mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

GigaWorld-Policy: An Efficient Action-Centered World--Action Model

arXiv 2603.17240 ↗First posted 18 Mar 2026cs.CVcited by 129

On the map: World models → Embodied and robot world models

Abstract (arXiv)

World-Action Models (WAM) initialized from pre-trained video generation backbones have demonstrated remarkable potential for robot policy learning. However, existing approaches face two critical bottlenecks that hinder performance and deployment. First, jointly reasoning over future visual dynamics and corresponding actions incurs substantial inference overhead. Second, joint modeling often entangles visual and motion representations, making motion prediction accuracy heavily dependent on the quality of future video forecasts. To address these issues, we introduce GigaWorld-Policy, an action-centered WAM that learns 2D pixel-action dynamics while enabling efficient action decoding, with optional video generation. Specifically, we formulate policy training into two coupled components: the model predicts future action sequences conditioned on the current observation, and simultaneously generates future videos conditioned on the predicted actions and the same observation. The policy is supervised by both action prediction and video generation, providing richer learning signals and encouraging physically plausible actions through visual-dynamics constraints. With a causal design that prevents future-video tokens from influencing action tokens, explicit future-video generation is optional at inference time, allowing faster action prediction during deployment. To support this paradigm, we curate a diverse, large-scale robot dataset to pre-train an action-centered video generation model, which is then adapted as the backbone for robot policy learning. Experimental results on real-world robotic platforms show that GigaWorld-Policy runs 9x faster than the leading WAM baseline, Motus, while improving task success rates by 7%. Moreover, compared with pi-0.5, GigaWorld-Policy improves performance by 95% on RoboTwin 2.0.

Key facts. Cited by 129 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 53 of its 66 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 18 Mar 2026.

Builds on

53 of 66 references.

Closest ancestors · 11

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026World Action Models are Zero-shot Policies17 Feb
  2. 2026GigaBrain-0.5M*: a VLA That Learns From World Model-Based Reinforcement Learning12 Feb
  3. 2025Motus: A Unified Latent Action World Model15 Dec
  4. 2025GigaWorld-0: World Models as Data Engine to Empower Embodied AI25 Nov
  5. 2025GigaBrain-0: A World Model-Powered Vision-Language-Action Model22 Oct
  6. 2025VLA-RFT: Vision-Language-Action Reinforcement Fine-tuning with Verified Rewards in World Simulators1 Oct
  7. 2025FreeAction: Training-Free Techniques for Enhanced Fidelity of Trajectory-to-Video Generation29 Sep
  8. 2025EmbodieDreamer: Advancing Real2Sim2Real Transfer for Policy Training via Embodied World Modeling7 Jul
  9. 2025WorldVLA: Towards Autoregressive Action World Model26 Jun
  10. 2025Aether: Geometric-Aware Unified World Modeling24 Mar
  11. 2024RoboDreamer: Learning Compositional World Models for Robot Imagination18 Apr

