mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Feedback World Model Enables Precise Guidance of Diffusion Policy

arXiv 2605.15705 ↗First posted 15 May 2026cs.RO cs.AIcited by 9

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

also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)

World models aim to improve robotic decision making by predicting the consequences of actions. However, in practice, their predictions often become unreliable once the robot encounters states outside the training distribution, limiting their effectiveness at deployment. We observe that execution itself provides a natural but underutilized signal: after each action, the robot directly observes the true next state, revealing the mismatch between predicted and actual outcomes. Building on this insight, we propose feedback world model, a new paradigm that closes the loop between prediction and observation at inference time. Instead of treating the world model as a static open-loop predictor, our method maintains a lightweight feedback state that is updated online to iteratively correct future predictions, compensating for model errors using real-time observations without additional training data or parameter updates. We show that this process can be interpreted as a latent-space observer and admits convergence guarantees under mild conditions. We further introduce action-aware guidance to better translate corrected predictions into control by emphasizing action-controllable components while suppressing irrelevant variations. Experiments on LIBERO-Plus, Robomimic, and real-world manipulation tasks demonstrate that our method substantially improves both prediction accuracy and policy performance under distribution shift. In particular, it reduces world model prediction error by up to 76.4% and improves out-of-distribution (OOD) success rate by 30%. These results show that incorporating real-time feedback at inference time provides a simple yet powerful alternative to static world modeling.

Key facts. Cited by 9 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 26 of its 28 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 15 May 2026.

Builds on

26 of 28 references.

Closest ancestors · 8

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026Fast-WAM: Do World Action Models Need Test-time Future Imagination?17 Mar
  2. 2026AtomVLA: Scalable Post-Training for Robotic Manipulation via Predictive Latent World Models9 Mar
  3. 2026World Guidance: World Modeling in Condition Space for Action Generation25 Feb
  4. 2026World Action Models are Zero-shot Policies17 Feb
  5. 2026VLA-JEPA: Enhancing Vision-Language-Action Model with Latent World Model10 Feb
  6. 2026World-VLA-Loop: Closed-Loop Learning of Video World Model and VLA Policy6 Feb
  7. 2026DDP-WM: Disentangled Dynamics Prediction for Efficient World Models2 Feb
  8. 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion7 Mar

Other references · 18

  1. 2020Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 9,122
  2. 2021Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesiscited by 8,255
  3. 2019Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distributioncited by 4,101
  4. 2019Dream to Control: Learning Behaviors by Latent Imaginationcited by 1,653
  5. 2018Learning Latent Dynamics for Planning from Pixelscited by 1,264
  6. 2022Planning with Diffusion for Flexible Behavior Synthesiscited by 1,061
  7. 2020Mastering Atari with Discrete World Modelscited by 1,007
  8. 2021What Matters in Learning from Offline Human Demonstrations for Robot Manipulationcited by 725
  9. 2024DINO-WM: World Models on Pre-trained Visual Features enable Zero-shot Planningcited by 386
  10. 2025LIBERO-Plus: In-depth Robustness Analysis of Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 303
  11. 2024Steering Your Generalists: Improving Robotic Foundation Models via Value Guidancecited by 106
  12. 2026World Model for Robot Learning: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 46
6 more
  1. 2025DynaGuide: Steering Diffusion Polices with Active Dynamic Guidancecited by 44
  2. 2023Finetuning Offline World Models in the Real Worldcited by 41
  3. 2025Latent Policy Barrier: Learning Robust Visuomotor Policies by Staying In-Distributioncited by 25
  4. 2026Action-to-Action Flow Matchingcited by 16
  5. 2026ProgressVLA: Progress-Guided Diffusion Policy for Vision-Language Robotic Manipulationcited by 10
  6. 2024Feedback Favors the Generalization of Neural ODEscited by 8

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 9.

9 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Do Robotic World Models Really Follow Actions? Diagnosing and Aligning Action-Conditioned Generation for Policy Learning
  2. 2025World4RL: Diffusion World Models for Policy Refinement with Reinforcement Learning for Robotic Manipulation
  3. 2026DriftWorld: Fast World Modeling through Drifting
  4. 2026World Models for Robotic Manipulation: A Survey
  5. 2025Inference-Time Enhancement of Generative Robot Policies via Predictive World Modeling
  6. 2026World Action Verifier: Self-Improving World Models via Forward-Inverse Asymmetry
  7. 2026DualWAM: Dual-System World Action Models for Asynchronous Global Planning and Local Refinement
  8. 2026Causal World Modeling for Robot Control