# Keeping JEPA World Models Plannable When Little of the Frame Moves

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.03137 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.03137/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Latent predictive world models, one of 11 directions in World models.
- Builds on 47 of its 51 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Oct 2026.

## Placed in

- World models / [Latent predictive world models](https://mlsanity.com/wm/latent-predictive-world-models/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 47)

- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04137/) (2023)
- [Do As I Can, Not As I Say: Grounding Language in Robotic Affordances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.01691/) (2022)
- [World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.10122/) (2018)
- [Mastering Diverse Domains through World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.04104/) (2023)
- [Curiosity-driven Exploration by Self-supervised Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.05363/) (2017)
- [VICReg: Variance-Invariance-Covariance Regularization for Self-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.04906/) (2021)
- [Self-Supervised Learning from Images with a Joint-Embedding Predictive Architecture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.08243/) (2023)
- [Language Models as Zero-Shot Planners: Extracting Actionable Knowledge for Embodied Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.07207/) (2022)
- [V-JEPA 2: Self-Supervised Video Models Enable Understanding, Prediction and Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09985/) (2025)
- [CALVIN: A Benchmark for Language-Conditioned Policy Learning for Long-Horizon Robot Manipulation Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03227/) (2021)
- [Revisiting Feature Prediction for Learning Visual Representations from Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.08471/) (2024)
- [LeWorldModel: Stable End-to-End Joint-Embedding Predictive Architecture from Pixels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.19312/) (2026)
- [Zero-Shot Robotic Manipulation with Pretrained Image-Editing Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10639/) (2023)
- [LeJEPA: Provable and Scalable Self-Supervised Learning Without the Heuristics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.08544/) (2025)
- [OGBench: Benchmarking Offline Goal-Conditioned RL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.20092/) (2024)
- [Interactive Language: Talking to Robots in Real Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.06407/) (2022)
- [Language Conditioned Imitation Learning over Unstructured Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.07648/) (2020)
- [Learning to Poke by Poking: Experiential Learning of Intuitive Physics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.07419/) (2016)
- [What Matters in Language Conditioned Robotic Imitation Learning over Unstructured Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06252/) (2022)
- [Learning Language-Conditioned Robot Behavior from Offline Data and Crowd-Sourced Annotation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01115/) (2021)
- [Learning from Reward-Free Offline Data: A Case for Planning with Latent Dynamics Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.14819/) (2025)
- [Denoised MDPs: Learning World Models Better Than the World Itself](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.15477/) (2022)
- [Learning to Model the World with Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.01399/) (2023)
- [Guaranteed Discovery of Control-Endogenous Latent States with Multi-Step Inverse Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.08229/) (2022)
- [What Drives Success in Physical Planning with Joint-Embedding Predictive World Models?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.24497/) (2025)
- [Temporal Straightening for Latent Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.12231/) (2026)
- [Causal-JEPA: Learning World Models through Object-Level Latent Masking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.11389/) (2026)
- [stable-worldmodel: A Platform for Reproducible World Modeling Research and Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.21800/) (2026)
- [Sensorimotor World Models: Perception for Action via Inverse Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.20104/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Specifying a goal in language rather than as a goal frame is a natural interface for planning with a latent world model, but testing it needs scenes in which language must discriminate between several objects. We build SLIM, a pushing benchmark with several small objects and paired visual and language goals on identical scenes. On SLIM a LeWM world model that solves PushT succeeds on under 1% of trials, although a scripted controller with simulator state solves every tier. Probes locate the failure in the encoder: its latent is nearly action-insensitive, neither pusher nor object positions can be decoded from it, and rollouts are no better than copying the current latent forward. One inverse-dynamics auxiliary loss, applied to encoder latents and to predicted latents through a shared head discarded at test time, restores every probe and raises success from 0.003 to 0.35 (0.16 on the hard pushing tier, where a goal-agnostic policy scores zero), and improves PushT at twice the trained horizon. Controls attribute the repair to the gradient into the encoder, and a response sweep shows that the vanilla model plans once enough of the frame responds to actions. A cheap action-sensitivity probe, computable without environment access, acts as an empirical necessary condition: all configurations below its threshold failed to plan. On the repaired latent, a small language-goal head plans from sentences without retraining the world model: it reaches 0.84 on navigation (visual-goal oracle 1.00), follows the named zone when it is swapped with a decoy, and degrades gracefully to unseen nouns. A single goal sentence rarely completes a push, but given the push as a sequence of stage sentences the head raises success on the medium and hard pushing tiers from 0.04 to 0.25, on par with the goal-frame oracle, also when the switch between stages is read from the latent alone.