mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

DyMD: Preserving Interaction Dynamics through Distribution Matching Distillation in Few-Step Video World Models

arXiv 2609.31349 ↗First posted 25 Sep 2026cs.CV cs.AIcited by 0

On the map: World models → Embodied and robot world models also fits: Video-generation world models and simulators

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Abstract (arXiv)

Large video diffusion models offer expressive priors for embodied prediction and learning, yet their many-step sampling remains costly for interactive downstream use. Distribution Matching Distillation (DMD) enables few-step video generation, but can suppress robot--object motion while preserving visual quality. Examining DMD's teacher and fake-score signals, we find that weak re-noising keeps the teacher posterior concentrated near motion-deficient rollouts, limiting motion-restoring guidance. Meanwhile, stronger-motion rollouts tend to incur larger fake-score fitting errors, which can hinder the generator's learning of interaction dynamics. We propose DyMD, a DMD framework that adapts both teacher supervision and critic fitting to the evolving student. Temporal affinity--conditioned re-noise sampling adapts the timestep distribution to each rollout's current interaction fidelity by mixing the base schedule with a teacher prior motivated by local posterior variation, thereby balancing motion recovery and appearance refinement. To better track stronger-motion rollouts, dynamics-guided fake-score tracking uses a noise-conditioned predictor to estimate noise-relative fitting difficulty from latent temporal dynamics, then upweights predicted-hard rollouts in the critic loss. Using DyMD, we distill a 14B teacher into a four-step 1.3B student with no auxiliary modules at inference. On embodied-video benchmarks, the student improves R-Bench task adherence by 9.6 percentage points and PAI-Bench-G Domain score by 5.1 points over Base DMD while maintaining comparable visual quality. As a backbone for downstream action planning, our student achieves 34% mean success across two WorldArena tasks, compared with 16% for Base DMD.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Embodied and robot world models, one of 11 directions in World models. Builds on 35 of its 38 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 25 Sep 2026.

Builds on

35 of 38 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026ABot-PhysWorld: Interactive World Foundation Model for Robotic Manipulation with Physics Alignment24 Mar
  2. 2025DreamGen: Unlocking Generalization in Robot Learning through Video World Models19 May

Other references · 33

  1. 2023DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervisioncited by 7,764
  2. 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,426
  3. 2021Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 3,736
  4. 2025Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Modelscited by 2,536
  5. 2023Consistency Modelscited by 1,778
  6. 2024HunyuanVideo: A Systematic Framework For Large Video Generative Modelscited by 1,597
  7. 2023One-step Diffusion with Distribution Matching Distillationcited by 978
  8. 2024WorldSimBench: Towards Video Generation Models as World Simulatorscited by 867
  9. 2025Cosmos World Foundation Model Platform for Physical AIcited by 833
  10. 2023Latent Consistency Models: Synthesizing High-Resolution Images with Few-Step Inferencecited by 826
  11. 2023Adversarial Diffusion Distillationcited by 741
  12. 2024Genie: Generative Interactive Environmentscited by 706
21 more
  1. 2024Improved Distribution Matching Distillation for Fast Image Synthesiscited by 648
  2. 2023Learning Universal Policies via Text-Guided Video Generationcited by 506
  3. 2025RoboTwin 2.0: A Scalable Data Generator and Benchmark with Strong Domain Randomization for Robust Bimanual Robotic Manipulationcited by 477
  4. 2019Learning Loss for Active Learningcited by 335
  5. 2024Video Prediction Policy: A Generalist Robot Policy with Predictive Visual Representationscited by 279
  6. 2023Efficient Diffusion Training via Min-SNR Weighting Strategycited by 242
  7. 2025VideoJAM: Joint Appearance-Motion Representations for Enhanced Motion Generation in Video Modelscited by 112
  8. 2026V-JEPA 2.1: Unlocking Dense Features in Video Self-Supervised Learningcited by 104
  9. 2018An elementary introduction to information geometrycited by 76
  10. 2025Reward Forcing: Efficient Streaming Video Generation with Rewarded Distribution Matching Distillationcited by 75
  11. 2026WorldArena: A Unified Benchmark for Evaluating Perception and Functional Utility of Embodied World Modelscited by 68
  12. 2025Distribution Matching Distillation Meets Reinforcement Learningcited by 43
  13. 2025PAI-Bench: A Comprehensive Benchmark For Physical AIcited by 30
  14. 2026Rethinking Video Generation Model for the Embodied Worldcited by 30
  15. 2025Phased DMD: Few-step Distribution Matching Distillation via Score Matching within Subintervalscited by 21
  16. 2026Optimizing Few-Step Generation with Adaptive Matching Distillationcited by 9
  17. 2026Adaptive Video Distillation: Mitigating Oversaturation and Temporal Collapse in Few-Step Generationcited by 7
  18. 2026PhysisForcing: Physics Reinforced World Simulator for Robotic Manipulationcited by 7
  19. 2026Reinforcing Few-step Generators via Reward-Tilted Distribution Matchingcited by 6
  20. 2026CoDMD: Copula-aware Distribution Matching Distillation for Fast Video Generationcited by 3
  21. 2026Generative Video Compression with Adaptive Score Distillationcited by 1

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  5. 2026MiniWorld: Democratizing the Training of Video World Models from Scratch
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  8. 2025AnchorDream: Repurposing Video Diffusion for Embodiment-Aware Robot Data Synthesis