mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

World models for navigation

139 papers2 this weekMedium confidence in this grouping: mostly one topic, with blurry edgesMedium confidence in this grouping: mostly one topic, with blurry edges · About

Keywords: navigation, embodied, environments, visual, agents

Key facts. World models for navigation: 139 papers on arXiv since 2015 (data through 7 Oct 2026). 35 of its 139 mapped papers (25%) cite “Navigation World Models” (2024, arXiv 2412.03572). 20 of its 139 mapped papers (14%) cite “Pathdreamer: A World Model for Indoor Navigation” (2021, arXiv 2105.08756). 15 new papers 17 Sep–7 Oct.

What’s new

17 Sep – 7 Oct 2026

15 new papers, 17 Sep – 7 Oct; 2 this week.

  1. This week · 2
  2. SearchWorld: Spatial Value-Grounded Imagination for UAV Object Search via World Models
  3. How Much Planning Is Enough? Reducing Search and Computation in World-Model Planning also fits: Latent predictive world models
  4. Earlier · 13
  5. EVEWorld: Physical Evolution Supervision for Embodied World Models also fits: Embodied and robot world models
  6. Social-WM: Safety-Aware Latent World Models for Robot Social Navigation also fits: Embodied and robot world models
  7. DiffWAM: A Fast and Efficient Navigation World Action Model
  8. DSWM: Decomposed Spatio-Temporal World Model for Demand-Driven UAV Base Station Repositioning also fits: Latent dynamics models and model-based RL
  9. AquaWAM: A Dynamics-aware World Action Model for Underwater Embodied Agents
  10. ForeFly: A Dual-Horizon World Action Model for Aerial Vision-Language Navigation
  11. DroneWAM: Efficient World Action Model for Drone Visual Navigation
  12. World SLAM Model: Joint World Modeling for SLAM and Navigation
All 15
  1. Aim Short to Reach Far: Your Frozen World Model Can Plan Better Than You Think also fits: Latent predictive world models
  2. Skytopia: Monocular Drone Navigation with Action-Conditioned Latent World Models
  3. WOLF: World Model Guided LiDAR Exploration with Predictive Frontiers also fits: World modeling from LiDAR generation
  4. Verti-WM: A Physics-Aided Exteroceptive World Model for Off-Road Reinforcement Learning
  5. Feeling Terrain Before Crossing: World Models for Off-Road Navigation

Foundations

Most cited by papers here

  1. Navigation World Models2024cited by 35 here
  2. Pathdreamer: A World Model for Indoor Navigation2021cited by 20 here
  3. Habitat: A Platform for Embodied AI Research2019cited by 19 here
  4. NavMorph: A Self-Evolving World Model for Vision-and-Language Navigation in Continuous Environments2025cited by 13 here
  5. A Comprehensive Survey on World Models for Embodied AI2025cited by 8 here

Lineage

The papers this direction builds on, oldest first.

Each paper on the line cites the one before.

  1. 2018World Modelscited by 45 here
  2. 2018Learning Latent Dynamics for Planning from Pixelscited by 34 here
  3. 2019Dream to Control: Learning Behaviors by Latent Imaginationcited by 40 here
  4. 2020Mastering Atari with Discrete World Modelscited by 31 here
  5. 2023Mastering Diverse Domains through World Modelscited by 38 here
  6. 2023TD-MPC2: Scalable, Robust World Models for Continuous Controlcited by 15 here
  7. 2024DINO-WM: World Models on Pre-trained Visual Features enable Zero-shot Planningcited by 15 here
  8. 2024Navigation World Modelscited by 35 here
  9. 2025Cosmos World Foundation Model Platform for Physical AIcited by 15 here
15 more it builds on, not in this chain
  1. 2017Matterport3D: Learning from RGB-D Data in Indoor Environmentscited by 16 here
  2. 2018Recurrent World Models Facilitate Policy Evolutioncited by 23 here
  3. 2019Habitat: A Platform for Embodied AI Researchcited by 19 here
  4. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 14 here
  5. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 15 here
  6. 2021Pathdreamer: A World Model for Indoor Navigationcited by 20 here
  7. 2022DayDreamer: World Models for Physical Robot Learningcited by 24 here
  8. 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 14 here
  9. 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 20 here
  10. 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusioncited by 19 here
  11. 2023GAIA-1: A Generative World Model for Autonomous Drivingcited by 14 here
  12. 2024Genie: Generative Interactive Environmentscited by 29 here
  13. 2024CogVideoX: Text-to-Video Diffusion Models with An Expert Transformercited by 15 here
  14. 2024Understanding World or Predicting Future? A Comprehensive Survey of World Modelscited by 18 here
  15. 2025Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Modelscited by 18 here

The 24 most cited of 561.

Browse

30 of 139, ranked 6–35

  1. 6WMNav: Integrating Vision-Language Models into World Models for Object Goal Navigation20257
  2. 7WorldArena: A Unified Benchmark for Evaluating Perception and Functional Utility of Embodied World Models20266
  3. 8X-MOBILITY: End-To-End Generalizable Navigation via World Modeling20246
  4. 9An Efficient and Multi-Modal Navigation System with One-Step World Model20265
  5. 10RAE-NWM: Navigation World Model in Dense Visual Representation Space20265
  6. 11Aerial World Model for Long-horizon Visual Generation and Navigation in 3D Space20255
  7. 12DREAMWALKER: Mental Planning for Continuous Vision-Language Navigation20235
  8. 13A Survey: Learning Embodied Intelligence from Physical Simulators and World Models20254
  9. 14MWM: Mobile World Models for Action-Conditioned Consistent Prediction20263
  10. 15World Model for Robot Learning: A Comprehensive Survey20263
All 30
  1. 16WorldVLN: Autoregressive World Action Model for Aerial Vision-Language Navigation20263
  2. 17MAD: Mapping-Aware World Models for Agile Quadrotor Flight20263
  3. 18AirScape: An Aerial Generative World Model with Motion Controllability20253
  4. 19Towards Unified World Models for Visual Navigation via Memory-Augmented Planning and Foresight20253
  5. 20Efficient Image-Goal Navigation with Representative Latent World Model20253
  6. 21The Essential Role of Causality in Foundation World Models for Embodied AI20243
  7. 22World Models and Predictive Coding for Cognitive and Developmental Robotics: Frontiers and Challenges20233
  8. 23Wow, wo, val! A Comprehensive Embodied World Model Evaluation Turing Test20262
  9. 24ImagineUAV: Aerial Vision-Language Navigation via World-Action Modeling and Kinodynamic Planning20262
  10. 25WAM-Nav: Asymmetric Latent World-Action Modeling for Unified Visual Navigation20262
  11. 26Embodied AI Agents: Modeling the World20252
  12. 27Embodied AI: From LLMs to World Models20252
  13. 28NavForesee: A Unified Vision-Language World Model for Hierarchical Planning and Dual-Horizon Navigation Prediction20252
  14. 29AstraNav-World: World Model for Foresight Control and Consistency20252
  15. 30WHALE: Towards Generalizable and Scalable World Models for Embodied Decision-making20242
  16. 31Tracking and Planning with Spatial World Models20222
  17. 32Active Inference-Driven World Modeling for Adaptive UAV Swarm Trajectory Design20261
  18. 33MotionScape: A Motion-Stratified UAV Video Benchmark for World Modeling and Future Video Generation20261
  19. 34DeTrack: A Benchmark and Altitude-Aware Dual World Model for Drone-embodied Tracking20261
  20. 35FlyMirage: A Fully Automated Generation Pipeline for Diverse and Scalable UAV Flight Data via Generative World Model20261