Kinema4D: Kinematic 4D World Modeling for Spatiotemporal Embodied Simulation
On the map: World models → Embodied and robot world models
Abstract (arXiv)
Simulating robot-world interactions is a cornerstone of Embodied AI. Recently, a few works have shown promise in leveraging video generations to transcend the rigid visual/physical constraints of traditional simulators. However, they primarily operate in 2D space or are guided by static environmental cues, ignoring the fundamental reality that robot-world interactions are inherently 4D spatiotemporal events that require precise interactive modeling. To restore this 4D essence while ensuring the precise robot control, we introduce Kinema4D, a new action-conditioned 4D generative robotic simulator that disentangles the robot-world interaction into: i) Precise 4D representation of robot controls: we drive a URDF-based 3D robot via kinematics, producing a precise 4D robot control trajectory. ii) Generative 4D modeling of environmental reactions: we project the 4D robot trajectory into a pointmap as a spatiotemporal visual signal, controlling the generative model to synthesize complex environments' reactive dynamics into synchronized RGB/pointmap sequences. To facilitate training, we curated a large-scale dataset called Robo4D-200k, comprising 201,426 robot interaction episodes with high-quality 4D annotations. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method effectively simulates physically-plausible, geometry-consistent, and embodiment-agnostic interactions that faithfully mirror diverse real-world dynamics. For the first time, it shows potential zero-shot transfer capability, providing a high-fidelity foundation for advancing next-generation embodied simulation.
Key facts. Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Embodied and robot world models, one of 11 directions in World models. Builds on 78 of its 88 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 17 Mar 2026.
Builds on
78 of 88 references.
Closest ancestors · 21
Same direction, newest first
- 2026DreamDojo: A Generalist Robot World Model from Large-Scale Human Videos6 Feb
- 2026BridgeV2W: Bridging Video Generation Models to Embodied World Models via Embodiment Masks3 Feb
- 2026PointWorld: Scaling 3D World Models for In-The-Wild Robotic Manipulation7 Jan
- 2025AnchorDream: Repurposing Video Diffusion for Embodiment-Aware Robot Data Synthesis12 Dec
- 2025Evaluating Gemini Robotics Policies in a Veo World Simulator11 Dec
- 2025RynnVLA-002: A Unified Vision-Language-Action and World Model21 Nov
- 2025Ctrl-World: A Controllable Generative World Model for Robot Manipulation11 Oct
- 2025RoDyn: Taming Interactive Robot-Dynamic 2.5D World Model for Robotic Manipulation10 Oct
- 2025GWM: Towards Scalable Gaussian World Models for Robotic Manipulation25 Aug
- 2025Geometry-aware 4D Video Generation for Robot Manipulation1 Jul
- 2025ParticleFormer: A 3D Point Cloud World Model for Multi-Object, Multi-Material Robotic Manipulation29 Jun
- 2025WorldVLA: Towards Autoregressive Action World Model26 Jun
9 more
- 2025V-JEPA 2: Self-Supervised Video Models Enable Understanding, Prediction and Planning11 Jun
- 2025ORV: 4D Occupancy-centric Robot Video Generation3 Jun
- 2025LaDi-WM: A Latent Diffusion-based World Model for Predictive Manipulation13 May
- 2025TesserAct: Learning 4D Embodied World Models29 Apr
- 2025Aether: Geometric-Aware Unified World Modeling24 Mar
- 2024iVideoGPT: Interactive VideoGPTs are Scalable World Models24 May
- 2024RoboDreamer: Learning Compositional World Models for Robot Imagination18 Apr
- 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion7 Mar
- 2020SAPIEN: A SimulAted Part-based Interactive ENvironment19 Mar
Other references · 57
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38 more
- 2025Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Modelscited by 2,708
- 2022RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scalecited by 2,061
- 2025VGGT: Visual Geometry Grounded Transformercited by 1,539
- 2018World Modelscited by 1,513
- 2019Towards Robust Monocular Depth Estimation: Mixing Datasets for Zero-shot Cross-dataset Transfercited by 1,495
- 2023LIBERO: Benchmarking Knowledge Transfer for Lifelong Robot Learningcited by 1,410
- 2021Isaac Gym: High Performance GPU-Based Physics Simulation For Robot Learningcited by 998
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- 2024DROID: A Large-Scale In-The-Wild Robot Manipulation Datasetcited by 852
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- 2025Re3Sim: Generating High-Fidelity Simulation Data via 3D-Photorealistic Real-to-Sim for Robotic Manipulationcited by 43
- 2025EnerVerse-AC: Envisioning Embodied Environments with Action Conditioncited by 42
- 2024Physically Embodied Gaussian Splatting: A Realtime Correctable World Model for Roboticscited by 40
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- 20254DNeX: Feed-Forward 4D Generative Modeling Made Easycited by 34
- 2025ReconViaGen: Towards Accurate Multi-view 3D Object Reconstruction via Generationcited by 33
50 most cited of 57 All 57 (JSON)
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 12.
