mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

EVA: Aligning Video World Models with Executable Robot Actions via Inverse Dynamics Rewards

arXiv 2603.17808 ↗First posted 18 Mar 2026cs.RO cs.AIcited by 14

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

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Abstract (arXiv)

Video generative models are increasingly used as world models for robotics, where a model generates a future visual rollout conditioned on the current observation and task instruction, and an inverse dynamics model (IDM) converts the generated frames into executable robot actions. However, current video world models lack explicit executability constraints. As a result, visually coherent rollouts may still violate rigid-body and kinematic consistency, producing unstable or infeasible control commands when decoded by an IDM. We refer to this mismatch between visual generation and physically executable control as the executability gap. While this gap can be mitigated at inference time using techniques such as rejection sampling, such approaches are inefficient due to the high cost of video generation. In this paper, we leverage the executability gap as a training signal and introduce Executable Video Alignment (EVA), a reinforcement-learning post-training framework for aligning video world models. EVA trains an inverse dynamics model on real robot trajectories and repurposes it as a reward model that evaluates generated videos through the action sequences they induce, encouraging smooth motions measured by velocity, acceleration, and jerk while penalizing actions that violate embodiment constraints. Importantly, the reward remains informative even when generated videos contain severe visual artifacts, since such artifacts typically translate into unstable or out-of-bound actions. Experiments on the RoboTwin benchmark and a real bimanual robot show that EVA reduces embodiment-specific artifacts in generated rollouts and improves downstream task execution success.

Key facts. Cited by 14 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 41 of its 46 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 18 Mar 2026.

Builds on

41 of 46 references.

Closest ancestors · 9

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026World Action Models are Zero-shot Policies17 Feb
  2. 2025Motus: A Unified Latent Action World Model15 Dec
  3. 2025Evaluating Gemini Robotics Policies in a Veo World Simulator11 Dec
  4. 2025Ctrl-World: A Controllable Generative World Model for Robot Manipulation11 Oct
  5. 2025WorldVLA: Towards Autoregressive Action World Model26 Jun
  6. 2025DreamGen: Unlocking Generalization in Robot Learning through Video World Models19 May
  7. 2024IRASim: A Fine-Grained World Model for Robot Manipulation20 Jun
  8. 2024RoboDreamer: Learning Compositional World Models for Robot Imagination18 Apr
  9. 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion7 Mar

Other references · 32

  1. 2022Training language models to follow instructions with human feedbackcited by 15,712
  2. 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 14,441
  3. 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 8,851
  4. 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 5,931
  5. 2024OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 2,777
  6. 2025Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Modelscited by 2,536
  7. 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,297
  8. 2023Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardwarecited by 1,490
  9. 2024Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policycited by 1,427
  10. 2025GR00T N1: An Open Foundation Model for Generalist Humanoid Robotscited by 1,167
  11. 2015End-to-End Training of Deep Visuomotor Policiescited by 847
  12. 2025Cosmos World Foundation Model Platform for Physical AIcited by 833
20 more
  1. 2024RDT-1B: a Diffusion Foundation Model for Bimanual Manipulationcited by 670
  2. 2024Diffusion Forcing: Next-token Prediction Meets Full-Sequence Diffusioncited by 634
  3. 2025Flow-GRPO: Training Flow Matching Models via Online RLcited by 605
  4. 2023Learning Universal Policies via Text-Guided Video Generationcited by 506
  5. 2025RoboTwin 2.0: A Scalable Data Generator and Benchmark with Strong Domain Randomization for Robust Bimanual Robotic Manipulationcited by 477
  6. 2024Video Prediction Policy: A Generalist Robot Policy with Predictive Visual Representationscited by 279
  7. 2026Cosmos Policy: Fine-Tuning Video Models for Visuomotor Control and Planningcited by 274
  8. 2025Improving Video Generation with Human Feedbackcited by 267
  9. 2024Gen2Act: Human Video Generation in Novel Scenarios enables Generalizable Robot Manipulationcited by 142
  10. 2025mimic-video: Video-Action Models for Generalizable Robot Control Beyond VLAscited by 133
  11. 2025Genie Envisioner: A Unified World Foundation Platform for Robotic Manipulationcited by 129
  12. 2025Large Video Planner Enables Generalizable Robot Controlcited by 67
  13. 2025WoW: Towards a World omniscient World model Through Embodied Interactioncited by 66
  14. 2025Vidar: Embodied Video Diffusion Model for Generalist Manipulationcited by 58
  15. 2025RLVR-World: Training World Models with Reinforcement Learningcited by 38
  16. 2025AnyPos: Automated Task-Agnostic Actions for Bimanual Manipulationcited by 23
  17. 2025PhyGDPO: Physics-Aware Groupwise Direct Preference Optimization for Physically Consistent Text-to-Video Generationcited by 22
  18. 2025Vidarc: Embodied Video Diffusion Model for Closed-loop Controlcited by 15
  19. 2026TAGRPO: Boosting GRPO on Image-to-Video Generation with Direct Trajectory Alignmentcited by 8
  20. 2025Diffusion-Based Imaginative Coordination for Bimanual Manipulationcited by 7

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  1. 2026SC3-Eval: Evaluating Robot Foundation Models via Self-Consistent Video Generation
  2. 2026RoboAlign-R1: Distilled Multimodal Reward Alignment for Robot Video World Models
  3. 2026Turning Video Models into Generalist Robot Policies
  4. 2025EnerVerse-AC: Envisioning Embodied Environments with Action Condition
  5. 2026XPACE: Joint World and Action Modeling from Heterogeneous Experience
  6. 2026TC-IDM: Grounding Video Generation for Executable Zero-shot Robot Motion
  7. 2024EVA: An Embodied World Model for Future Video Anticipation
  8. 2025Scalable Policy Evaluation with Video World Models