Flex-π: A Multi-Stream World-Action Model with Compute Flexibility
On the map: World models → Video-generation world models and simulators
Abstract (arXiv)
World-action models (WAMs) predict the future to act better, but nearly all of them predict only RGB latents, trained purely for pixel reconstruction, with no explicit signal for the 3D geometry or object semantics manipulation needs. We find a surprising free lunch: the same frozen video-generation VAE that encodes RGB also encodes 3D pointmaps almost losslessly, with no pointmap-specific training at all. This lets us supervise Flex-π, a 6B-parameter WAM, on 3D geometry and object-centric DINO semantics alongside RGB, at no cost in new sensors, new pre-training, or inference latency. Every visual signal is projected into this shared latent space and denoised jointly with actions inside a Mixture-of-Transformers backbone; per-stream dropout with cross-modality forcing then lets a single trained checkpoint run on any subset of these streams, from a fast action-only mode to full joint generation. The result is a policy that is exceptionally demonstration-efficient and generalizes well, beating the strongest baselines by up to 2-7× on dexterous, precise, real-world bimanual manipulation tasks both in and out of distribution, all while running faster than π0.5. Our project website: https://flex-pi.github.io/
Key facts. Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Video-generation world models and simulators, one of 11 directions in World models. Builds on 53 of its 99 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 11 Aug 2026.
Builds on
53 of 99 references.
Closest ancestors · 2
Same direction, newest first
- 2026Cosmos 3: Omnimodal World Models for Physical AI1 Jun
- 2025Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Models26 Mar
Other references · 51
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- 2024HunyuanVideo: A Systematic Framework For Large Video Generative Modelscited by 1,660
- 2023LIBERO: Benchmarking Knowledge Transfer for Lifelong Robot Learningcited by 1,410
- 2023Mastering Diverse Domains through World Modelscited by 1,253
- 2025GR00T N1: An Open Foundation Model for Generalist Humanoid Robotscited by 1,225
- 2020Mastering Atari with Discrete World Modelscited by 1,007
- 2025Fine-Tuning Vision-Language-Action Models: Optimizing Speed and Successcited by 883
- 2024LTX-Video: Realtime Video Latent Diffusioncited by 581
- 2025SpatialVLA: Exploring Spatial Representations for Visual-Language-Action Modelcited by 519
- 2025RoboTwin 2.0: A Scalable Data Generator and Benchmark with Strong Domain Randomization for Robust Bimanual Robotic Manipulationcited by 518
- 2020robosuite: A Modular Simulation Framework and Benchmark for Robot Learningcited by 511
38 more
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- 2024DINO-WM: World Models on Pre-trained Visual Features enable Zero-shot Planningcited by 386
- 2026Fast-WAM: Do World Action Models Need Test-time Future Imagination?cited by 349
- 20243D-VLA: A 3D Vision-Language-Action Generative World Modelcited by 328
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- 2025LIBERO-Plus: In-depth Robustness Analysis of Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 303
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- 2025MolmoAct: Action Reasoning Models that can Reason in Spacecited by 197
- 2024RoboDreamer: Learning Compositional World Models for Robot Imaginationcited by 195
- 2025DreamGen: Unlocking Generalization in Robot Learning through Video World Modelscited by 179
- 2026GigaWorld-Policy: An Efficient Action-Centered World--Action Modelcited by 139
- 2025Interactive Post-Training for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 135
- 2026DreamDojo: A Generalist Robot World Model from Large-Scale Human Videoscited by 135
- 2025NORA: A Small Open-Sourced Generalist Vision Language Action Model for Embodied Taskscited by 127
- 2025F1: A Vision-Language-Action Model Bridging Understanding and Generation to Actionscited by 86
- 2025Gemini Robotics: Bringing AI into the Physical Worldcited by 83
- 2026PointWorld: Scaling 3D World Models for In-The-Wild Robotic Manipulationcited by 82
- 2023RoboCook: Long-Horizon Elasto-Plastic Object Manipulation with Diverse Toolscited by 76
- 2025Training Strategies for Efficient Embodied Reasoningcited by 55
- 2026MolmoAct2: Action Reasoning Models for Real-world Deploymentcited by 50
- 2026Qwen-RobotManip Technical Report: Alignment Unlocks Scale for Robotic Manipulation Foundation Modelscited by 50
- 2025VLA-0: Building State-of-the-Art VLAs with Zero Modificationcited by 49
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- 2025OG-VLA: Orthographic Image Generation for 3D-Aware Vision-Language Action Modelcited by 13
- 2025Integrating LMM Planners and 3D Skill Policies for Generalizable Manipulationcited by 8
- 2025Multimodal Diffusion Forcing for Forceful Manipulationcited by 4
- 2026Modality Forcing for Scalable Spatial Generationcited by 4
50 most cited of 51 All 51 (JSON)
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 11.
