AdaWorldPolicy: World-Model-Driven Diffusion Policy with Online Adaptive Learning for Robotic Manipulation
On the map: World models → Embodied and robot world models
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Abstract (arXiv)
Effective robotic manipulation requires policies that can anticipate physical outcomes and adapt to real-world environments. Effective robotic manipulation requires policies that can anticipate physical outcomes and adapt to real-world environments. In this work, we introduce a unified framework, World-Model-Driven Diffusion Policy with Online Adaptive Learning (AdaWorldPolicy) to enhance robotic manipulation under dynamic conditions with minimal human involvement. Our core insight is that world models provide strong supervision signals, enabling online adaptive learning in dynamic environments, which can be complemented by force-torque feedback to mitigate dynamic force shifts. Our AdaWorldPolicy integrates a world model, an action expert, and a force predictor-all implemented as interconnected Flow Matching Diffusion Transformers (DiT). They are interconnected via the multi-modal self-attention layers, enabling deep feature exchange for joint learning while preserving their distinct modularity characteristics. We further propose a novel Online Adaptive Learning (AdaOL) strategy that dynamically switches between an Action Generation mode and a Future Imagination mode to drive reactive updates across all three modules. This creates a powerful closed-loop mechanism that adapts to both visual and physical domain shifts with minimal overhead. Across a suite of simulated and real-robot benchmarks, our AdaWorldPolicy achieves state-of-the-art performance, with dynamical adaptive capacity to out-of-distribution scenarios.
Key facts. Cited by 9 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 44 of its 54 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 23 Feb 2026.
Builds on
44 of 54 references.
Closest ancestors · 4
Same direction, newest first
- 2025WorldVLA: Towards Autoregressive Action World Model26 Jun
- 2025V-JEPA 2: Self-Supervised Video Models Enable Understanding, Prediction and Planning11 Jun
- 2025Unified World Models: Coupling Video and Action Diffusion for Pretraining on Large Robotic Datasets3 Apr
- 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion7 Mar
Other references · 40
- 2019Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformercited by 14,491
- 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 5,931
- 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,426
- 2021RoFormer: Enhanced Transformer with Rotary Position Embeddingcited by 4,581
- 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,094
- 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
- 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,297
- 2022RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scalecited by 2,007
- 2017Arbitrary Style Transfer in Real-time with Adaptive Instance Normalizationcited by 1,998
- 2019Dream to Control: Learning Behaviors by Latent Imaginationcited by 1,598
- 2024Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policycited by 1,427
28 more
- 2023LIBERO: Benchmarking Knowledge Transfer for Lifelong Robot Learningcited by 1,338
- 2019Mastering Atari, Go, Chess and Shogi by Planning with a Learned Modelcited by 1,327
- 2022Planning with Diffusion for Flexible Behavior Synthesiscited by 1,023
- 2025Fine-Tuning Vision-Language-Action Models: Optimizing Speed and Successcited by 844
- 2025Cosmos World Foundation Model Platform for Physical AIcited by 833
- 2025FAST: Efficient Action Tokenization for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 643
- 2021CALVIN: A Benchmark for Language-Conditioned Policy Learning for Long-Horizon Robot Manipulation Taskscited by 564
- 2022Continual Test-Time Domain Adaptationcited by 520
- 2023Learning Universal Policies via Text-Guided Video Generationcited by 506
- 2022Is Conditional Generative Modeling all you need for Decision-Making?cited by 504
- 2025SpatialVLA: Exploring Spatial Representations for Visual-Language-Action Modelcited by 502
- 2024DINO-WM: World Models on Pre-trained Visual Features enable Zero-shot Planningcited by 357
- 2023Unleashing Large-Scale Video Generative Pre-training for Visual Robot Manipulationcited by 353
- 2023Vision-Language Foundation Models as Effective Robot Imitatorscited by 344
- 2024Navigation World Modelscited by 262
- 2025Unified Video Action Modelcited by 195
- 2025World Simulation with Video Foundation Models for Physical AIcited by 183
- 2023AdaptDiffuser: Diffusion Models as Adaptive Self-evolving Plannerscited by 147
- 2024Multimodal Diffusion Transformer: Learning Versatile Behavior from Multimodal Goalscited by 131
- 2024Hierarchical Diffusion Policy for Kinematics-Aware Multi-Task Robotic Manipulationcited by 92
- 2023Large Language Models as Generalizable Policies for Embodied Taskscited by 86
- 2024Efficient Diffusion Transformer Policies with Mixture of Expert Denoisers for Multitask Learningcited by 46
- 2023Steve-Eye: Equipping LLM-based Embodied Agents with Visual Perception in Open Worldscited by 45
- 2025EnerVerse-AC: Envisioning Embodied Environments with Action Conditioncited by 40
- 2024GR-MG: Leveraging Partially Annotated Data via Multi-Modal Goal-Conditioned Policycited by 39
- 2024True Knowledge Comes from Practice: Aligning LLMs with Embodied Environments via Reinforcement Learningcited by 36
- 2025DDAT: Diffusion Policies Enforcing Dynamically Admissible Robot Trajectoriescited by 14
- 2025Embodied Perception for Test-time Grasping Detection Adaptation with Knowledge Infusioncited by 1
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 9.
9 papers.
- 2026World Action Models: The Next Frontier in Embodied AIcited by 46
- 2026OA-WAM: Object-Addressable World Action Model for Robust Robot Manipulationcited by 25
- 2026World Action Models: A Surveycited by 10
- 2026Why AI systems don't learn and what to do about it: Lessons on autonomous learning from cognitive sciencecited by 8
- 2026Kairos: A Regret-Aware Native World-Action Model Stack for Physical AIcited by 8
- 2026Foresight Without Seeing: Latent Futures for World Action Modelscited by 4
- 2026SyncWorld: Visual Calibration Enables World Models as Zero-Shot Simulatorscited by 1
- 2026EVO-WAM: Evolving World Action Models through Video-Action Verificationcited by 0
- 2026Juno: Taming Predictive Latents for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 0
- 2026Juno: Taming Predictive Latents for Vision-Language-Action Models7 Oct 2026
- 2026EVO-WAM: Evolving World Action Models through Video-Action Verification29 Sep 2026
- 2026SyncWorld: Visual Calibration Enables World Models as Zero-Shot Simulators8 Sep 2026
- 2026Foresight Without Seeing: Latent Futures for World Action Models12 Aug 2026
- 2026World Action Models: A Survey18 Jun 2026
- 2026Kairos: A Regret-Aware Native World-Action Model Stack for Physical AI15 Jun 2026
- 2026World Action Models: The Next Frontier in Embodied AI12 May 2026
- 2026OA-WAM: Object-Addressable World Action Model for Robust Robot Manipulation7 May 2026
- 2026Why AI systems don't learn and what to do about it: Lessons on autonomous learning from cognitive science16 Mar 2026
Similar, not cited
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- 2026Closed-Loop Action Chunks with Dynamic Corrections for Training-Free Diffusion Policy
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- 2025Time-Unified Diffusion Policy with Action Discrimination for Robotic Manipulation
- 2025D2PPO: Diffusion Policy Policy Optimization with Dispersive Loss
- 2026Learning Transferable Dynamics Priors from Action to World Modeling
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