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Do World Models Make Better Robots? A Survey of Evaluation Benchmarks for Predictive Embodied Intelligence

arXiv · AI, language, vision and robotics · article · Aug 30, 2026 · UTC

Robot learning now advances along two tracks that rarely meet. On one side, direct Vision-Language-Action (VLA) policies map observations to actions and are scored by closed-loop task success. On the other, predictive and generative world models forecast future observations and are scored by open-loop prediction or generation quality. A natural question sits between them: does world modelling earn a measurable, closed-loop advantage over a direct policy, and for which robotic capabilities? We argue that the field cannot yet answer this question, and that the reason is a gap in how it is measur

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