Other references · 42

  1. 2023SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,290
  2. 2025Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Modelscited by 2,536
  3. 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,297
  4. 2025π0.5: a Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Generalizationcited by 1,653
  5. 2024DROID: A Large-Scale In-The-Wild Robot Manipulation Datasetcited by 801
  6. 2024PaliGemma: A versatile 3B VLM for transfercited by 679
  7. 2024RDT-1B: a Diffusion Foundation Model for Bimanual Manipulationcited by 670
  8. 2025RoboTwin 2.0: A Scalable Data Generator and Benchmark with Strong Domain Randomization for Robust Bimanual Robotic Manipulationcited by 477
  9. 2025X-VLA: Soft-Prompted Transformer as Scalable Cross-Embodiment Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 285
  10. 2026Cosmos Policy: Fine-Tuning Video Models for Visuomotor Control and Planningcited by 274
  11. 2025SmolVLM: Redefining small and efficient multimodal modelscited by 226
  12. 2024PaliGemma 2: A Family of Versatile VLMs for Transfercited by 204
30 more
  1. 2025DreamVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model Dreamed with Comprehensive World Knowledgecited by 203
  2. 2025EgoDex: Learning Dexterous Manipulation from Large-Scale Egocentric Videocited by 191
  3. 2024RoboMIND: Benchmark on Multi-embodiment Intelligence Normative Data for Robot Manipulationcited by 166
  4. 2025VLA-Adapter: An Effective Paradigm for Tiny-Scale Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 140
  5. 2025mimic-video: Video-Action Models for Generalizable Robot Control Beyond VLAscited by 133
  6. 2025GR-3 Technical Reportcited by 110
  7. 2025Galaxea Open-World Dataset and G0 Dual-System VLA Modelcited by 90
  8. 2024Pandora: Towards General World Model with Natural Language Actions and Video Statescited by 83
  9. 2025OpenHelix: A Short Survey, Empirical Analysis, and Open-Source Dual-System VLA Model for Robotic Manipulationcited by 79
  10. 2024Point Mamba: A Novel Point Cloud Backbone Based on State Space Model with Octree-Based Ordering Strategycited by 71
  11. 2025VideoVLA: Video Generators Can Be Generalizable Robot Manipulatorscited by 61
  12. 2025Vidar: Embodied Video Diffusion Model for Generalist Manipulationcited by 58
  13. 2025Think with 3D: Geometric Imagination Grounded Spatial Reasoning from Limited Viewscited by 58
  14. 2025Humanoid-VLA: Towards Universal Humanoid Control with Visual Integrationcited by 43
  15. 2025VisRL: Intention-Driven Visual Perception via Reinforced Reasoningcited by 39
  16. 2025VLA-R1: Enhancing Reasoning in Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 38
  17. 2025ReconDreamer++: Harmonizing Generative and Reconstructive Models for Driving Scene Representationcited by 36
  18. 2025WonderTurbo: Generating Interactive 3D World in 0.72 Secondscited by 31
  19. 2025ReconDreamer-RL: Enhancing Reinforcement Learning via Diffusion-based Scene Reconstructioncited by 27
  20. 2025MimicDreamer: Aligning Human and Robot Demonstrations for Scalable VLA Trainingcited by 24
  21. 2025SwiftVLA: Unlocking Spatiotemporal Dynamics for Lightweight VLA Models at Minimal Overheadcited by 23
  22. 2025HumanDreamer: Generating Controllable Human-Motion Videos via Decoupled Generationcited by 19
  23. 2025DriveGen3D: Boosting Feed-Forward Driving Scene Generation with Efficient Video Diffusioncited by 14
  24. 2025HumanDreamer-X: Photorealistic Single-image Human Avatars Reconstruction via Gaussian Restorationcited by 13
  25. 2025EMMA: Generalizing Real-World Robot Manipulation via Generative Visual Transfercited by 12
  26. 2025Scalable Training for Vector-Quantized Networks with 100% Codebook Utilizationcited by 10
  27. 2025RoboTransfer: Controllable Geometry-Consistent Video Diffusion for Manipulation Policy Transfercited by 7
  28. 2025WonderFree: Enhancing Novel View Quality and Cross-View Consistency for 3D Scene Explorationcited by 7
  29. 2026Seeing through the Conflict: Transparent Knowledge Conflict Handling in Retrieval-Augmented Generationcited by 6
  30. 2025SAMPO:Scale-wise Autoregression with Motion PrOmpt for generative world modelscited by 4

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 129.

129 papers.

