aiqbench analysis
This research addresses the computational bottleneck of training reinforcement learning policies by integrating local and global world models, enabling efficient gradient computation without relying on hand-crafted physics simulators. By leveraging large-scale diffusion models to capture complex dynamics like contacts and non-rigidity, the approach significantly improves sample efficiency on manipulation tasks compared to standard baselines. This work represents a significant step toward solving hard-to-model RL problems in image space using purely data-driven world models.
Coupled Local and Global World Models for Efficient First Order RL
arXiv:2602.06219v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: World models offer a promising avenue for more faithfully capturing complex dynamics, including contacts and non-rigidity, as well as complex sensory information, such as visual perception, in situations where standard simulators struggle. However, these models are computationally complex to evaluate, posing a challenge for popular RL approaches that have been successfully used with simulators to solve complex locomotion tasks but yet struggle with manipulation. This paper introduces a method that bypasses simulators entirely, training RL policies inside world models learned from robots' interactions with real environments. At its core, our approach enables policy training with large-scale diffusion models via a novel decoupled first-order gradient (FoG) method: a full-scale world model generates accurate forward trajectories, while a lightweight latent-space surrogate approximates its local dynamics for efficient gradient computation. This coupling of a local and global world model ensures high-fidelity unrolling alongside computationally tractable differentiation. We demonstrate the efficacy of our method on the Push-T manipulation task, where it significantly outperforms PPO in sample efficiency. We further evaluate our approach through an ego-centric object manipulation task with a quadruped. Together, these results demonstrate that learning inside data-driven world models is a promising pathway for solving hard-to-model RL tasks in image space without reliance on hand-crafted physics simulators.
Abstract:World models offer a promising avenue for more faithfully capturing complex dynamics, including contacts and non-rigidity, as well as complex sensory information, such as visual perception, in situations where standard simulators struggle. However, these models are computationally complex to evaluate, posing a challenge for popular RL approaches that have been successfully used with simulators to solve complex locomotion tasks but yet struggle with manipulation. This paper introduces a method that bypasses simulators entirely, training RL policies inside world models learned from robots' interactions with real environments. At its core, our approach enables policy training with large-scale diffusion models via a novel decoupled first-order gradient (FoG) method: a full-scale world model generates accurate forward trajectories, while a lightweight latent-space surrogate approximates its local dynamics for efficient gradient computation. This coupling of a local and global world model ensures high-fidelity unrolling alongside computationally tractable differentiation. We demonstrate the efficacy of our method on the Push-T manipulation task, where it significantly outperforms PPO in sample efficiency. We further evaluate our approach through an ego-centric object manipulation task with a quadruped. Together, these results demonstrate that learning inside data-driven world models is a promising pathway for solving hard-to-model RL tasks in image space without reliance on hand-crafted physics simulators.
Accepted at the 10th Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL 2026). Project website: this https URL
Robotics (cs.RO); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
arXiv:2602.06219 [cs.RO]
(or arXiv:2602.06219v3 [cs.RO] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.06219 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite
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Full text under the publisher's open licence · 314 words
