arXiv Machine Learning

World Model Control by Trajectory Reachability Metrics

arXiv AI
Aug 17

Traj-LeWM: Path-Aware World-Model Planning via Latent Trajectory Cost

arXiv:2608. 14125v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: LeWM is a lightweight visual world model that learns latent dynamics end-to-end from pixels and ranks candidate action sequences by the distance between their predicted endpoints and the goal.

By Xiaodi Huang, Ziyi Ding, Jingtian Wan, Yuchen Liu, Yuan Zhang, Xiao-Ping Zhang, Jiayu Chen, Zhang Zhang, Tao Huang
arXiv AI
Sep 10

ARC-Bench: Closed-Loop Replanning Masks Broken Action Ranking in Frozen JEPA World Models

ARC‑Bench is a new benchmark that tests whether frozen JEPA‑style latent world models can correctly rank candidate actions by latent distance. The study finds that the assumption of latent rankability fails dramatically in both navigation and manipulation tasks, with the top‑scored actions often being suboptimal. Closed‑loop replanning masks this defect, but reducing replanning frequency reveals the underlying ranking failures.

By Zhengshu Zhang, Zhiyuan Li
arXiv AI
2d ago

Beyond a single latent space: a dual-latent world model for long-horizon planning

The paper introduces the Dual-Latent World Model (Dual-WM), which separates local execution and long-range planning into distinct latent spaces and dynamics models. A new learning method, Long-Horizon Representation Learning with Weighted Rollout (LoRe), supervises predictions at both levels using exponential horizon weights. Experiments on five goal-conditioned visual control tasks show that Dual-WM improves success rates over strong baselines, especially at longer horizons.

By Delin Zhao, Zhengrong Yue, Shaobin Zhuang, Junlin He, Xiaoyu Chen, Zikang Wang, Yuxin Liu, Limin Wang, Yali Wang
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 22

FIRM-WM: State-factorized factual-interventional recurrent modeling for reward-free visual planning

FIRM-WM is a compact pixel world model that separates a goal‑comparable configuration from a 128‑dimensional dynamic fiber, enabling reward‑free visual planning from offline videos. It addresses two key mismatches: aligning planning states with goal images and reconciling factual trajectories with interventional sampling. In experiments, FIRM‑WM achieves high success rates on TwoRoom, Reacher, and OGBench‑Cube while using fewer parameters and faster planning times than prior models.

By Yilun Wu, Yunjian Zhang, Aobo Li, Mujiangshan Wang, Haitao Wu, Aqiang Zhang
arXiv AI
Sep 25

AD-WM: Action-Discriminative World Models for Counterfactual Model Predictive Control

AD-WM is a new action‑discriminative joint‑embedding world model designed for counterfactual model predictive control. It augments residual latent dynamics with action‑recovery regularization based on inverse dynamics and conditional mutual information, while discarding auxiliary heads at test time so that MPC remains unchanged. Experiments on OGBench‑Cube and other simulation environments show substantial gains in hard‑start success and mean success, and zero‑shot transfer to a Franka robot improves pick‑and‑place success from 42.2% to 71.1%.

By Jiabin Qiu, Zixuan Chen, Hongye Cao, Jieqi Shi, Jing Huo, Yang Gao
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 1

The Intervention Gap in Latent World Models

The paper introduces the concept of intervention fidelity in latent world models, measuring whether a model’s open‑loop transitions align with actual environment interventions. Experiments on TD‑MPC2, Cheetah, and DreamerV3 show that high reward fit does not guarantee fidelity, and that self‑supervised models can outperform task‑anchored ones in preserving intervention effects. The authors propose a capture‑gated audit to localize failures and argue that fidelity must be directly audited on the model’s native interface.

By Donna Vakalis
arXiv Computer Vision
2d ago

CST-WM: A Causally Structured World Model for Embodied Visual Tracking

CST‑WM is a causally structured world model designed for embodied visual tracking, where a robot must keep a moving target visible and recover it after occlusion or drift. The model separates state into target‑evidence, robot, and observation branches, removing direct action‑to‑target‑evidence edges to prevent causal hallucination and instead letting actions influence evidence through robot motion and resulting views. Evaluated on EVT‑Bench, Habitat 3.0, and real‑world trials with a Unitree Go2 quadruped, CST‑WM outperforms reactive trackers and other world‑model baselines in following, distance control, safety, and re‑acquisition, achieving 20 of 30 successful real‑world recoveries versus 14 for TrackVLA.

By Junyi Hu, Shuaihang Yuan, Jiazhao Liang, Yi Fang
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 4

Latent Energy Action Planning with World Models

Latent Energy Action Planning (LEAP) is a new method that treats the entire action horizon as a differentiable variable and optimizes it using a frozen LeWorldModel (LeWM). LEAP couples terminal latent goal matching with a terminal‑window state energy, ensuring that the predicted terminal latent and decoder‑predicted terminal descriptor align with the goal. Using a frozen goal‑conditioned proposal, a quasi‑Newton solver, and post‑optimization projection, LEAP improves mean success from 77.5% to 94.8% across four control domains while keeping the LeWM representation frozen.

By Phu Pham, Aniket Bera