Interactive World Simulator for Robot Policy Training and Evaluation
On the map: World models → Embodied and robot world models
Abstract (arXiv)
Action-conditioned video prediction models (often referred to as world models) have shown strong potential for robotics applications, but existing approaches are often slow and struggle to capture physically consistent interactions over long horizons, limiting their usefulness for scalable robot policy training and evaluation. We present Interactive World Simulator, a framework for building interactive world models from a moderate-sized robot interaction dataset. Our approach leverages consistency models for both image decoding and latent-space dynamics prediction, enabling fast and stable simulation of physical interactions. In our experiments, the learned world models produce interaction-consistent pixel-level predictions and support stable long-horizon interactions for more than 10 minutes at 15 FPS on a single RTX 4090 GPU. Our framework enables scalable demonstration collection solely within the world models to train state-of-the-art imitation policies. Through extensive real-world evaluation across diverse tasks involving rigid objects, deformable objects, object piles, and their interactions, we find that policies trained on world-model-generated data perform comparably to those trained on the same amount of real-world data. Additionally, we evaluate policies both within the world models and in the real world across diverse tasks, and observe a strong correlation between simulated and real-world performance. Together, these results establish the Interactive World Simulator as a stable and physically consistent surrogate for scalable robotic data generation and faithful, reproducible policy evaluation.
Key facts. Cited by 27 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 73 of its 77 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 9 Mar 2026.
Builds on
73 of 77 references.
Closest ancestors · 13
Same direction, newest first
- 2026World Action Models are Zero-shot Policies17 Feb
- 2026DreamDojo: A Generalist Robot World Model from Large-Scale Human Videos6 Feb
- 2026Causal World Modeling for Robot Control29 Jan
- 2025Evaluating Gemini Robotics Policies in a Veo World Simulator11 Dec
- 2025Ctrl-World: A Controllable Generative World Model for Robot Manipulation11 Oct
- 2025V-JEPA 2: Self-Supervised Video Models Enable Understanding, Prediction and Planning11 Jun
- 2025WorldGym: World Model as An Environment for Policy Evaluation31 May
- 2025FLARE: Robot Learning with Implicit World Modeling21 May
- 2025DreamGen: Unlocking Generalization in Robot Learning through Video World Models19 May
- 2024Predictive Inverse Dynamics Models are Scalable Learners for Robotic Manipulation19 Dec
- 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion7 Mar
- 2020SAPIEN: A SimulAted Part-based Interactive ENvironment19 Mar
Other references · 60
- 2023RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Controlcited by 2,993
- 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
- 2017FiLM: Visual Reasoning with a General Conditioning Layercited by 2,286
- 2023Consistency Modelscited by 1,778
- 2025π0.5: a Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Generalizationcited by 1,653
- 2023Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardwarecited by 1,490
- 2024Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policycited by 1,427
- 2023Mastering Diverse Domains through World Modelscited by 1,193
- 2025GR00T N1: An Open Foundation Model for Generalist Humanoid Robotscited by 1,167
- 2024WorldSimBench: Towards Video Generation Models as World Simulatorscited by 867
- 2025Cosmos World Foundation Model Platform for Physical AIcited by 833
38 more
- 2024Autoregressive Image Generation without Vector Quantizationcited by 644
- 2024Diffusion Forcing: Next-token Prediction Meets Full-Sequence Diffusioncited by 634
