mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Beyond Instance Slots: Semantically Rich World Models for Physical Interaction Planning

arXiv 2608.22294 ↗First posted 23 Aug 2026cs.ROcited by 1

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

Abstract (arXiv)

World models for physical interaction are typically trained to predict future observations or latent features; however, a planning-oriented model must answer a fundamentally different question: whether a candidate action produces a task consistent future while preserving essential relations. Monolithic state representations obscure the underlying entities, while standard instance-level object slots merely identify what is present without specifying what role each entity plays in the task context. To bridge this gap, we present the Semantically Rich World Model (SR-WM), a task-conditioned world model structured around five functional roles: gripper, target, goal, relation, and phase. Within SR-WM, a visual entity encoder extracts soft entity hypotheses from pretrained patch features, allowing segmentation masks to serve as optional proposal priors without mandating them as required state representations or inference inputs. A role binder subsequently maps these hypotheses to task-specific roles, while an action conditioned dynamics model predicts role transitions alongside fine-grained semantics, including grasp/contact, predicate establishment, relation preservation, fixture state, and phase change. Crucially, this unified role state grounds downstream multi-candidate action generation, stage-aware reranking, and violation-aware suffix resampling. Our comprehensive evaluation protocol spans all four LIBERO simulation suites, cross-suite transfer, perception diagnostics, and action sensitivity analysis. Ultimately, this formulation transforms object-centric prediction into a semantic interface linking visual dynamics with planning-oriented decision making

Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Embodied and robot world models, one of 11 directions in World models. Builds on 9 of its 17 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 23 Aug 2026.

Builds on

9 of 17 references.

Closest ancestors · 4

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026MaskWAM: Unifying Mask Prompting and Prediction for World-Action Models11 Jun
  2. 2026Unifying Object-Centric World Models and Diffusion Policy: A Hierarchical Framework for Multi-Stage Robotic Tasks7 Jun
  3. 2026Learning Action-Conditional and Object-Centric Gaussian Splatting World Models for Rigid Objects1 Jun
  4. 2026OA-WAM: Object-Addressable World Action Model for Robust Robot Manipulation7 May

Other references · 5

  1. 2024DINO-WM: World Models on Pre-trained Visual Features enable Zero-shot Planningcited by 357
  2. 2026LeWorldModel: Stable End-to-End Joint-Embedding Predictive Architecture from Pixelscited by 237
  3. 2021The Surprising Effectiveness of Representation Learning for Visual Imitationcited by 149
  4. 2026Predictive but Not Plannable: RC-aux for Latent World Modelscited by 16
  5. 2026Slot-MPC: Goal-Conditioned Model Predictive Control with Object-Centric Representationscited by 3

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.

1 paper.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Magic-W0: A Structured World-Action Foundation Model for Physical Intelligence
  2. 2026Decoupling Intention from Trajectory: A Representational Deduction Framework for World Action Models
  3. 2026From World Action Models to Embodied Brains: A Roadmap for Open-World Physical Intelligence
  4. 2026Lifting Embodied World Models for Planning and Control
  5. 2026AIM: Intent-Aware Unified world action Modeling with Spatial Value Maps
  6. 2026CogWAM: Aligning Semantic Cognition with World Action Modeling via Event-Driven Interfaces
  7. 2026Event-Aligned Visual Action Reasoning for World Action Models
  8. 2026OpenWAM: An Open, Modular Exploration Towards Systematic World-Action Model Pretraining