HiMem-WAM: Hierarchical Memory-Gated World Action Models for Robotic Manipulation
On the map: World models → Embodied and robot world models
Abstract (arXiv)
World Action Models (WAMs) have emerged as a new powerful paradigm for embodied intelligence, learning action-relevant visual dynamics that significantly enhance generalization and robustness. However, existing WAMs still struggle with task-relevant memory in long-horizon robotic manipulation. To address this, we present HiMem-WAM, a Hierarchical Memory-Gated WAM that integrates motion-centric latent actions, high-level skill latents, and boundary-triggered memory updates. Specifically, we develop a hierarchical latent action framework that jointly learns low-level motion and high-level skill latents, providing structured temporal abstraction. Meanwhile, a boundary-aware memory gate writes compact task states at predicted skill transitions, enabling causal inference without test-time generation of future video or optical flow estimation. Evaluated on LIBERO, LIBERO-PLUS, RMBench and real-world tasks, HiMem-WAM shows that hierarchical latents improve robustness under deployment perturbations, and the memory module substantially benefits memory-dependent long-horizon manipulation.
Key facts. Cited by 8 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 23 of its 32 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 9 Jun 2026.
Builds on
23 of 32 references.
Closest ancestors · 8
Same direction, newest first
- 2026When to Trust Imagination: Adaptive Action Execution for World Action Models7 May
- 2026Motubrain: An Advanced World Action Model for Robot Control30 Apr
- 2026Fast-WAM: Do World Action Models Need Test-time Future Imagination?17 Mar
- 2026AtomVLA: Scalable Post-Training for Robotic Manipulation via Predictive Latent World Models9 Mar
- 2026Causal World Modeling for Robot Control29 Jan
- 2025Motus: A Unified Latent Action World Model15 Dec
- 2025WorldVLA: Towards Autoregressive Action World Model26 Jun
- 2025Unified World Models: Coupling Video and Action Diffusion for Pretraining on Large Robotic Datasets3 Apr
Other references · 15
- 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,407
- 2025π0.5: a Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Generalizationcited by 1,761
- 2023Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardwarecited by 1,568
- 2023LIBERO: Benchmarking Knowledge Transfer for Lifelong Robot Learningcited by 1,410
- 2024CogACT: A Foundational Vision-Language-Action Model for Synergizing Cognition and Action in Robotic Manipulationcited by 422
- 2025X-VLA: Soft-Prompted Transformer as Scalable Cross-Embodiment Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 303
- 2025LIBERO-Plus: In-depth Robustness Analysis of Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 303
- 2025MemoryVLA: Perceptual-Cognitive Memory in Vision-Language-Action Models for Robotic Manipulationcited by 192
- 2025F1: A Vision-Language-Action Model Bridging Understanding and Generation to Actionscited by 86
- 2025MemER: Scaling Up Memory for Robot Control via Experience Retrievalcited by 67
- 2025Vidar: Embodied Video Diffusion Model for Generalist Manipulationcited by 62
- 2025SAM2Act: Integrating Visual Foundation Model with A Memory Architecture for Robotic Manipulationcited by 61
3 more
- 2026RMBench: Memory-Dependent Robotic Manipulation Benchmark with Insights into Policy Designcited by 45
- 2025CronusVLA: Towards Efficient and Robust Manipulation via Multi-Frame Vision-Language-Action Modelingcited by 25
- 2026Rethinking the Practicality of Vision-language-action Model: A Comprehensive Benchmark and An Improved Baselinecited by 9
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 8.
8 papers.
- 2026HarnessWAM: Bridging Prediction and Deliberation in World Action Modelscited by 5
- 2026SimpleMemVLA: A Simple but Effective Native-Video Memory for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 3
- 2026ChainVLA: Chaining Vision-Language-Action Queries through a Unified Execution State for Long-Horizon Manipulationcited by 2
- 2026Long-WAM: Scaling the Context of World-Action Modelscited by 1
- 2026Skills in Weights, Memory in Code: Hybrid Learning for Memory-Dependent Robot Manipulationcited by 0
- 2026AtomEgo: Exploring Ego-Robot Integration for Embodied Foundation Model Pretrainingcited by 0
- 2026LIBERO-MAX: Do Robot Policies Adapt When the World Changes?cited by 0
- 2026TACROSS: An Efficient and Low-Cost Scalable Human Touch System Across Heterogeneous Tactile Sensors for Dexterous Robot Learningcited by 0
- 2026TACROSS: An Efficient and Low-Cost Scalable Human Touch System Across Heterogeneous Tactile Sensors for Dexterous Robot Learning8 Oct 2026
- 2026Long-WAM: Scaling the Context of World-Action Models7 Oct 2026
- 2026LIBERO-MAX: Do Robot Policies Adapt When the World Changes?29 Sep 2026
- 2026AtomEgo: Exploring Ego-Robot Integration for Embodied Foundation Model Pretraining18 Sep 2026
- 2026SimpleMemVLA: A Simple but Effective Native-Video Memory for Vision-Language-Action Models2 Sep 2026
- 2026HarnessWAM: Bridging Prediction and Deliberation in World Action Models10 Aug 2026
- 2026Skills in Weights, Memory in Code: Hybrid Learning for Memory-Dependent Robot Manipulation10 Aug 2026
- 2026ChainVLA: Chaining Vision-Language-Action Queries through a Unified Execution State for Long-Horizon Manipulation3 Aug 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026RM-WAM: Reliable Memory-Augmented World Action Models for Long-Horizon Robot Manipulation
- 2026MemoryWAM: Efficient World Action Modeling with Persistent Memory
- 2026DIM-WAM: World-Action Modeling with Diverse Historical Event Memory
- 2026Mem-World: Memory-Augmented Action-Conditioned World Models for Persistent Robot Manipulation
- 2026τ0-WM: A Unified Video-Action World Model for Robotic Manipulation
- 2026WorldScape Policy 2.0: Empowering Steerable World Action Modeling with Reasoning-Augmented Memory and In-Context Learning
- 2026MV-WAM: Manifold-Aware World Action Model with Value Augmentation
- 2026WAM-TTT: Steering World-Action Models by Watching Human Play at Test Time