- 2025SmolVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model for Affordable and Efficient Roboticscited by 507
- 2023Learning Universal Policies via Text-Guided Video Generationcited by 506
- 2020robosuite: A Modular Simulation Framework and Benchmark for Robot Learningcited by 484
- 2024Evaluating Real-World Robot Manipulation Policies in Simulationcited by 484
- 2023Consistency Trajectory Models: Learning Probability Flow ODE Trajectory of Diffusioncited by 448
- 2023Improved Techniques for Training Consistency Modelscited by 430
- 2025UniVLA: Learning to Act Anywhere with Task-centric Latent Actionscited by 386
- 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
- 2024Latent Action Pretraining from Videoscited by 302
- 2024GR-2: A Generative Video-Language-Action Model with Web-Scale Knowledge for Robot Manipulationcited by 290
- 2024Diffusion for World Modeling: Visual Details Matter in Ataricited by 285
- 2024Video Prediction Policy: A Generalist Robot Policy with Predictive Visual Representationscited by 279
- 2026Cosmos Policy: Fine-Tuning Video Models for Visuomotor Control and Planningcited by 274
- 2025Video models are zero-shot learners and reasonerscited by 208
- 2023Any-point Trajectory Modeling for Policy Learningcited by 207
- 2025Unified Video Action Modelcited by 195
- 2025MolmoAct: Action Reasoning Models that can Reason in Spacecited by 189
- 2025History-Guided Video Diffusioncited by 165
- 2025mimic-video: Video-Action Models for Generalizable Robot Control Beyond VLAscited by 133
- 2024Multimodal Diffusion Transformer: Learning Versatile Behavior from Multimodal Goalscited by 131
- 2025A Careful Examination of Large Behavior Models for Multitask Dexterous Manipulationcited by 125
- 2025Training Agents Inside of Scalable World Modelscited by 122
- 2025Video Generators are Robot Policiescited by 86
- 2024Dreamitate: Real-World Visuomotor Policy Learning via Video Generationcited by 84
- 2023Video Prediction Models as Rewards for Reinforcement Learningcited by 76
- 2025Large Video Planner Enables Generalizable Robot Controlcited by 67
- 2024Prediction with Action: Visual Policy Learning via Joint Denoising Processcited by 64
- 2025RoboArena: Distributed Real-World Evaluation of Generalist Robot Policiescited by 63
- 2015Learning Visual Predictive Models of Physics for Playing Billiardscited by 58
- 2025Visual Imitation Enables Contextual Humanoid Controlcited by 57
- 2025From Foresight to Forethought: VLM-In-the-Loop Policy Steering via Latent Alignmentcited by 51
- 2025AutoEval: Autonomous Evaluation of Generalist Robot Manipulation Policies in the Real Worldcited by 46
- 2025NovaFlow: Zero-Shot Manipulation via Actionable Flow from Generated Videoscited by 38
- 2025Unified Diffusion VLA: Vision-Language-Action Model via Joint Discrete Denoising Diffusion Processcited by 37
- 2025Robotic Manipulation by Imitating Generated Videos Without Physical Demonstrationscited by 33
50 most cited of 60 All 60 (JSON)
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 27.
27 papers.
Sort:
By area:
- 2026World Action Models: The Next Frontier in Embodied AIcited by 46
- 2026World Model for Robot Learning: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 42
- 2026ImageWAM: Do World Action Models Really Need Video Generation, or Just Image Editing?cited by 33
- 2026LLM-as-a-Verifier: A General-Purpose Verification Frameworkcited by 21
- 2026EgoWAM: World Action Models Beyond Pixels with In-the-Wild Egocentric Human Datacited by 17
- 2026World Action Models: A Surveycited by 10
- 2026Masked Visual Actions for Unified World Modelingcited by 7
- 2026Towards Interactive Video World Modeling: Frontiers, Challenges, Benchmarks, and Future Trendscited by 6
- 2026Mem-World: Memory-Augmented Action-Conditioned World Models for Persistent Robot Manipulationcited by 6
