Video Generation Models in Robotics - Applications, Research Challenges, Future Directions

2026-01-12

AI Summary

This study addresses the limitations of traditional physics simulators in robotics—such as restricted expressiveness due to simplifying assumptions, high data costs, and difficulties in modeling complex physical interactions—by systematically reviewing video generation models as embodied world models. Integrating high-fidelity, multimodal-conditioned video synthesis with imitation learning, reinforcement learning, and visual planning frameworks, this work provides the first comprehensive analysis of their potential and limitations in tasks including action prediction, dynamics modeling, and policy evaluation. The review highlights breakthroughs in high-fidelity modeling of physical interactions while identifying key challenges in instruction following, physical consistency, and safety. These insights lay a theoretical foundation and outline future directions for replacing conventional simulators and enabling deployment in safety-critical scenarios.

Technology Category

• Computer Vision: Low Level & Physics-based Vision
• Intelligent Robots: Embodied AI
• Machine Learning: Imitation Learning & Inverse Reinforcement Learning

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User modeling and simulation for interactive and conversational systems
• Semantics and Knowledge: Data modeling to support human-machine intelligence, including LLMs agents, intelligent system behavior, explanations, and user-friendly interactions
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy

Abstract

Video generation models have emerged as high-fidelity models of the physical world, capable of synthesizing high-quality videos capturing fine-grained interactions between agents and their environments conditioned on multi-modal user inputs. Their impressive capabilities address many of the long-standing challenges faced by physics-based simulators, driving broad adoption in many problem domains, e.g., robotics. For example, video models enable photorealistic, physically consistent deformable-body simulation without making prohibitive simplifying assumptions, which is a major bottleneck in physics-based simulation. Moreover, video models can serve as foundation world models that capture the dynamics of the world in a fine-grained and expressive way. They thus overcome the limited expressiveness of language-only abstractions in describing intricate physical interactions. In this survey, we provide a review of video models and their applications as embodied world models in robotics, encompassing cost-effective data generation and action prediction in imitation learning, dynamics and rewards modeling in reinforcement learning, visual planning, and policy evaluation. Further, we highlight important challenges hindering the trustworthy integration of video models in robotics, which include poor instruction following, hallucinations such as violations of physics, and unsafe content generation, in addition to fundamental limitations such as significant data curation, training, and inference costs. We present potential future directions to address these open research challenges to motivate research and ultimately facilitate broader applications, especially in safety-critical settings.

Problem

• video generation models
• robotics
• hallucination
• physics violation
• trustworthy integration

Innovation

• video generation models
• embodied world models
• physics-consistent simulation
• robotics
• multimodal conditioning