 159
- 2023ManipLLM: Embodied Multimodal Large Language Model for Object-Centric Robotic Manipulationcited by 157
- 2025RoboTwin: Dual-Arm Robot Benchmark with Generative Digital Twinscited by 117
- 2025OneTwoVLA: A Unified Vision-Language-Action Model with Adaptive Reasoningcited by 105
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- 2024Video Motion Transfer with Diffusion Transformerscited by 39
- 2024Grounding Video Models to Actions through Goal Conditioned Explorationcited by 25
- 2024Towards Efficient Visual-Language Alignment of the Q-Former for Visual Reasoning Taskscited by 9
- 2023Multi-directional Sobel operator kernel on GPUscited by 2
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Citing papers per year: 2025: 1; 2026: 12.
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- 2026VLA-JEPA: Enhancing Vision-Language-Action Model with Latent World Modelcited by 104
- 2026World Model for Robot Learning: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 42
- 2026Mask World Model: Predicting What Matters for Robust Robot Policy Learningcited by 15
- 2025PhysBrain: Human Egocentric Data as a Bridge from Vision Language Models to Physical Intelligencecited by 10
- 2026HarmoWAM: Harmonizing Generalizable and Precise Manipulation via Adaptive World Action Modelscited by 10
- 2026TC-IDM: Grounding Video Generation for Executable Zero-shot Robot Motioncited by 8
- 2026Hi-WM: Human-in-the-World-Model for Scalable Robot Post-Trainingcited by 8
- 2026SANTS: A State-Adaptive Scheduler for World Action Modelscited by 7
- 2026TwinRL: Digital Twin-Driven Reinforcement Learning for Real-World Robotic Manipulationcited by 5
- 2026Steering Robustness into World Action Models via Mechanistic Interpretability and Optimal Controlcited by 3
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1 more
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- 2026Steering Robustness into World Action Models via Mechanistic Interpretability and Optimal Control16 Jul 2026
- 2026TACO: TActile World Model as a Self-COrrector for Scalable Robot Policy Post-Training3 Jul 2026
- 2026SANTS: A State-Adaptive Scheduler for World Action Models27 May 2026
- 2026HarmoWAM: Harmonizing Generalizable and Precise Manipulation via Adaptive World Action Models11 May 2026
- 2026World Model for Robot Learning: A Comprehensive Survey30 Apr 2026
- 20263D Generation for Embodied AI and Robotic Simulation: A Survey29 Apr 2026
- 2026Hi-WM: Human-in-the-World-Model for Scalable Robot Post-Training23 Apr 2026
- 2026Mask World Model: Predicting What Matters for Robust Robot Policy Learning21 Apr 2026
- 2026VLA-JEPA: Enhancing Vision-Language-Action Model with Latent World Model10 Feb 2026
- 2026TwinRL: Digital Twin-Driven Reinforcement Learning for Real-World Robotic Manipulation9 Feb 2026
- 2026TC-IDM: Grounding Video Generation for Executable Zero-shot Robot Motion26 Jan 2026
- 2026VLA-JEPA: Enhancing Vision-Language-Action Model with Latent World Modelcited by 104
- 2026World Model for Robot Learning: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 42
- 2026Mask World Model: Predicting What Matters for Robust Robot Policy Learningcited by 15
- 2026HarmoWAM: Harmonizing Generalizable and Precise Manipulation via Adaptive World Action Modelscited by 10
- 2026TC-IDM: Grounding Video Generation for Executable Zero-shot Robot Motioncited by 8
- 2026Hi-WM: Human-in-the-World-Model for Scalable Robot Post-Trainingcited by 8
- 2026SANTS: A State-Adaptive Scheduler for World Action Modelscited by 7
- 2026Steering Robustness into World Action Models via Mechanistic Interpretability and Optimal Controlcited by 3
- 2026TACO: TActile World Model as a Self-COrrector for Scalable Robot Policy Post-Trainingcited by 1
- 2026Video Prediction Policy 2: Predict Better, Act Bettercited by 0
- 2026Video Prediction Policy 2: Predict Better, Act Better7 Oct 2026
- 2026Steering Robustness into World Action Models via Mechanistic Interpretability and Optimal Control16 Jul 2026
- 2026TACO: TActile World Model as a Self-COrrector for Scalable Robot Policy Post-Training3 Jul 2026
- 2026SANTS: A State-Adaptive Scheduler for World Action Models27 May 2026
- 2026HarmoWAM: Harmonizing Generalizable and Precise Manipulation via Adaptive World Action Models11 May 2026
- 2026World Model for Robot Learning: A Comprehensive Survey30 Apr 2026
- 2026Hi-WM: Human-in-the-World-Model for Scalable Robot Post-Training23 Apr 2026
- 2026Mask World Model: Predicting What Matters for Robust Robot Policy Learning21 Apr 2026
- 2026VLA-JEPA: Enhancing Vision-Language-Action Model with Latent World Model10 Feb 2026
- 2026TC-IDM: Grounding Video Generation for Executable Zero-shot Robot Motion26 Jan 2026
Similar, not cited
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- 2026DiT4DiT: Jointly Modeling Video Dynamics and Actions for Generalizable Robot Control
- 2025CoVAR: Co-generation of Video and Action for Robotic Manipulation via Multi-Modal Diffusion
- 2026Vid2WAM: Distilling Video Diffusion Priors into World Action Models
- 2025Robotic VLA Benefits from Joint Learning with Motion Image Diffusion
- 2025Pixel Motion Diffusion is What We Need for Robot Control
- 2026Causal World Modeling for Robot Control
- 2026DeVA: Decoupled Video-Action Model with physical guidance for robot policy learning
- 2026SpatialVAM:Spatial-Aware Multi-View Video Diffusion as a Data-Efficient Robot Policy