mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Interactive World Simulator for Robot Policy Training and Evaluation

arXiv 2603.08546 ↗First posted 9 Mar 2026cs.RO cs.CV cs.LGcited by 27

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

  1. 2026World Action Models are Zero-shot Policies17 Feb
  2. 2026DreamDojo: A Generalist Robot World Model from Large-Scale Human Videos6 Feb
  3. 2026Causal World Modeling for Robot Control29 Jan
  4. 2025Evaluating Gemini Robotics Policies in a Veo World Simulator11 Dec
  5. 2025Ctrl-World: A Controllable Generative World Model for Robot Manipulation11 Oct
  6. 2025V-JEPA 2: Self-Supervised Video Models Enable Understanding, Prediction and Planning11 Jun
  7. 2025WorldGym: World Model as An Environment for Policy Evaluation31 May
  8. 2025FLARE: Robot Learning with Implicit World Modeling21 May
  9. 2025DreamGen: Unlocking Generalization in Robot Learning through Video World Models19 May
  10. 2024Predictive Inverse Dynamics Models are Scalable Learners for Robotic Manipulation19 Dec
  11. 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion7 Mar
  12. 2020SAPIEN: A SimulAted Part-based Interactive ENvironment19 Mar
1 more
  1. 2016Learning to Poke by Poking: Experiential Learning of Intuitive Physics23 Jun

Other references · 60

  1. 2023RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Controlcited by 2,993
  2. 2023Stable Video Diffusion: Scaling Latent Video Diffusion Models to Large Datasetscited by 2,526
  3. 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,297
  4. 2017FiLM: Visual Reasoning with a General Conditioning Layercited by 2,286
  5. 2023Consistency Modelscited by 1,778
  6. 2025π0.5: a Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Generalizationcited by 1,653
  7. 2023Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardwarecited by 1,490
  8. 2024Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policycited by 1,427
  9. 2023Mastering Diverse Domains through World Modelscited by 1,193
  10. 2025GR00T N1: An Open Foundation Model for Generalist Humanoid Robotscited by 1,167
  11. 2024WorldSimBench: Towards Video Generation Models as World Simulatorscited by 867
  12. 2025Cosmos World Foundation Model Platform for Physical AIcited by 833
38 more
  1. 2024Autoregressive Image Generation without Vector Quantizationcited by 644
  2. 2024Diffusion Forcing: Next-token Prediction Meets Full-Sequence Diffusioncited by 634
  3. 2025SmolVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model for Affordable and Efficient Roboticscited by 507
  4. 2023Learning Universal Policies via Text-Guided Video Generationcited by 506
  5. 2020robosuite: A Modular Simulation Framework and Benchmark for Robot Learningcited by 484
  6. 2024Evaluating Real-World Robot Manipulation Policies in Simulationcited by 484
  7. 2023Consistency Trajectory Models: Learning Probability Flow ODE Trajectory of Diffusioncited by 448
  8. 2023Improved Techniques for Training Consistency Modelscited by 430
  9. 2025UniVLA: Learning to Act Anywhere with Task-centric Latent Actionscited by 386
  10. 2024DINO-WM: World Models on Pre-trained Visual Features enable Zero-shot Planningcited by 357
  11. 2023Unleashing Large-Scale Video Generative Pre-training for Visual Robot Manipulationcited by 353
  12. 2024Latent Action Pretraining from Videoscited by 302
  13. 2024GR-2: A Generative Video-Language-Action Model with Web-Scale Knowledge for Robot Manipulationcited by 290
  14. 2024Diffusion for World Modeling: Visual Details Matter in Ataricited by 285
  15. 2024Video Prediction Policy: A Generalist Robot Policy with Predictive Visual Representationscited by 279
  16. 2026Cosmos Policy: Fine-Tuning Video Models for Visuomotor Control and Planningcited by 274
  17. 2025Video models are zero-shot learners and reasonerscited by 208
  18. 2023Any-point Trajectory Modeling for Policy Learningcited by 207
  19. 2025Unified Video Action Modelcited by 195
  20. 2025MolmoAct: Action Reasoning Models that can Reason in Spacecited by 189
  21. 2025History-Guided Video Diffusioncited by 165
  22. 2025mimic-video: Video-Action Models for Generalizable Robot Control Beyond VLAscited by 133
  23. 2024Multimodal Diffusion Transformer: Learning Versatile Behavior from Multimodal Goalscited by 131
  24. 2025A Careful Examination of Large Behavior Models for Multitask Dexterous Manipulationcited by 125
  25. 2025Training Agents Inside of Scalable World Modelscited by 122
  26. 2025Video Generators are Robot Policiescited by 86
  27. 2024Dreamitate: Real-World Visuomotor Policy Learning via Video Generationcited by 84
  28. 2023Video Prediction Models as Rewards for Reinforcement Learningcited by 76
  29. 2025Large Video Planner Enables Generalizable Robot Controlcited by 67
  30. 2024Prediction with Action: Visual Policy Learning via Joint Denoising Processcited by 64
  31. 2025RoboArena: Distributed Real-World Evaluation of Generalist Robot Policiescited by 63
  32. 2015Learning Visual Predictive Models of Physics for Playing Billiardscited by 58
  33. 2025Visual Imitation Enables Contextual Humanoid Controlcited by 57
  34. 2025From Foresight to Forethought: VLM-In-the-Loop Policy Steering via Latent Alignmentcited by 51
  35. 2025AutoEval: Autonomous Evaluation of Generalist Robot Manipulation Policies in the Real Worldcited by 46
  36. 2025NovaFlow: Zero-Shot Manipulation via Actionable Flow from Generated Videoscited by 38
  37. 2025Unified Diffusion VLA: Vision-Language-Action Model via Joint Discrete Denoising Diffusion Processcited by 37
  38. 2025Robotic Manipulation by Imitating Generated Videos Without Physical Demonstrationscited by 33

