mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

When to Trust Imagination: Adaptive Action Execution for World Action Models

arXiv 2605.06222 ↗First posted 7 May 2026cs.RO cs.AIcited by 18

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

Abstract (arXiv)

World Action Models (WAMs) jointly predict future visual observations and actions, but typically execute a fixed number of actions before replanning, regardless of whether the imagined future remains consistent with reality. We formulate adaptive WAM execution as future--reality verification and propose Future Forward Dynamics Causal Attention (FFDC), a lightweight verifier that reasons over predicted actions, predicted visual dynamics, real observations, and instruction-conditioned semantics. FFDC allows continued execution when a plan remains reliable and triggers replanning when its validity deteriorates. We combine verification with Mixture-of-Horizon Training to improve long-horizon trajectory coverage. On RoboTwin, FFDC-WAM achieves the highest average success rate among the evaluated methods in both clean and randomized settings. Under randomization, it improves success by 2.54 percentage points over Base-Motus while reducing WAM planning calls by 69.10% and completion time by 33.88%. Notably, across six real-world tasks on a Unitree G1D robot, FFDC-WAM improves average success by 9.17% over Base-Motus-LC16 while reducing calls by 74.06% and completion time by 51.31%.

Key facts. Cited by 18 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 31 of its 34 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 7 May 2026.

Builds on

31 of 34 references.

Closest ancestors · 8

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026Being-H0.7: A Latent World-Action Model from Egocentric Videos30 Apr
  2. 2026Speedup Patch: Learning a Plug-and-Play Policy to Accelerate Embodied Manipulation21 Mar
  3. 2026GigaWorld-Policy: An Efficient Action-Centered World--Action Model18 Mar
  4. 2026Fast-WAM: Do World Action Models Need Test-time Future Imagination?17 Mar
  5. 2026World Action Models are Zero-shot Policies17 Feb
  6. 2026Causal World Modeling for Robot Control29 Jan
  7. 2025Motus: A Unified Latent Action World Model15 Dec
  8. 2025Unified World Models: Coupling Video and Action Diffusion for Pretraining on Large Robotic Datasets3 Apr

Other references · 23

  1. 2023SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,290
  2. 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,297
  3. 2025π0.5: a Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Generalizationcited by 1,653
  4. 2023Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardwarecited by 1,490
  5. 2025SmolVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model for Affordable and Efficient Roboticscited by 507
  6. 2023Learning Universal Policies via Text-Guided Video Generationcited by 506
  7. 2025RoboTwin 2.0: A Scalable Data Generator and Benchmark with Strong Domain Randomization for Robust Bimanual Robotic Manipulationcited by 477
  8. 2024Latent Action Pretraining from Videoscited by 302
  9. 2025Unified Video Action Modelcited by 195
  10. 2017DART: Noise Injection for Robust Imitation Learningcited by 187
  11. 2025mimic-video: Video-Action Models for Generalizable Robot Control Beyond VLAscited by 133
  12. 2021ThriftyDAgger: Budget-Aware Novelty and Risk Gating for Interactive Imitation Learningcited by 98
11 more
  1. 2018EnsembleDAgger: A Bayesian Approach to Safe Imitation Learningcited by 96
  2. 2025Video Generators are Robot Policiescited by 86
  3. 2025F1: A Vision-Language-Action Model Bridging Understanding and Generation to Actionscited by 85
  4. 2024Prediction with Action: Visual Policy Learning via Joint Denoising Processcited by 64
  5. 2024Diff-DAgger: Uncertainty Estimation with Diffusion Policy for Robotic Manipulationcited by 29
  6. 2026Adaptive Action Chunking at Inference-time for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 24
  7. 2025Mixture of Horizons in Action Chunkingcited by 20
  8. 2025Towards Human-level Intelligence via Human-like Whole-Body Manipulationcited by 12
  9. 2025Improving Generative Behavior Cloning via Self-Guidance and Adaptive Chunkingcited by 7
  10. 2026VLA Knows Its Limits: Adaptive Execution Horizons for Robot Policiescited by 7
  11. 2026Open-Loop Planning, Closed-Loop Verification: Speculative Verification for VLAcited by 5

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 18.

18 papers.

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  1. 2026World Action Models: A Surveycited by 10
  2. 2026HiMem-WAM: Hierarchical Memory-Gated World Action Models for Robotic Manipulationcited by 8
  3. 2026Test-Time Scaling for World Action Models via Zero-Shot Geometric Evaluationcited by 6
  4. 2026Rethink Before You Execute: Adaptive Execution for World Action Modelscited by 4
  5. 2026Continue or Replan? Bernoulli-Continuation Policy Learning for Adaptive Horizon Executioncited by 3
  6. 2026Embodied.cpp: A Portable Inference Runtime of Embodied AI Models on Heterogeneous Robotscited by 2
  7. 2026World Models for Embodied Intelligence: From Plausible to Controllable to Actionablecited by 1
  8. 2026CoWAM: Coordination Contracts for Selective Policy Intervention with WAMscited by 0
  9. 2026Paired Exact-Reset Evaluation of a Prediction-Derived Medium-to-Full World-Model Cascadecited by 0
  10. 2026Reading the Room: Implicit Confusion Encoding in Recurrent World Model Statescited by 0
  11. 2026DreamLedger: Where to Refuse World-Model Imagination Using Execution-Settled Creditcited by 0
  12. 2026GameWAM: A World Action Model for Video Gamescited by 0
6 more
  1. 2026Learning to Use Imagination: Progress-Conditioned Future Utilization for World Action Modelscited by 0
  2. 2026Task-Specified Active Metrological Inspection with Measurement-Steered VLA Manipulation and Deterministic Evidence Gatingcited by 0
  3. 2026When Should a World Model Move? Loss-Conditioned State Executioncited by 0
  4. 2026Are Vision-Language-Action Models Robust to One-Step Observation Perturbations?cited by 0
  5. 2026Revision, Not Restart: Revisable Visual Plans for Closed-Loop World-Action Modelscited by 0
  6. 2026Staircase Policy: Streaming Inference for World-Action Models with Large Action Chunkscited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Efficient-WAM: A 1B-Parameter World-Action Model with Low-Cost Future Imagination
  2. 2026Faster-WAM: Efficient Inference-Time Future Conditioning for Robust World Action Models
  3. 2026World-Coherent Decoding: Self-Verifying Test-Time Planning for World Action Models
  4. 2026Commit While Futures Agree: Consequence-Aware Adaptive Action Chunking for Robot Manipulation ↗
  5. 2026Latent Action as Intention Enables Efficient Future Imagination for World Action Models
  6. 2026World Action Models in Real Time: An Empirical Study of Smooth Execution via Asynchronous Deployment
  7. 2026DELE-w0.5: Inferring Action from Future Latent State for Robotic Manipulation
  8. 2026PACT-WAM: Predicting Actions and Visual Foresight with Compact Temporal Encoding for Robot Manipulation