# World Models for Learning Dexterous Hand-Object Interactions from Human Videos

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.13644 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.13644/

## Key facts

- Cited by 31 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 77 of its 97 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Dec 2025.

## Placed in

- World models / [Embodied and robot world models](https://mlsanity.com/wm/embodied-and-robot-world-models/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 77)

- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [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)
- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03003/) (2022)
- [Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04137/) (2023)
- [CogVideoX: Text-to-Video Diffusion Models with An Expert Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06072/) (2024)
- [Dream to Control: Learning Behaviors by Latent Imagination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01603/) (2019)
- [Ego4D: Around the World in 3,000 Hours of Egocentric Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.07058/) (2021)
- [Align your Latents: High-Resolution Video Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08818/) (2023)
- [DINOv3](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10104/) (2025)
- [GR00T N1: An Open Foundation Model for Generalist Humanoid Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14734/) (2025)
- [SigLIP 2: Multilingual Vision-Language Encoders with Improved Semantic Understanding, Localization, and Dense Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.14786/) (2025)
- [CogVideo: Large-scale Pretraining for Text-to-Video Generation via Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15868/) (2022)
- [WorldSimBench: Towards Video Generation Models as World Simulators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.18072/) (2024)
- [Cosmos World Foundation Model Platform for Physical AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.03575/) (2025)
- [DROID: A Large-Scale In-The-Wild Robot Manipulation Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12945/) (2024)
- [V-JEPA 2: Self-Supervised Video Models Enable Understanding, Prediction and Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09985/) (2025)
- [Genie: Generative Interactive Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.15391/) (2024)
- [Solving Rubik's Cube with a Robot Hand](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.07113/) (2019)
- [Diffusion Forcing: Next-token Prediction Meets Full-Sequence Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.01392/) (2024)
- [VideoGPT: Video Generation using VQ-VAE and Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10157/) (2021)
- [Open-Sora: Democratizing Efficient Video Production for All](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.20404/) (2024)
- [GAIA-1: A Generative World Model for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.17080/) (2023)
- [TD-MPC2: Scalable, Robust World Models for Continuous Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.16828/) (2023)
- [RoboCasa: Large-Scale Simulation of Everyday Tasks for Generalist Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.02523/) (2024)
- [DINO-WM: World Models on Pre-trained Visual Features enable Zero-shot Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.04983/) (2024)
- [Reconstructing Hands in 3D with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.05251/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 31)

- [DreamDojo: A Generalist Robot World Model from Large-Scale Human Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.06949/) (2026)
- [World Action Models: The Next Frontier in Embodied AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.12090/) (2026)
- [Beyond Language Modeling: An Exploration of Multimodal Pretraining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.03276/) (2026)
- [EgoWAM: World Action Models Beyond Pixels with In-the-Wild Egocentric Human Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.08436/) (2026)
- [Do as I Do: Dexterous Manipulation Data from Everyday Human Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.19333/) (2026)
- [World Action Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.20781/) (2026)
- [Dexterous Manipulation Policies from RGB Human Videos via 3D Hand-Object Trajectory Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.09013/) (2026)
- [SkyJEPA: Learning Long-Horizon World Models for Zero-Shot Sim-to-Real Control of Quadrotors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.23444/) (2026)
- [Masked Visual Actions for Unified World Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.19343/) (2026)
- [FlowHOI: Flow-based Semantics-Grounded Generation of Hand-Object Interactions for Dexterous Robot Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.13444/) (2026)
- [Robot Learning from Human Videos: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.27621/) (2026)
- [LUCID: Learning Embodiment-Agnostic Intent Models from Unstructured Human Videos for Scalable Dexterous Robot Skill Acquisition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.11628/) (2026)
- [MolmoMotion: Forecasting Point Trajectories in 3D with Language Instruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.18558/) (2026)
- [Qantara: Bridge-Flow Training for Multi-Paradigm JEPA Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.04978/) (2026)
- [EgoExo-WM: Unlocking Exo Video for Ego World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.15477/) (2026)
- [RynnWorld-Teleop: An Action-Conditioned World Model for Digital Teleoperation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.06558/) (2026)
- [AnyWorld: Factorized Egocentric World Models for Cross-Embodiment Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.29242/) (2026)
- [Mask2Real-WM: Segmentation Masks as a Sim-to-Real Bridge for Controllable Dexterous World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.04546/) (2026)
- [EgoKit: Towards Unified Low-Cost Egocentric Data Collection with Heterogeneous Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.16797/) (2026)
- [DexFuture: Hierarchical Future-State Visuomotor Targeting for Bimanual Dexterous Tool Use](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.05699/) (2026)
- [MotionForesight: Re-purposing Video Models for Future 3D Scene-Flow Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.16192/) (2026)
- [Unified Video-Action Joint Denoising for Dexterous Action and Data Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.03868/) (2026)
- [Human-Centric Intelligence in the Era of Foundation Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.18184/) (2026)
- [Track, Articulate, Act: Generating Articulation from Casual Human Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.19119/) (2026)
- [Skel-WAM: A Hand-Skeleton-Conditioned World Action Model for Human-to-Robot Manipulation Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.21514/) (2026)
- [Ego-Exo4D Human Meshes Dataset: 4D Human Motion Reconstruction for Ego-Exo Captures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.30187/) (2026)
- [DeepJEPA: Scaling World Models from Within](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.00368/) (2026)
- [PointWAM: 3D World Action Modeling for Dexterous Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.02840/) (2026)
- [Native Action-Prior Learning from Videos for World Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.03391/) (2026)
- [Frame-Level Temporal Alignment for Human-to-Robot Visual Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.04372/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Modeling dexterous hand-object interactions is challenging as it requires understanding how subtle finger motions influence the environment through contact with objects. While recent world models address interaction modeling, they typically rely on coarse action spaces that fail to capture fine-grained dexterity. We, therefore, introduce DexWM, a Dexterous Interaction World Model that predicts future latent states of the environment conditioned on past states and dexterous actions. To overcome the scarcity of finely annotated dexterous datasets, DexWM represents actions using finger keypoints extracted from egocentric videos, enabling training on over 900 hours of human and non-dexterous robot data. Further, to accurately model dexterity, we find that predicting visual features alone is insufficient; therefore, we incorporate an auxiliary hand consistency loss that enforces accurate hand configurations. DexWM outperforms prior world models conditioned on text, navigation, or full-body actions in future-state prediction and demonstrates strong zero-shot transfer to unseen skills on a Franka Panda arm with an Allegro gripper, surpassing Diffusion Policy by over 50% on average across grasping, placing, and reaching tasks.