mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Kinema4D: Kinematic 4D World Modeling for Spatiotemporal Embodied Simulation

arXiv 2603.16669 ↗First posted 17 Mar 2026cs.RO cs.CVcited by 12

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

  1. 2026DreamDojo: A Generalist Robot World Model from Large-Scale Human Videos6 Feb
  2. 2026BridgeV2W: Bridging Video Generation Models to Embodied World Models via Embodiment Masks3 Feb
  3. 2026PointWorld: Scaling 3D World Models for In-The-Wild Robotic Manipulation7 Jan
  4. 2025AnchorDream: Repurposing Video Diffusion for Embodiment-Aware Robot Data Synthesis12 Dec
  5. 2025Evaluating Gemini Robotics Policies in a Veo World Simulator11 Dec
  6. 2025RynnVLA-002: A Unified Vision-Language-Action and World Model21 Nov
  7. 2025Ctrl-World: A Controllable Generative World Model for Robot Manipulation11 Oct
  8. 2025RoDyn: Taming Interactive Robot-Dynamic 2.5D World Model for Robotic Manipulation10 Oct
  9. 2025GWM: Towards Scalable Gaussian World Models for Robotic Manipulation25 Aug
  10. 2025Geometry-aware 4D Video Generation for Robot Manipulation1 Jul
  11. 2025ParticleFormer: A 3D Point Cloud World Model for Multi-Object, Multi-Material Robotic Manipulation29 Jun
  12. 2025WorldVLA: Towards Autoregressive Action World Model26 Jun
9 more
  1. 2025V-JEPA 2: Self-Supervised Video Models Enable Understanding, Prediction and Planning11 Jun
  2. 2025ORV: 4D Occupancy-centric Robot Video Generation3 Jun
  3. 2025LaDi-WM: A Latent Diffusion-based World Model for Predictive Manipulation13 May
  4. 2025TesserAct: Learning 4D Embodied World Models29 Apr
  5. 2025Aether: Geometric-Aware Unified World Modeling24 Mar
  6. 2024iVideoGPT: Interactive VideoGPTs are Scalable World Models24 May
  7. 2024RoboDreamer: Learning Compositional World Models for Robot Imagination18 Apr
  8. 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion7 Mar
  9. 2020SAPIEN: A SimulAted Part-based Interactive ENvironment19 Mar

Other references · 57

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  2. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,863
  3. 2021LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Modelscited by 14,380
  4. 2018The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metriccited by 11,177
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38 more
  1. 2025Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Modelscited by 2,708
  2. 2022RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scalecited by 2,061
  3. 2025VGGT: Visual Geometry Grounded Transformercited by 1,539
  4. 2018World Modelscited by 1,513
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  6. 2023LIBERO: Benchmarking Knowledge Transfer for Lifelong Robot Learningcited by 1,410
  7. 2021Isaac Gym: High Performance GPU-Based Physics Simulation For Robot Learningcited by 998
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  25. 2025Genie Envisioner: A Unified World Foundation Platform for Robotic Manipulationcited by 137
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  29. 2024URDFormer: A Pipeline for Constructing Articulated Simulation Environments from Real-World Imagescited by 111
  30. 2024Wonderland: Navigating 3D Scenes from a Single Imagecited by 99
  31. 2025SpatialTrackerV2: 3D Point Tracking Made Easycited by 87
  32. 2024RoboGSim: A Real2Sim2Real Robotic Gaussian Splatting Simulatorcited by 53
  33. 2025Re3Sim: Generating High-Fidelity Simulation Data via 3D-Photorealistic Real-to-Sim for Robotic Manipulationcited by 43
  34. 2025EnerVerse-AC: Envisioning Embodied Environments with Action Conditioncited by 42
  35. 2024Physically Embodied Gaussian Splatting: A Realtime Correctable World Model for Roboticscited by 40
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  37. 20254DNeX: Feed-Forward 4D Generative Modeling Made Easycited by 34
  38. 2025ReconViaGen: Towards Accurate Multi-view 3D Object Reconstruction via Generationcited by 33

50 most cited of 57 All 57 (JSON)

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 12.

12 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026RynnWorld-4D: 4D Embodied World Models for Robotic Manipulation
  2. 2026MVISTA-4D: View-Consistent 4D World Model with Test-Time Action Inference for Robotic Manipulation
  3. 20264DSynth: Controllable Procedural World Synthesis for Dynamic Embodied Simulation
  4. 2026Embody4D: A Generalist Data Engine for Embodied 4D World Modeling
  5. 2025Any4D: Open-Prompt 4D Generation from Natural Language and Images
  6. 2026IOI: Decoupling Kinematics and Physics for Interactive World Models
  7. 2026KineWorld: Action-Induced Transport Fields for Embodied World Modeling
  8. 20263D Generation for Embodied AI and Robotic Simulation: A Survey