# Towards VLA-Dreamer: Refining VLA Behavior Using World Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.31313 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.31313/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Embodied and robot world models, one of 11 directions in World models.
- Builds on 15 of its 16 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Sep 2026.

## Placed in

- World models / [Embodied and robot world models](https://mlsanity.com/wm/embodied-and-robot-world-models/)
- Vision-language-action models / [World model-based VLA](https://mlsanity.com/vla/world-model-based-vla/)
- Offline RL and imitation learning from data / [Language-conditioned policies and VLAs](https://mlsanity.com/offlinerl/language-conditioned-policies-and-vlas/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [Sigmoid Loss for Language Image Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15343/) (2023)
- [RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15818/) (2023)
- [OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09246/) (2024)
- [π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.24164/) (2024)
- [Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12213/) (2024)
- [V-JEPA 2: Self-Supervised Video Models Enable Understanding, Prediction and Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09985/) (2025)
- [PaliGemma: A versatile 3B VLM for transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07726/) (2024)
- [FAST: Efficient Action Tokenization for Vision-Language-Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.09747/) (2025)
- [SmolVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model for Affordable and Efficient Robotics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.01844/) (2025)
- [World Action Models are Zero-shot Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.15922/) (2026)
- [DINO-WM: World Models on Pre-trained Visual Features enable Zero-shot Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.04983/) (2024)
- [Unleashing Large-Scale Video Generative Pre-training for Visual Robot Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.13139/) (2023)
- [Prismatic VLMs: Investigating the Design Space of Visually-Conditioned Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.07865/) (2024)
- [NICOL: A Neuro-inspired Collaborative Semi-humanoid Robot that Bridges Social Interaction and Reliable Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.08528/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Vision-Language-Action models (VLAs), while showing strong potential for robot control, require massive amounts of high-quality imitation learning data. Moreover, the absence of an explicit world model casts further doubt on their control capabilities. In this concept paper, we propose a novel architecture that addresses sample efficiency in VLAs by training a predictive world model on the embedding space of the VLA's vision encoder. We hypothesize that these embeddings are action-relevant and usable for future prediction. To this end, we propose using the suggested architecture to investigate how well these embeddings predict the future based on actions, as the inability to do so would mark a key limitation of VLA architectures: the lack of a non-lossy implicit world model to simulate real-world dynamics. The proposed architecture differs from the standard world model dynamics as the loss comes from the embedding space rather than the pixel space, similar to joint embedding predictive architectures. Furthermore, the trained world model can be utilized for short-term planning tasks by sampling VLA actions given goal images. We intend to examine the richness of vision embeddings in VLAs and reduce their high data requirements through a world model that can also generate plans during inference.