mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

SoMA: A Real-to-Sim Neural Simulator for Robotic Soft-body Manipulation

arXiv 2602.02402 ↗First posted 2 Feb 2026cs.RO cs.AI cs.CVcited by 4

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Abstract (arXiv)

Simulating deformable objects under rich interactions remains a fundamental challenge for real-to-sim robot manipulation, with dynamics jointly driven by environmental effects and robot actions. Existing simulators rely on predefined physics or data-driven dynamics without robot-conditioned control, limiting accuracy, stability, and generalization. This paper presents SoMA, a 3D Gaussian Splat simulator for soft-body manipulation. SoMA couples deformable dynamics, environmental forces, and robot joint actions in a unified latent neural space for end-to-end real-to-sim simulation. Modeling interactions over learned Gaussian splats enables controllable, stable long-horizon manipulation and generalization beyond observed trajectories without predefined physical models. SoMA improves resimulation accuracy and generalization on real-world robot manipulation by 20%, enabling stable simulation of complex tasks such as long-horizon cloth folding.

Key facts. Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 34 of its 48 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 2 Feb 2026.

Builds on

34 of 48 references.

References · 34

  1. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,863
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  3. 20233D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Renderingcited by 6,226
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  10. 2019DiffTaichi: Differentiable Programming for Physical Simulationcited by 258
  11. 2025AnySplat: Feed-forward 3D Gaussian Splatting from Unconstrained Viewscited by 243
  12. 2023Text-To-4D Dynamic Scene Generationcited by 205
22 more
  1. 2024WonderWorld: Interactive 3D Scene Generation from a Single Imagecited by 202
  2. 2023DreamGaussian4D: Generative 4D Gaussian Splattingcited by 194
  3. 2024PhysDreamer: Physics-Based Interaction with 3D Objects via Video Generationcited by 191
  4. 2023Align Your Gaussians: Text-to-4D with Dynamic 3D Gaussians and Composed Diffusion Modelscited by 169
  5. 2024VD3D: Taming Large Video Diffusion Transformers for 3D Camera Controlcited by 156
  6. 20234DGen: Grounded 4D Content Generation with Spatial-temporal Consistencycited by 117
  7. 2024Reconstruction and Simulation of Elastic Objects with Spring-Mass 3D Gaussianscited by 97
  8. 2025PhysTwin: Physics-Informed Reconstruction and Simulation of Deformable Objects from Videoscited by 87
  9. 2026PointWorld: Scaling 3D World Models for In-The-Wild Robotic Manipulationcited by 82
  10. 2024TC4D: Trajectory-Conditioned Text-to-4D Generationcited by 77
  11. 2025WorldMirror: Universal 3D World Reconstruction with Any-Prior Promptingcited by 67
  12. 2025WonderPlay: Dynamic 3D Scene Generation from a Single Image and Actionscited by 45
  13. 2024Dynamic 3D Gaussian Tracking for Graph-Based Neural Dynamics Modelingcited by 43
  14. 2024A Survey of Embodied Learning for Object-Centric Robotic Manipulationcited by 35
  15. 2024GASP: Gaussian Splatting for Physic-Based Simulationscited by 24
  16. 2023Make-It-4D: Synthesizing a Consistent Long-Term Dynamic Scene Video from a Single Imagecited by 19
  17. 2023Learning 3D Particle-based Simulators from RGB-D Videoscited by 17
  18. 2024Modeling the Real World with High-Density Visual Particle Dynamicscited by 12
  19. 2023Foldsformer: Learning Sequential Multi-Step Cloth Manipulation With Space-Time Attentioncited by 10
  20. 2025Learning 3D-Gaussian Simulators from RGB Videoscited by 8
  21. 2024Physics-Encoded Graph Neural Networks for Deformation Prediction under Contactcited by 6
  22. 2024GausSim: Foreseeing Reality by Gaussian Simulator for Elastic Objectscited by 4

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 4.

4 papers.

  1. 2026M^3: Dense Matching Meets Multi-View Foundation Models for Monocular Gaussian Splatting SLAMcited by 2
  2. 2026SIM1: Physics-Aligned Simulator as Zero-Shot Data Scaler in Deformable Worldscited by 1
  3. 2026PhysReal: Learning Real-World Deformable Object Physics via Hybrid Constitutive Modelingcited by 0
  4. 2026VPTwin: Real-Sim-Real Video Prediction for Robotic Manipulation Planningcited by 0