Rethink Before You Execute: Adaptive Execution for World Action Models
On the map: World models → Embodied and robot world models
Abstract (arXiv)
World Action Models (WAMs) jointly predict future actions and the evolution of the environment. At each inference, a WAM generates a chunk of actions and the robot executes a fixed prefix before replanning. We argue that this fixed execution horizon is poorly matched to execution dynamics: the chunk reliability varies across task stages, so when to replan depends on the result of accumulated execution, not on the step counts. We propose TempoWAM (Timing Execution by Monitoring Progress Online), a lightweight plug-and-play execution scheme for WAMs. A Recurrent Progress Monitor first estimates task progress from the current observation, task instruction, remaining actions, and execution history; and an Adaptive Execution Protocol then evaluates whether the chunk is advancing the task to decide if replanning is needed. To bridge the training-deployment gap, the protocol is calibrated by a task-dependent calibration factor with online adaptation. Experiments on LIBERO, RoboTwin, and real-world tasks show that TempoWAM consistently improves the efficiency-success trade-off of WAM execution. On real robots, it reduces WAM inferences by 26.9% on easy tasks while maintaining success, and improves success by 13.3 points on difficult tasks.
Key facts. Cited by 4 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 10 of its 17 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 10 Aug 2026.
Builds on
10 of 17 references.
Closest ancestors · 4
Same direction, newest first
- 2026LaWAM: Latent World Action Models for Efficient Dynamics-Aware Robot Policies14 Jun
- 2026AHA-WAM:Asynchronous Horizon-Adaptive World-Action Modeling with Observation-Guided Context Routing8 Jun
- 2026When to Trust Imagination: Adaptive Action Execution for World Action Models7 May
- 2026Fast-WAM: Do World Action Models Need Test-time Future Imagination?17 Mar
Other references · 6
- 2023LIBERO: Benchmarking Knowledge Transfer for Lifelong Robot Learningcited by 1,338
- 2025RoboTwin 2.0: A Scalable Data Generator and Benchmark with Strong Domain Randomization for Robust Bimanual Robotic Manipulationcited by 477
- 2026ProgressVLA: Progress-Guided Diffusion Policy for Vision-Language Robotic Manipulationcited by 8
- 2026Denoising Tells When to Replan: Denoising-Variance Adaptive Chunking for Flow-Based Robot Policiescited by 8
- 2026PACE: Phase-Aware Chunk Execution for Robot Policies with Action Chunkingcited by 7
- 2026Dynamic Execution Horizon Prediction for Chunk-based Robot Policiescited by 3
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 4.
4 papers.
- 2026World Models for Embodied Intelligence: From Plausible to Controllable to Actionablecited by 1
- 2026Learning to Use Imagination: Progress-Conditioned Future Utilization for World Action Modelscited by 0
- 2026VLA-ULAP: Interleaving Cloud VLA Calls with Ultra-Lightweight Local Action Prediction at the Edgecited by 0
- 2026CAPEX: Efficiently Distilling Foundation Model Behavior into Deployable Robot Policies through Experience-Adaptive Reasoningcited by 0
- 2026CAPEX: Efficiently Distilling Foundation Model Behavior into Deployable Robot Policies through Experience-Adaptive Reasoning26 Sep 2026
- 2026VLA-ULAP: Interleaving Cloud VLA Calls with Ultra-Lightweight Local Action Prediction at the Edge16 Sep 2026
- 2026World Models for Embodied Intelligence: From Plausible to Controllable to Actionable15 Sep 2026
- 2026Learning to Use Imagination: Progress-Conditioned Future Utilization for World Action Models6 Sep 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026World Action Models in Real Time: An Empirical Study of Smooth Execution via Asynchronous Deployment
- 2026Commit While Futures Agree: Consequence-Aware Adaptive Action Chunking for Robot Manipulation ↗
- 2026HarnessWAM: Bridging Prediction and Deliberation in World Action Models
- 2026Future Anchored Verification and Online Recovery for World Action Models
- 2026EVO-WAM: Evolving World Action Models through Video-Action Verification
- 2026Staircase Policy: Streaming Inference for World-Action Models with Large Action Chunks
- 2026Test-Time Scaling for World Action Models via Zero-Shot Geometric Evaluation
- 2026Long-WAM: Scaling the Context of World-Action Models