# Dexterous World Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17907 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.17907/

## Key facts

- Cited by 18 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 53 of its 62 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Dec 2025.

## Placed in

- World models / [Embodied and robot world models](https://mlsanity.com/wm/embodied-and-robot-world-models/)
- Diffusion models / [Diffusion and flow policies for robotics](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/diffusion-and-flow-policies-for-robotics/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 53)

- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [CogVideoX: Text-to-Video Diffusion Models with An Expert Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06072/) (2024)
- [SDEdit: Guided Image Synthesis and Editing with Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.01073/) (2021)
- [Expressive Body Capture: 3D Hands, Face, and Body from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05866/) (2019)
- [DUSt3R: Geometric 3D Vision Made Easy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14132/) (2023)
- [VGGT: Visual Geometry Grounded Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11651/) (2025)
- [Learning Latent Dynamics for Planning from Pixels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.04551/) (2018)
- [Scaling Egocentric Vision: The EPIC-KITCHENS Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.02748/) (2018)
- [Recurrent World Models Facilitate Policy Evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.01999/) (2018)
- [Genie: Generative Interactive Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.15391/) (2024)
- [GAIA-1: A Generative World Model for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.17080/) (2023)
- [ViewCrafter: Taming Video Diffusion Models for High-fidelity Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.02048/) (2024)
- [DreamSim: Learning New Dimensions of Human Visual Similarity using Synthetic Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.09344/) (2023)
- [Reconstructing Hands in 3D with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.05251/) (2023)
- [Diffusion for World Modeling: Visual Details Matter in Atari](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12399/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Models Are Real-Time Game Engines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.14837/) (2024)
- [gsplat: An Open-Source Library for Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.06765/) (2024)
- [Navigation World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03572/) (2024)
- [Unified World Models: Coupling Video and Action Diffusion for Pretraining on Large Robotic Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02792/) (2025)
- [EgoDex: Learning Dexterous Manipulation from Large-Scale Egocentric Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.11709/) (2025)
- [Project Aria: A New Tool for Egocentric Multi-Modal AI Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.13561/) (2023)
- [GAIA-2: A Controllable Multi-View Generative World Model for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20523/) (2025)
- [Stable Virtual Camera: Generative View Synthesis with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14489/) (2025)
- [DreamGen: Unlocking Generalization in Robot Learning through Video World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.12705/) (2025)
- [Scaling Up Dynamic Human-Scene Interaction Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.08629/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [Hand2World: Autoregressive Egocentric Interaction Generation via Free-Space Hand Gestures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.09600/) (2026)
- [EgoSim: Egocentric World Simulator for Embodied Interaction Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.01001/) (2026)
- [Masked Visual Actions for Unified World Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.19343/) (2026)
- [Robot Learning from Human Videos: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.27621/) (2026)
- [HandEdit: A Unified Benchmark for Egocentric Human-to-Robot Dexterous Hand Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.12122/) (2026)
- [AnchorWorld: Embodied Egocentric World Simulation with View-based Evolution Customization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.07326/) (2026)
- [Robot-Factored World Models via Robot Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.22535/) (2026)
- [World-Ego Modeling for Long-Horizon Evolution in Hybrid Embodied Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.19957/) (2026)
- [Wh0: Generative World Models as Scalable Sources of Egocentric Human Hand Manipulation Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.22136/) (2026)
- [Mask2Real-WM: Segmentation Masks as a Sim-to-Real Bridge for Controllable Dexterous World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.04546/) (2026)
- [TourPhysics: Bringing Physics to World Models for Exploration and Manipulation from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.04911/) (2026)
- [Not All Actions Are Equal: Rethinking Conditioning for Dexterous World Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.27325/) (2026)
- [DeWorldSG: Depth-Aware 3D Semantic Scene Graph Generation via World-Model Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.00889/) (2026)
- [Hand-Object Interaction in the Age of Large Foundation Models:Reconstruction, Generation, and Embodied Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.28394/) (2026)
- [DexSIM: Real-time Dexterous Simulation with Unified Causal Video Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.24630/) (2026)
- [Code Plans, Diffusion Renders: Open-Ended Generative World Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.26458/) (2026)
- [PointWAM: 3D World Action Modeling for Dexterous Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.02840/) (2026)
- [Decoupled Drift-Diffusion World Models for Consistent Future Frame Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.19212/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent progress in 3D reconstruction has made it easy to create realistic digital twins from everyday environments. However, current digital twins remain largely static and are limited to navigation and view synthesis without embodied interactivity. To bridge this gap, we introduce Dexterous World Model (DWM), a scene-action-conditioned video diffusion framework that models how dexterous human actions induce dynamic changes in static 3D scenes. Given a static 3D scene rendering and an egocentric hand motion sequence, DWM generates temporally coherent videos depicting plausible human-scene interactions. Our approach conditions video generation on (1) static scene renderings following a specified camera trajectory to ensure spatial consistency, and (2) egocentric hand mesh renderings that encode both geometry and motion cues to model action-conditioned dynamics directly. To train DWM, we construct a hybrid interaction video dataset. Synthetic egocentric interactions provide fully aligned supervision for joint locomotion and manipulation learning, while fixed-camera real-world videos contribute diverse and realistic object dynamics. Experiments demonstrate that DWM enables realistic and physically plausible interactions, such as grasping, opening, and moving objects, while maintaining camera and scene consistency. This framework represents a first step toward video diffusion-based interactive digital twins and enables embodied simulation from egocentric actions.