Say, Dream, and Act: Learning Video World Models for Instruction-Driven Robot Manipulation
On the map: World models → Embodied and robot world models
Abstract (arXiv)
Robotic manipulation requires anticipating how the environment evolves in response to actions, yet most existing systems lack this predictive capability, often resulting in errors and inefficiency. While Vision-Language Models (VLMs) provide high-level guidance, they cannot explicitly forecast future states, and existing world models either predict only short horizons or produce spatially inconsistent frames. To address these challenges, we propose a framework for fast and predictive video-conditioned action. Our approach first selects and adapts a robust video generation model to ensure reliable future predictions, then applies adversarial distillation for fast, few-step video generation, and finally trains an action model that leverages both generated videos and real observations to correct spatial errors. Extensive experiments show that our method produces temporally coherent, spatially accurate video predictions that directly support precise manipulation, achieving significant improvements in embodiment consistency, spatial referring ability, and task completion over existing baselines. Codes & Models will be released.
Key facts. Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Embodied and robot world models, one of 11 directions in World models. Builds on 20 of its 32 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 11 Feb 2026.
Builds on
20 of 32 references.
Closest ancestors · 6
Same direction, newest first
- 2025WorldVLA: Towards Autoregressive Action World Model26 Jun
- 2025FLARE: Robot Learning with Implicit World Modeling21 May
- 2025DreamGen: Unlocking Generalization in Robot Learning through Video World Models19 May
- 2025LaDi-WM: A Latent Diffusion-based World Model for Predictive Manipulation13 May
- 2024RoboDreamer: Learning Compositional World Models for Robot Imagination18 Apr
- 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion7 Mar
Other references · 14
- 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
- 2023Stable Video Diffusion: Scaling Latent Video Diffusion Models to Large Datasetscited by 2,526
- 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,297
- 2025GR00T N1: An Open Foundation Model for Generalist Humanoid Robotscited by 1,167
- 2025Fine-Tuning Vision-Language-Action Models: Optimizing Speed and Successcited by 844
- 2025SmolVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model for Affordable and Efficient Roboticscited by 507
- 2023Learning Interactive Real-World Simulatorscited by 440
- 2025CoT-VLA: Visual Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 440
- 2025UniVLA: Learning to Act Anywhere with Task-centric Latent Actionscited by 386
- 2024Fast High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Adversarial Diffusion Distillationcited by 276
- 2025DreamVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model Dreamed with Comprehensive World Knowledgecited by 203
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 7.
7 papers.
- 2026World Action Models: The Next Frontier in Embodied AIcited by 46
- 2026World Model for Robot Learning: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 42
- 2026World Action Models: A Surveycited by 10
- 2026VT-WAM: Visual-Tactile World Action Model for Contact-Rich Manipulationcited by 10
- 2026World Pilot: Steering Vision-Language-Action Models with World-Action Priorscited by 2
- 2026Beyond Task Success: Behavioral and Representational Diagnostics for WAM and VLAcited by 0
- 2026Toward Unified Robot Learning: Bridging Representation, Vision-Language-Action, and World Modelscited by 0
- 2026Toward Unified Robot Learning: Bridging Representation, Vision-Language-Action, and World Models3 Sep 2026
- 2026VT-WAM: Visual-Tactile World Action Model for Contact-Rich Manipulation2 Jul 2026
- 2026World Action Models: A Survey18 Jun 2026
- 2026World Pilot: Steering Vision-Language-Action Models with World-Action Priors10 Jun 2026
- 2026Beyond Task Success: Behavioral and Representational Diagnostics for WAM and VLA31 May 2026
- 2026World Action Models: The Next Frontier in Embodied AI12 May 2026
- 2026World Model for Robot Learning: A Comprehensive Survey30 Apr 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026τ0-WM: A Unified Video-Action World Model for Robotic Manipulation
- 2026World Models for Robotic Manipulation: A Survey
- 2026DreamX-Phi 1.0: Action-Conditioned Video World Model for Robotic Manipulation
- 2026GE-Act 2.0: Pretraining and Scaling a World-Action Model for Robotic Manipulation
- 2025VideoVLA: Video Generators Can Be Generalizable Robot Manipulators
- 2026From Human Videos to Robot Manipulation: A Survey on Scalable Vision-Language-Action Learning with Human-Centric Data
- 2026DELE-w0.5: Inferring Action from Future Latent State for Robotic Manipulation
- 2026SWEET: Sparse World Modeling with Image Editing for Embodied Task Execution