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RobotWorld

World Models

WaterfallPagination
WORLD MODELS · TIMELINE

World Models: 36 Years from Internal Models to WAMs

1990–2026 · Five lineages · 33 milestones

Early explorationLatent-space eraVideo generation · Physical AI · VLAWAM unification1990200020102018202020222023202420252026Model-based RL · Latent DynamicsVideo-generation World ModelsJEPA Predictive EmbeddingsVLA · World Action ModelsEmbodied / Physical World ModelsWorld Models1990 · SchmidhuberPILCO2011 · Deisenroth & RasmussenWorld Models2018 · Ha & SchmidhuberPlaNet2018 · DeepMindMuZero2019 · DeepMindDreamer2019 · Hafner et al.DreamerV22020 · Hafner et al.TD-MPC2022 · Hansen et al.DreamerV32023 · Hafner et al.I-JEPA2023 · Meta AIGAIA-12023 · WayveUniSim2023 · GoogleSora2024 · OpenAIGenie2024 · DeepMindV-JEPA2024 · Meta AI1X World Model2024 · 1X TechnologiesGenie 22024 · DeepMindCosmos2025 · NVIDIAV-JEPA 22025 · Meta AIGenie 32025 · DeepMindRT-22023 · Google DeepMindOpenVLA2024 · Stanford et al.π02024 · Physical IntelligenceGR00T N12025 · NVIDIAHelix2025 · Figure AIWAMs Survey2026 · Fudan University · Shanghai Innovation Institute · NUSACT2023 · StanfordRDT / H-RDT2024 · Tsinghuaπ0.52025 · Physical IntelligenceOpenVLA-OFT2025 · Stanford · BerkeleyGR00T N1.72026 · NVIDIAXiaomi-Robotics-02026 · XiaomiGigaWorld-Policy-02026 · GigaWorld Team
The x-axis is non-linear (1990–2017 compressed). Hover a node for details.← swipe to explore the full timeline →
WAM PHYLOGENY · 2023–2026

Branching Evolution: From VLA to World Action Models

61 site-collected papers · four lineages · taxonomy per arXiv:2605.12090

2023202420252026timeVLA · p(a|o,l)Cascaded WAMJoint WAMWorld models · p(o′|o,a)RT-2OctoHelixGR00T N1Pointmap-VLACosFly-VLAAC-VLAJoyNexusPOT-VLAFM-VLAMoE-VLAN₀-VTLAτFutureRTCRL²-VLAπR²Ego2RobotAtlasVLAG0.5HAFWAMs SurveyHyWorldVLADeVALeapBot-WARobust-WAMAeroActWorldDiTN₀-TWAMX-NavDPω-0SimWAMDynaWMSiamJEPAOrbis 2When to PlanKoopman DreamerPhysCoReWorld TranslationMusic-JEPAViTacWorldRobot-Factored WMGS-AgentFeelWorldPhyLatentPhyAITinyVLAMolmoActSpatial ForcingX-VLASmolVLAInternVLA-A1ABot-M0LDA-1BDM0Xiaomi-Robotics-0GigaWorld-Policy-0Fast-WAMHy-Embodied-0.5-VLAEventVLAInternVLA-A1.5Xiaomi-Robotics-1
Vertical axis is paper date (non-linear; the dense 2026 band is expanded). WAM unifies VLA's p(a|o,l) and world models' p(o′|o,a) into the joint distribution p(o′,a|o,l), splitting into cascaded (imagine, then act) and joint (one model generates both) families; the bottom band is the RoboDojo arena snapshot (Aug 2026, 34 models). Hover for details; click a node to open the paper.
PAPERMay 30, 2024

SparseDrive: End-to-End Autonomous Driving via Sparse Scene Representation

SparseDrive unifies detection, tracking, online mapping, prediction, and planning with sparse scene representation, using a symmetric perception module, a parallel motion planner, and collision-aware rescoring for safe planning.

Wenchao Sun, Xuewu Lin, Yining Shi

BEVSparseDrivenuScenesAutonomous Driving
PAPER

GR00T N1: NVIDIA Humanoid Robot Foundation Model

GR00T N1 is NVIDIA's humanoid foundation model combining vision-language understanding with action generation for cross-platform transfer.

NVIDIA

NVIDIAHumanoidFoundation ModelsIsaac
PAPER

Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policy Based on Transformers

Octo is an open-source generalist robot policy using Transformers, enabling rapid fine-tuning across diverse robot platforms with multimodal inputs.

UC Berkeley

Open SourceTransformerGeneral Purpose StrategyMulti-Platform
PAPER

RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Control

RT-2 converts pretrained VLMs into robotic policies, enabling zero-shot generalization to novel instructions and objects.

Google DeepMind

VLAGoogleEmbodied AIZero-Shot
PAPER

Helix: Large-Scale Neural Networks for Whole-Body Humanoid Control

Helix is an end-to-end neural framework for humanoid whole-body perception and manipulation, achieving high generalization through large-scale sim data and real-world fine-tuning.

Figure AI Team

Figure AIHelixHumanoidVLA