- 2026SC3-Eval: Evaluating Robot Foundation Models via Self-Consistent Video Generationcited by 4
- 2026Learning Visual Feature-Based World Models via Residual Latent Actioncited by 2
- 2026iMaC: Translating Actions into Motion and Contact Images for Embodied World Modelscited by 2
15 more
- 2026DriftWorld: Fast World Modeling through Driftingcited by 2
- 2026WorldSimProbe: Diagnosing Simulator Faithfulness in Action-Conditioned World Models for Embodied Manipulationcited by 2
- 2026Universal Manipulation Exoskeleton: Learning Compliant Whole-body Policies with Real-time Torque Feedbackcited by 1
- 2026TACO: TActile World Model as a Self-COrrector for Scalable Robot Policy Post-Trainingcited by 1
- 2026World-Action Models for Robot Learning and Control: A Surveycited by 1
- 2026World Models for Embodied Intelligence: From Plausible to Controllable to Actionablecited by 1
- 2026Targeting World Models to Compromise Robot Learning Pipelinescited by 0
- 2026Deform360: A Massive Multi-view Visuotactile Dataset for Deformable World Modelscited by 0
- 2026ContactFlow: A video action conditioning that transfers across embodimentscited by 0
- 2026RigidBench: Evaluating Rigid-Body Physics in Video Generation Modelscited by 0
- 2026Revisiting the "Push-T" Robot Manipulation Task with Agentic Roboticscited by 0
- 2026Toward Unified Robot Learning: Bridging Representation, Vision-Language-Action, and World Modelscited by 0
- 2026No Free Checker: A Survey of Verifiers for Robot Policiescited by 0
- 2026VPTwin: Real-Sim-Real Video Prediction for Robotic Manipulation Planningcited by 0
- 2026WorldLine: Action-Driven Visual Simulation for Robotic Manipulationcited by 0
- 2026WorldLine: Action-Driven Visual Simulation for Robotic Manipulation29 Sep 2026
- 2026VPTwin: Real-Sim-Real Video Prediction for Robotic Manipulation Planning27 Sep 2026
- 2026World Models for Embodied Intelligence: From Plausible to Controllable to Actionable15 Sep 2026
- 2026World-Action Models for Robot Learning and Control: A Survey13 Sep 2026
- 2026No Free Checker: A Survey of Verifiers for Robot Policies8 Sep 2026
- 2026Toward Unified Robot Learning: Bridging Representation, Vision-Language-Action, and World Models3 Sep 2026
- 2026Revisiting the "Push-T" Robot Manipulation Task with Agentic Robotics18 Aug 2026
- 2026RigidBench: Evaluating Rigid-Body Physics in Video Generation Models16 Aug 2026
- 2026WorldSimProbe: Diagnosing Simulator Faithfulness in Action-Conditioned World Models for Embodied Manipulation10 Aug 2026
- 2026ContactFlow: A video action conditioning that transfers across embodiments29 Jul 2026
- 2026Masked Visual Actions for Unified World Modeling21 Jul 2026
- 2026DriftWorld: Fast World Modeling through Drifting16 Jul 2026
15 more
- 2026EgoWAM: World Action Models Beyond Pixels with In-the-Wild Egocentric Human Data8 Jul 2026
- 2026LLM-as-a-Verifier: A General-Purpose Verification Framework6 Jul 2026
- 2026Deform360: A Massive Multi-view Visuotactile Dataset for Deformable World Models6 Jul 2026
- 2026TACO: TActile World Model as a Self-COrrector for Scalable Robot Policy Post-Training3 Jul 2026
- 2026World Action Models: A Survey18 Jun 2026
- 2026ImageWAM: Do World Action Models Really Need Video Generation, or Just Image Editing?17 Jun 2026
- 2026Mem-World: Memory-Augmented Action-Conditioned World Models for Persistent Robot Manipulation17 Jun 2026
- 2026SC3-Eval: Evaluating Robot Foundation Models via Self-Consistent Video Generation17 Jun 2026
- 2026Universal Manipulation Exoskeleton: Learning Compliant Whole-body Policies with Real-time Torque Feedback12 Jun 2026
- 2026iMaC: Translating Actions into Motion and Contact Images for Embodied World Models8 Jun 2026
- 2026Targeting World Models to Compromise Robot Learning Pipelines8 Jun 2026
- 2026Towards Interactive Video World Modeling: Frontiers, Challenges, Benchmarks, and Future Trends31 May 2026
- 2026World Action Models: The Next Frontier in Embodied AI12 May 2026
