mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Motus2: A Self-Evolving General World Model for Dexterous Manipulation

arXiv 2608.30237 ↗First posted 31 Aug 2026cs.RO cs.AI cs.CVcited by 6

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

Abstract (arXiv)

General embodied agents should perceive, predict, act, evaluate, and improve within a unified system. World models have shown great promise in building such agents, yet existing models typically append an action output head to a world simulator, without coupling them into a closed decision-and-learning loop for policy improvement. We present Motus2, a self-evolving general world model for dexterous manipulation. Motus2 advances world modeling through model scaling and data scaling. For model scaling, a single model with shared weights exposes three control interfaces: a policy (world-action model), a simulator (action-conditioned world model), and an evaluator (value model). The policy proposes candidate action chunks, the simulator predicts their visual consequences, and the evaluator assesses the predicted outcomes. Their coupling forms a closed decision-and-learning loop for policy improvement. This formulation uses curated expert demonstrations for action learning, while failed and suboptimal interactions provide valuable evidence for dynamics modeling and value learning. For data scaling, Motus2 progresses from large-scale monocular egocentric data to synchronized stereo egocentric data, followed by robot-domain adaptation with robot trajectories and supplementary human-robot alignment data. Motus2 further studies global-autoregressive and hybrid-memory extensions of its sliding-window context, adds tactile feedback for contact-aware control, and is instantiated on a fully biomimetic platform with stereo vision, dual arms, dual dexterous hands, and tactile sensing. Together, egocentric data scaling and closed-loop general world model scaling provide a general path toward self-evolving dexterous manipulation.

Key facts. Cited by 6 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 44 of its 49 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 31 Aug 2026.

Builds on

44 of 49 references.

Closest ancestors · 16

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026EgoWAM: World Action Models Beyond Pixels with In-the-Wild Egocentric Human Data8 Jul
  2. 2026GigaWorld-1: A Roadmap to Build World Models for Robot Policy Evaluation2 Jul
  3. 2026MemoryWAM: Efficient World Action Modeling with Persistent Memory18 Jun
  4. 2026Being-H0.7: A Latent World-Action Model from Egocentric Videos30 Apr
  5. 2026Motubrain: An Advanced World Action Model for Robot Control30 Apr
  6. 2026AcceRL: A Distributed Asynchronous Reinforcement Learning and World Model Framework for Vision-Language-Action Models19 Mar
  7. 2026GigaWorld-Policy: An Efficient Action-Centered World--Action Model18 Mar
  8. 2026Fast-WAM: Do World Action Models Need Test-time Future Imagination?17 Mar
  9. 2026RISE: Self-Improving Robot Policy with Compositional World Model11 Feb
  10. 2026DreamDojo: A Generalist Robot World Model from Large-Scale Human Videos6 Feb
  11. 2025Motus: A Unified Latent Action World Model15 Dec
  12. 2025Reinforcing Action Policies by Prophesying25 Nov
4 more
  1. 2025NORA-1.5: A Vision-Language-Action Model Trained using World Model- and Action-based Preference Rewards18 Nov
  2. 2025WMPO: World Model-based Policy Optimization for Vision-Language-Action Models12 Nov
  3. 2025Ctrl-World: A Controllable Generative World Model for Robot Manipulation11 Oct
  4. 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion7 Mar

Other references · 28

  1. 2024OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 2,777
  2. 2025Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Modelscited by 2,536
  3. 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,297
  4. 2022DPM-Solver: A Fast ODE Solver for Diffusion Probabilistic Model Sampling in Around 10 Stepscited by 1,961
  5. 2025π0.5: a Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Generalizationcited by 1,653
  6. 2021Ego4D: Around the World in 3,000 Hours of Egocentric Videocited by 1,530
  7. 2023Mastering Diverse Domains through World Modelscited by 1,193
  8. 2024Genie: Generative Interactive Environmentscited by 706
  9. 2024RDT-1B: a Diffusion Foundation Model for Bimanual Manipulationcited by 670
  10. 2022All are Worth Words: A ViT Backbone for Diffusion Modelscited by 498
  11. 2022Analytic-DPM: an Analytic Estimate of the Optimal Reverse Variance in Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 331
  12. 2025DiffusionNFT: Online Diffusion Reinforcement with Forward Processcited by 204
16 more
  1. 2023One Transformer Fits All Distributions in Multi-Modal Diffusion at Scalecited by 185
  2. 2022Offline Reinforcement Learning via High-Fidelity Generative Behavior Modelingcited by 177
  3. 2024Vidu: a Highly Consistent, Dynamic and Skilled Text-to-Video Generator with Diffusion Modelscited by 159
  4. 2023Contrastive Energy Prediction for Exact Energy-Guided Diffusion Sampling in Offline Reinforcement Learningcited by 145
  5. 2025EgoVLA: Learning Vision-Language-Action Models from Egocentric Human Videoscited by 116
  6. 2024DexMimicGen: Automated Data Generation for Bimanual Dexterous Manipulation via Imitation Learningcited by 104
  7. 2025RELIC: Interactive Video World Model with Long-Horizon Memorycited by 89
  8. 2026EgoScale: Scaling Dexterous Manipulation with Diverse Egocentric Human Datacited by 77
  9. 2023Score Regularized Policy Optimization through Diffusion Behaviorcited by 67
  10. 2025H-RDT: Human Manipulation Enhanced Bimanual Robotic Manipulationcited by 41
  11. 2026RDT2: Exploring the Scaling Limit of UMI Data Towards Zero-Shot Cross-Embodiment Generalizationcited by 29
  12. 2024Aligning Diffusion Behaviors with Q-functions for Efficient Continuous Controlcited by 12
  13. 2026T-Rex: Tactile-Reactive Dexterous Manipulationcited by 10
  14. 2025METIS: Multi-Source Egocentric Training for Integrated Dexterous Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 9
  15. 2026Dexora: Open-source VLA for High-DoF Bimanual Dexteritycited by 9
  16. 2026EgoSteer: An Open-Source Full-Stack System Towards Steerable Dexterous Manipulation from Egocentric Videoscited by 3

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 6.

6 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026World Models for Robotic Manipulation: A Survey
  2. 2025A Step Toward World Models: A Survey on Robotic Manipulation
  3. 2026GE-Act 2.0: Pretraining and Scaling a World-Action Model for Robotic Manipulation
  4. 2026PointWAM: 3D World Action Modeling for Dexterous Robotic Manipulation
  5. 2026DELE-w0.5: Inferring Action from Future Latent State for Robotic Manipulation
  6. 2026Mask2Real-WM: Segmentation Masks as a Sim-to-Real Bridge for Controllable Dexterous World Models
  7. 2026JoyAI-RA 0.5: Scaling Robot Manipulation Learning via Dual Action Alignment
  8. 2026WEAVER, Better, Faster, Longer: An Effective World Model for Robotic Manipulation