World SLAM Model: Joint World Modeling for SLAM and Navigation
On the map: World models → World models for navigation
Abstract (arXiv)
We introduce World SLAM Model (WSM), a unified framework that brings the SLAM paradigm directly into downstream navigation. Rather than treating SLAM merely as an upstream module that provides poses, maps or tokens, WSM adopts its core mechanisms, including incremental state updates with persistent memory and backend refinement of accumulated errors, to maintain a consistent world state during interaction. Given the current observation and a navigation goal, WSM predicts future visual states and jointly estimates their camera motion and dense geometry, grounding visual prediction in an evolving spatial world state. This spatial state is continuously updated as new observations arrive and provides the basis for action generation and closed-loop navigation. WSM is trained end-to-end with a joint navigation--SLAM objective, enabling downstream navigation to benefit directly from SLAM-style state maintenance and refinement while preserving accurate geometric estimation. Experiments demonstrate improved navigation performance together with strong SLAM accuracy, highlighting the potential of SLAM as an intrinsic mechanism for long-horizon world modeling and embodied interaction.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in World models for navigation, one of 11 directions in World models. Builds on 32 of its 37 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 26 Sep 2026.
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- 2024Navigation World Models4 Dec
Other references · 31
- 2021LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Modelscited by 14,380
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- 2020ORB-SLAM3: An Accurate Open-Source Library for Visual, Visual-Inertial and Multi-Map SLAMcited by 878
- 2021DROID-SLAM: Deep Visual SLAM for Monocular, Stereo, and RGB-D Camerascited by 687
- 2016Past, Present, and Future of Simultaneous Localization And Mapping: Towards the Robust-Perception Agecited by 411
- 2019DD-PPO: Learning Near-Perfect PointGoal Navigators from 2.5 Billion Framescited by 362
- 2026Fast-WAM: Do World Action Models Need Test-time Future Imagination?cited by 349
- 2026Causal World Modeling for Robot Controlcited by 321
- 2025π3: Permutation-Equivariant Visual Geometry Learningcited by 319
- 2020Learning to Explore using Active Neural SLAMcited by 316
19 more
- 2024NaVid: Video-based VLM Plans the Next Step for Vision-and-Language Navigationcited by 233
- 2025DiffusionNFT: Online Diffusion Reinforcement with Forward Processcited by 230
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- 2024NaVILA: Legged Robot Vision-Language-Action Model for Navigationcited by 211
- 2026Cosmos 3: Omnimodal World Models for Physical AIcited by 165
- 2024Mixture-of-Transformers: A Sparse and Scalable Architecture for Multi-Modal Foundation Modelscited by 163
- 2025Streaming 4D Visual Geometry Transformercited by 161
- 2025StreamVLN: Streaming Vision-and-Language Navigation via SlowFast Context Modelingcited by 118
- 2025JanusVLN: Decoupling Semantics and Spatiality with Dual Implicit Memory for Vision-Language Navigationcited by 89
- 2025UniGoal: Towards Universal Zero-shot Goal-oriented Navigationcited by 57
- 2025Efficiently Reconstructing Dynamic Scenes One D4RT at a Timecited by 54
- 2025NavDP: Learning Sim-to-Real Navigation Diffusion Policy with Privileged Information Guidancecited by 49
- 2023ViPlanner: Visual Semantic Imperative Learning for Local Navigationcited by 46
- 2023iPlanner: Imperative Path Planningcited by 37
- 2026LingBot-Map: Geometric Context Transformer for Streaming 3D Reconstructioncited by 37
- 2025Dynam3D: Dynamic Layered 3D Tokens Empower VLM for Vision-and-Language Navigationcited by 23
- 2025CompassNav: Steering From Path Imitation To Decision Understanding In Navigationcited by 10
- 2025SLAM-Former: Putting SLAM into One Transformercited by 9
- 2025LoGoPlanner: Localization Grounded Navigation Policy with Metric-aware Visual Geometrycited by 6
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- 2026UniNav: A Unified World-Action Diffusion Model for Visual Navigation
- 2026Pondering the Way: Spatial-perceiving World Action Model for Embodied Navigation
- 2025WMNav: Integrating Vision-Language Models into World Models for Object Goal Navigation
- 2026WorldMAP: Bootstrapping Vision-Language Navigation Trajectory Prediction with Generative World Models
- 2026WorldFly: A World-Model-Based Vision-Language-Action Model for UAV Navigation
- 2026SuperMap: A Spatio-Temporal SLAM System for Visual-Language Navigation ↗