- 2026Learning Visual Feature-Based World Models via Residual Latent Action8 May 2026
- 2026World Model for Robot Learning: A Comprehensive Survey30 Apr 2026
- 2026World Action Models: The Next Frontier in Embodied AIcited by 46
- 2026World Model for Robot Learning: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 42
- 2026ImageWAM: Do World Action Models Really Need Video Generation, or Just Image Editing?cited by 33
- 2026EgoWAM: World Action Models Beyond Pixels with In-the-Wild Egocentric Human Datacited by 17
- 2026World Action Models: A Surveycited by 10
- 2026Masked Visual Actions for Unified World Modelingcited by 7
- 2026Towards Interactive Video World Modeling: Frontiers, Challenges, Benchmarks, and Future Trendscited by 6
- 2026Mem-World: Memory-Augmented Action-Conditioned World Models for Persistent Robot Manipulationcited by 6
- 2026Learning Visual Feature-Based World Models via Residual Latent Actioncited by 2
- 2026iMaC: Translating Actions into Motion and Contact Images for Embodied World Modelscited by 2
- 2026DriftWorld: Fast World Modeling through Driftingcited by 2
- 2026WorldSimProbe: Diagnosing Simulator Faithfulness in Action-Conditioned World Models for Embodied Manipulationcited by 2
12 most cited of 20 All 20 (JSON)
- 2026VPTwin: Real-Sim-Real Video Prediction for Robotic Manipulation Planning27 Sep 2026
- 2026World Models for Embodied Intelligence: From Plausible to Controllable to Actionable15 Sep 2026
- 2026World-Action Models for Robot Learning and Control: A Survey13 Sep 2026
- 2026Toward Unified Robot Learning: Bridging Representation, Vision-Language-Action, and World Models3 Sep 2026
- 2026WorldSimProbe: Diagnosing Simulator Faithfulness in Action-Conditioned World Models for Embodied Manipulation10 Aug 2026
- 2026ContactFlow: A video action conditioning that transfers across embodiments29 Jul 2026
- 2026Masked Visual Actions for Unified World Modeling21 Jul 2026
- 2026DriftWorld: Fast World Modeling through Drifting16 Jul 2026
- 2026EgoWAM: World Action Models Beyond Pixels with In-the-Wild Egocentric Human Data8 Jul 2026
- 2026Deform360: A Massive Multi-view Visuotactile Dataset for Deformable World Models6 Jul 2026
- 2026TACO: TActile World Model as a Self-COrrector for Scalable Robot Policy Post-Training3 Jul 2026
- 2026World Action Models: A Survey18 Jun 2026
12 newest of 20 All 20 (JSON)
- 2026LLM-as-a-Verifier: A General-Purpose Verification Frameworkcited by 21
- 2026Universal Manipulation Exoskeleton: Learning Compliant Whole-body Policies with Real-time Torque Feedbackcited by 1
- 2026RigidBench: Evaluating Rigid-Body Physics in Video Generation Modelscited by 0
- 2026No Free Checker: A Survey of Verifiers for Robot Policiescited by 0
- 2026WorldLine: Action-Driven Visual Simulation for Robotic Manipulationcited by 0
- 2026WorldLine: Action-Driven Visual Simulation for Robotic Manipulation29 Sep 2026
- 2026No Free Checker: A Survey of Verifiers for Robot Policies8 Sep 2026
- 2026RigidBench: Evaluating Rigid-Body Physics in Video Generation Models16 Aug 2026
- 2026Universal Manipulation Exoskeleton: Learning Compliant Whole-body Policies with Real-time Torque Feedback12 Jun 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026Learning Transferable Dynamics Priors from Action to World Modeling
- 2026BWM: A Low-Cost High-Fidelity World Simulator for Robot Learning
- 2025WorldEval: World Model as Real-World Robot Policies Evaluator
- 2025Unified World Models: Coupling Video and Action Diffusion for Pretraining on Large Robotic Datasets
- 2026ACWM-Phys: Investigating Generalized Physical Interaction in Action-Conditioned Video World Models
- 2026PlayWorld: Learning Robot World Models from Autonomous Play
- 2026OpenWAM: An Open Framework for Composable World-Action Models
- 2026InternW0-Δ: A World Action Model Bridging Predictive Dynamics and Actions with 20K+ Hours of Open Data