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  1. 2026Unified 4D World Action Modeling from Video Priors with Asynchronous Denoisingcited by 65
  2. 2026World Action Models: The Next Frontier in Embodied AIcited by 46
  3. 2026LaWAM: Latent World Action Models for Efficient Dynamics-Aware Robot Policiescited by 46
  4. 2026World Model for Robot Learning: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 42
  5. 2026AHA-WAM:Asynchronous Horizon-Adaptive World-Action Modeling with Observation-Guided Context Routingcited by 41
  6. 2026ReTrack: Evidence-Driven Dual-Stream Directional Anchor Calibration Network for Composed Video Retrievalcited by 39
  7. 2026DSpark: Confidence-Scheduled Speculative Decoding with Semi-Autoregressive Generationcited by 36
  8. 2026Do World Action Models Generalize Better than VLAs? A Robustness Studycited by 35
  9. 2026RoboDojo: A Unified Sim-and-Real Benchmark for Comprehensive Evaluation of Generalist Robot Manipulation Policiescited by 35
  10. 2026ImageWAM: Do World Action Models Really Need Video Generation, or Just Image Editing?cited by 33
  11. 2026ABot-M0.5: Unified Mobility-and-Manipulation World Action Modelcited by 28
  12. 2026INTENT: Invariance and Discrimination-aware Noise Mitigation for Robust Composed Image Retrievalcited by 26
38 more
  1. 2026HABIT: Chrono-Synergia Robust Progressive Learning Framework for Composed Image Retrievalcited by 24
  2. 2026Xiaomi-Robotics-1: Scaling Vision-Language-Action Models with over 100K Hours of Real-World Trajectoriescited by 24
  3. 2026When to Trust Imagination: Adaptive Action Execution for World Action Modelscited by 18
  4. 2026DriveDreamer-Policy: A Geometry-Grounded World-Action Model for Unified Generation and Planningcited by 17
  5. 2026Efficient-WAM: A 1B-Parameter World-Action Model with Low-Cost Future Imaginationcited by 17
  6. 2026Flash-WAM: Modality-Aware Distillation for World Action Modelscited by 16
  7. 2026Learning 4D Geometric Priors for Inference-Efficient World Action Modelscited by 14
  8. 2026World Action Verifier: Self-Improving World Models via Forward-Inverse Asymmetrycited by 13
  9. 2026AIM: Intent-Aware Unified world action Modeling with Spatial Value Mapscited by 12
  10. 2026DriveWAM: Video Generative Priors Enable Scalable World-Action Modeling for Autonomous Drivingcited by 12
  11. 2026MemoryWAM: Efficient World Action Modeling with Persistent Memorycited by 12
  12. 2026Is the Future Compatible? Diagnosing Dynamic Consistency in World Action Modelscited by 10
  13. 2026HarmoWAM: Harmonizing Generalizable and Precise Manipulation via Adaptive World Action Modelscited by 10
  14. 2026World Action Models: A Surveycited by 10
  15. 2026VT-WAM: Visual-Tactile World Action Model for Contact-Rich Manipulationcited by 10
  16. 2026FlowWAM: Optical Flow as a Unified Action Representation for World Action Modelscited by 10
  17. 2026GigaWorld-Policy-0.5: A Faster and Stronger WAM Empowered by AutoResearchcited by 10
  18. 2026ST-WAM: Semantic-Temporal World Action Model for Robust Manipulation under Visual Distribution Shiftscited by 10
  19. 2026RepWAM: World Action Modeling with Representation Visual-Action Tokenizerscited by 9
  20. 2026TurboVLA: Real-Time Vision-Language-Action Model at 32 Hz on an RTX 4090 with <1 GB VRAMcited by 9
  21. 2026Faster-WAM: Do World Action Models Need Deep Action Modules?cited by 9
  22. 2026LiLa-WAM: Lightweight Latent Reasoning World-Action Model for Robotic Manipulationcited by 9
  23. 2026Flex-π: A Multi-Stream World-Action Model with Compute Flexibilitycited by 9
  24. 2026SafeVLA-Bench: A Benchmark for the Success-Safety Gap in Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 8
  25. 2026GeoSem-WAM: Geometry- and Semantic-Aware World Action Modelscited by 8
  26. 2026MotionWAM: Towards Foundation World Action Models for Real-Time Humanoid Loco-Manipulationcited by 8
  27. 2026Kairos: A Regret-Aware Native World-Action Model Stack for Physical AIcited by 8
  28. 2026DSWAM: A Dual-System World Action Foundation Model for Fine-Grained Robot Manipulationcited by 8
  29. 2026Zero-WAM: In-Context World-Action Modeling from Human Videos for Open-Ended Task Generalizationcited by 8
  30. 2026SANTS: A State-Adaptive Scheduler for World Action Modelscited by 7
  31. 2026FAWAM: Force-Aware World Action Models for Closed-Loop Contact-Rich Manipulationcited by 7
  32. 2026Towards Interactive Video World Modeling: Frontiers, Challenges, Benchmarks, and Future Trendscited by 6
  33. 2026Orca: The World is in Your Mindcited by 6
  34. 2026WAM-TTT: Steering World-Action Models by Watching Human Play at Test Timecited by 6
  35. 2026Motus2: A Self-Evolving General World Model for Dexterous Manipulationcited by 6
  36. 2026Human Cognition in Machines: A Unified Perspective of World Modelscited by 5
  37. 2026DIM-WAM: World-Action Modeling with Diverse Historical Event Memorycited by 5
  38. 2026ACE-Brain-0.5: A Unified Embodied Foundational Model for Physical Agentic AIcited by 5

50 most cited of 129 All 129 (JSON)

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  1. 2026MoWAM: Explicit Future Motion Prediction for Efficient World Action Models
  2. 2026Action Images: End-to-End Policy Learning via Multiview Video Generation
  3. 2026Vid2WAM: Distilling Video Diffusion Priors into World Action Models
  4. 2026SG-WAM: Self-Guided World Modeling in Geometry-Aware Policy Space
  5. 2026ACG-WAM: World-Action Modeling via Action-Conditioned Geometric Latent Prediction
  6. 2026JEPA-WAM: Learning Vision-Language-Action Policies with Joint-Embedding World Modeling
  7. 2026Light-WAM: Efficient World Action Models with State-Fusion Action Decoding
  8. 2026DualWAM: Dual-System World Action Models for Asynchronous Global Planning and Local Refinement