50 most cited of 60 All 60 (JSON)

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 27.

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  1. 2026World Action Models: The Next Frontier in Embodied AIcited by 46
  2. 2026World Model for Robot Learning: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 42
  3. 2026ImageWAM: Do World Action Models Really Need Video Generation, or Just Image Editing?cited by 33
  4. 2026LLM-as-a-Verifier: A General-Purpose Verification Frameworkcited by 21
  5. 2026EgoWAM: World Action Models Beyond Pixels with In-the-Wild Egocentric Human Datacited by 17
  6. 2026World Action Models: A Surveycited by 10
  7. 2026Masked Visual Actions for Unified World Modelingcited by 7
  8. 2026Towards Interactive Video World Modeling: Frontiers, Challenges, Benchmarks, and Future Trendscited by 6
  9. 2026Mem-World: Memory-Augmented Action-Conditioned World Models for Persistent Robot Manipulationcited by 6
  10. 2026SC3-Eval: Evaluating Robot Foundation Models via Self-Consistent Video Generationcited by 4
  11. 2026Learning Visual Feature-Based World Models via Residual Latent Actioncited by 2
  12. 2026iMaC: Translating Actions into Motion and Contact Images for Embodied World Modelscited by 2
15 more
  1. 2026DriftWorld: Fast World Modeling through Driftingcited by 2
  2. 2026WorldSimProbe: Diagnosing Simulator Faithfulness in Action-Conditioned World Models for Embodied Manipulationcited by 2
  3. 2026Universal Manipulation Exoskeleton: Learning Compliant Whole-body Policies with Real-time Torque Feedbackcited by 1
  4. 2026TACO: TActile World Model as a Self-COrrector for Scalable Robot Policy Post-Trainingcited by 1
  5. 2026World-Action Models for Robot Learning and Control: A Surveycited by 1
  6. 2026World Models for Embodied Intelligence: From Plausible to Controllable to Actionablecited by 1
  7. 2026Targeting World Models to Compromise Robot Learning Pipelinescited by 0
  8. 2026Deform360: A Massive Multi-view Visuotactile Dataset for Deformable World Modelscited by 0
  9. 2026ContactFlow: A video action conditioning that transfers across embodimentscited by 0
  10. 2026RigidBench: Evaluating Rigid-Body Physics in Video Generation Modelscited by 0
  11. 2026Revisiting the "Push-T" Robot Manipulation Task with Agentic Roboticscited by 0
  12. 2026Toward Unified Robot Learning: Bridging Representation, Vision-Language-Action, and World Modelscited by 0
  13. 2026No Free Checker: A Survey of Verifiers for Robot Policiescited by 0
  14. 2026VPTwin: Real-Sim-Real Video Prediction for Robotic Manipulation Planningcited by 0
  15. 2026WorldLine: Action-Driven Visual Simulation for Robotic Manipulationcited by 0

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  1. 2026Learning Transferable Dynamics Priors from Action to World Modeling
  2. 2026BWM: A Low-Cost High-Fidelity World Simulator for Robot Learning
  3. 2025WorldEval: World Model as Real-World Robot Policies Evaluator
  4. 2025Unified World Models: Coupling Video and Action Diffusion for Pretraining on Large Robotic Datasets
  5. 2026ACWM-Phys: Investigating Generalized Physical Interaction in Action-Conditioned Video World Models
  6. 2026PlayWorld: Learning Robot World Models from Autonomous Play
  7. 2026OpenWAM: An Open Framework for Composable World-Action Models
  8. 2026InternW0-Δ: A World Action Model Bridging Predictive Dynamics and Actions with 20K+ Hours of Open Data