mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

MetaWorld: Skill Transfer and Composition in a Hierarchical World Model for Grounding High-Level Instructions

arXiv 2601.17507 ↗First posted 24 Jan 2026cs.ROcited by 1

On the map: World models → Humanoid and legged locomotion world models

Abstract (arXiv)

Humanoid robot loco-manipulation remains constrained by the semantic-physical gap. Current methods face three limitations: Low sample efficiency in reinforcement learning, poor generalization in imitation learning, and physical inconsistency in VLMs. We propose MetaWorld, a hierarchical world model that integrates semantic planning and physical control via expert policy transfer. The framework decouples tasks into a VLM-driven semantic layer and a latent dynamics model operating in a compact state space. Our dynamic expert selection and motion prior fusion mechanism leverages a pre-trained multi-expert policy library as transferable knowledge, enabling efficient online adaptation via a two-stage framework. VLMs serve as semantic interfaces, mapping instructions to executable skills and bypassing symbol grounding. Experiments on Humanoid-Bench show MetaWorld outperforms world model-based RL in task completion and motion coherence. Our code will be found at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/metaworld-2BF4/

Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Humanoid and legged locomotion world models, one of 11 directions in World models. Builds on 3 of its 23 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 24 Jan 2026.

Builds on

3 of 23 references.

References · 3

  1. 2025Training Agents Inside of Scalable World Modelscited by 122
  2. 2024HumanoidBench: Simulated Humanoid Benchmark for Whole-Body Locomotion and Manipulationcited by 101
  3. 2025DETACH: Cross-domain Learning for Long-Horizon Tasks via Mixture of Disentangled Expertscited by 5

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.

1 paper.

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  1. 2026MetaWorld-X: Hierarchical World Modeling via VLM-Orchestrated Experts for Humanoid Loco-Manipulation
  2. 2024Autonomous Behavior Planning For Humanoid Loco-manipulation Through Grounded Language Model
  3. 2026LUCID: Latent-Skill Unified Control via Imagined Dynamics for Long-Horizon Humanoid Loco-Manipulation
  4. 2025Instruction-Augmented Long-Horizon Planning: Embedding Grounding Mechanisms in Embodied Mobile Manipulation
  5. 2024HYPERmotion: Learning Hybrid Behavior Planning for Autonomous Loco-manipulation
  6. 2026DreamControl-v2: Simpler and Scalable Autonomous Humanoid Skills via Trainable Guided Diffusion Priors
  7. 2026LocoVLM: Grounding Vision and Language for Adapting Versatile Legged Locomotion Policies
  8. 2025MIND-V: Hierarchical World Model for Long-Horizon Robotic Manipulation with RL-based Physical Alignment