12 papers.
- 2026ImageWAM: Do World Action Models Really Need Video Generation, or Just Image Editing?cited by 38
- 2026WAM4D: Fast 4D World Action Model via Spatial Register Tokenscited by 15
- 2026Masked Visual Actions for Unified World Modelingcited by 9
- 2026OSCAR: Omni-Embodiment Action-Conditioned World Model for Roboticscited by 7
- 2026GeniWorld: A Generalizable Interactive World Model for Robotic Manipulation via Visual Actionscited by 3
- 2026LAWM-3D: Learning 3D-Aware Latent Actions from Human Videos for Generalizable Robot World Modelscited by 1
- 2026ContactFlow: A video action conditioning that transfers across embodimentscited by 0
- 2026From Generation to Simulation: How Far Are World Models from Being True Simulators?cited by 0
- 2026Toward Unified Robot Learning: Bridging Representation, Vision-Language-Action, and World Modelscited by 0
- 2026SimForcing: Distilling Simulation Motion Priors into Real-Domain Robot World Modelscited by 0
- 2026Beyond Successful Robot Demonstrations: Learning from Human Interactions and Modeling Failure Dynamicscited by 0
- 2026WorldOracle: Benchmarking Action-Conditioned World Models against Real-World Executionscited by 0
- 2026WorldOracle: Benchmarking Action-Conditioned World Models against Real-World Executions13 Oct 2026
- 2026Beyond Successful Robot Demonstrations: Learning from Human Interactions and Modeling Failure Dynamics9 Oct 2026
- 2026SimForcing: Distilling Simulation Motion Priors into Real-Domain Robot World Models5 Oct 2026
- 2026Toward Unified Robot Learning: Bridging Representation, Vision-Language-Action, and World Models3 Sep 2026
- 2026From Generation to Simulation: How Far Are World Models from Being True Simulators?24 Aug 2026
- 2026GeniWorld: A Generalizable Interactive World Model for Robotic Manipulation via Visual Actions6 Aug 2026
- 2026LAWM-3D: Learning 3D-Aware Latent Actions from Human Videos for Generalizable Robot World Models6 Aug 2026
- 2026ContactFlow: A video action conditioning that transfers across embodiments29 Jul 2026
- 2026Masked Visual Actions for Unified World Modeling21 Jul 2026
- 2026ImageWAM: Do World Action Models Really Need Video Generation, or Just Image Editing?17 Jun 2026
- 2026WAM4D: Fast 4D World Action Model via Spatial Register Tokens12 Jun 2026
- 2026OSCAR: Omni-Embodiment Action-Conditioned World Model for Robotics3 Jun 2026
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- 2025Any4D: Open-Prompt 4D Generation from Natural Language and Images
- 2026IOI: Decoupling Kinematics and Physics for Interactive World Models
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