arXiv Computer Vision

DRILL: Training World Models to Improve Policies, Not Predict Pixels

The paper introduces DRILL, a bilevel training framework that optimizes world models for policy improvement rather than pixel accuracy. By reweighting prediction errors with policy visitation and confidence (DRILL‑VWI) or using a full meta‑gradient approach (DRILL‑IMG), the authors demonstrate significant gains in downstream policy success rates across multiple manipulation simulators. The work shows that world models can be more effectively trained using the policy gradients they generate, rather than relying solely on pixel‑level prediction metrics.

Hugging Face Trending Papers
Oct 22

DRILL: Training World Models to Improve Policies, Not Predict Pixels

The paper introduces DRILL, a bilevel training framework that optimizes world models for policy improvement rather than pixel accuracy. DRILL-VWI reweights prediction errors using policy visitation and model confidence, while DRILL-IMG employs meta‑gradients to directly maximize downstream policy returns. Experiments on manipulation simulators show DRILL-IMG boosts success rates by 13.1 points over WMPO and 7.9 points over RLVR-World, demonstrating that world models can be more effectively trained using policy gradients.

arXiv AI
Jun 30

WoVR: World Models as Reliable Simulators for Post-Training VLA Policies with RL

arXiv:2602. 13977v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) promises to unlock capabilities beyond imitation learning for Vision--Language--Action (VLA) models, but its requirement for massive real-world interaction prevents direct deployment on physical robots.

By Zhennan Jiang, Shangqing Zhou, Yutong Jiang, Zefang Huang, Mingjie Wei, Yuhui Chen, Tianxing Zhou, Zhen Guo, Hao Lin, Quanlu Zhang, Yu Wang, Haoran Li, Chao Yu, Dongbin Zhao
arXiv AI
Aug 19

Q-Learning With World Models

The paper introduces QWM, a framework that integrates world models with standard Q‑learning to perform test‑time search over imagined trajectories. By training the policy and value function solely on real transitions, QWM avoids compounding model bias while still benefiting from predictive search. Experiments on the Robomimic and LIBERO manipulation benchmarks show that QWM outperforms strong prior state‑of‑the‑art methods in both sample efficiency and performance.

By Perry Dong, Yueru Jia, Chelsea Finn, Dorsa Sadigh
arXiv Computer Vision
Sep 7

Persistent Robot World Models: Stabilizing Multi-Step Rollouts via Reinforcement Learning

The paper introduces a reinforcement learning post‑training scheme that trains robot world models on their own autoregressive rollouts, using a contrastive RL objective adapted from diffusion models. It also proposes a training protocol that compares multiple variable‑length futures, a multi‑view visual fidelity reward, and demonstrates state‑of‑the‑art rollout fidelity on the DROID dataset, outperforming baselines on LPIPS, SSIM, and human preference tests.

By Jai Bardhan, Patrik Drozdik, Josef Sivic, Vladimir Petrik
arXiv Computer Vision
Oct 12

SimVTA: Simulation-Grounded Video-Trajectory Alignment for Driving World Action Models

SimVTA is a post‑training framework that enhances driving world action models by aligning simulated future videos with candidate trajectories. It samples trajectories, renders high‑reward futures in a real‑world simulator using 3D Gaussian Splatting, and prioritizes video supervision for high‑error futures. The approach improves planning performance, raising PDMS from 86.2 to 91.3 on NAVSIM v1 and achieving strong results on NAVSIM v2 and HUGSIM.

By Changhui Jing, Haochen Tian, Hongchen Li, Tianyu Li, Caojun Wang, Zihao Zhang, Yanhao Liu, Chengen Xie, Bailin Li, Hao Zhao, Zhenjie Yang
arXiv Computer Vision
Oct 9

WorldGuide: Goal-Directed Video World Model for Procedural Task Execution

WorldGuide is a closed‑loop video world model that, given an initial image and a task goal, predicts an atomic action, generates the corresponding video clip, and uses that clip to decide the next action or terminate the task. It trains a Planner to predict the next action or completion from visual progress and an Executor to realize those actions, while a hierarchical visual memory tracks state over long horizons. The authors introduce WorldGuide‑Bench, a dataset of ~59K step‑annotated videos across 245 tasks, and show that WorldGuide outperforms the recent MiniMax‑H3 model on both WorldGuide‑Bench and VideoCraft‑Bench, highlighting the benefit of coupling planning with learned execution for goal‑directed procedural video generation.

By Ankan Deria, Komal Kumar, Hisham Cholakkal, Fahad Shahbaz Khan, Salman Khan