11 papers.
- 2026GIFT: Guided Intermediate Feature Training via Action-Oriented Structural Supervision for Robotic Manipulationcited by 4
- 2026GlanceWAM: Sparse Test-Time Imagination for World-Action Modelscited by 3
- 2026Modality-Autoregressive World-Action Modelscited by 2
- 2026PointZero: 3D Point Track Completion for Learning Transferable 3D Dynamicscited by 2
- 2026Grounded Action Model: 3D Grounding as a Foundation for Roboticscited by 0
- 2026From World Models to World Action Models: Rethinking Next-State Predictioncited by 0
- 2026One from Infinity: Actualizing Futures from Pretrained World Models into Robot Actionscited by 0
- 2026PreferenceFlow: Test-Time Guidance of Flow-Matching Robot Policies from Human Interventionscited by 0
- 2026WAM-Cache: Staleness-Bounded KV Reuse for Efficient World Action Modelscited by 0
- 2026What Visual Representations Do World Action Models Need?cited by 0
- 2026RAIN: Robotic Task Generalization with Region-Aware Interaction Networkscited by 0
- 2026What Visual Representations Do World Action Models Need?9 Oct 2026
- 2026WAM-Cache: Staleness-Bounded KV Reuse for Efficient World Action Models8 Oct 2026
- 2026RAIN: Robotic Task Generalization with Region-Aware Interaction Networks2 Oct 2026
- 2026PreferenceFlow: Test-Time Guidance of Flow-Matching Robot Policies from Human Interventions29 Sep 2026
- 2026One from Infinity: Actualizing Futures from Pretrained World Models into Robot Actions29 Sep 2026
- 2026From World Models to World Action Models: Rethinking Next-State Prediction28 Sep 2026
- 2026Grounded Action Model: 3D Grounding as a Foundation for Robotics20 Sep 2026
- 2026PointZero: 3D Point Track Completion for Learning Transferable 3D Dynamics16 Sep 2026
- 2026Modality-Autoregressive World-Action Models15 Sep 2026
- 2026GIFT: Guided Intermediate Feature Training via Action-Oriented Structural Supervision for Robotic Manipulation3 Sep 2026
- 2026GlanceWAM: Sparse Test-Time Imagination for World-Action Models25 Aug 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026DreamWAM: Beyond RGB Future Prediction for World Action Models
- 2026Unified 4D World Action Modeling from Video Priors with Asynchronous Denoising
- 2026RynnWorld-4D: 4D Embodied World Models for Robotic Manipulation
- 2026DC-WAM: Dynamic-Centric Visual Supervision and Reasoning for World-Action Models
- 2026PointAction: 3D Points as Universal Action Representations for Robot Control
- 2026XGenAct: Geometry-Enhanced World Action Models through Cross-Task Generation
- 2026UCM: Unified Modeling of Camera Control and Memory with Time-aware Positional Encoding Warping for World Models
- 2026GeoSem-WAM: Geometry- and Semantic-Aware World Action Models