Software Engineering

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Locomotion, Humanoids, and Navigation

Jul 27, 2026·66 min read

Model legged locomotion, whole-body control, and map-based navigation with hybrid contact dynamics, terrain uncertainty, and sim-to-real transfer.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Robotic Manipulation

Jul 26, 2026·42 min read

Build a miniature planar pushing world model in Python: contact features, Ridge regressors, rollout error, random-shooting plans, and affordance maps.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Games and Learned Game Engines

Jul 25, 2026·43 min read

Compare Atari, board games, and open worlds as learned game engines. Measure one-step prediction, recursive rollout drift, and model-predictive control.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Vision-Language-Action and World-Action Models

Jul 24, 2026·76 min read

VLA and world-action models fuse vision, language, and control, tokenize robot actions, and transfer across embodiments under closed-loop evaluation.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Cosmos and Omnimodal World Foundation Models

Jul 23, 2026·67 min read

Examines NVIDIA's Cosmos world foundation models: video tokenization, physical AI data curation, conditional generation, guidance calibration, and simulation.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Pretrained Visual Models and DINO-WM

Jul 20, 2026·53 min read

Explains how DINO-WM freezes a pretrained visual encoder, trains action-conditioned feature dynamics, and uses goal-image planning.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Offline and Conservative Model-Based RL

Jul 18, 2026·75 min read

Explains how fixed datasets limit offline RL, why model exploitation can mislead planners, and how pessimism and policy constraints reduce unsupported choices.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

TD-MPC and Control-Centric Representations

Jul 17, 2026·53 min read

Explains how TD-MPC pairs short-horizon latent planning with a learned terminal value, why decoder-free control-centric representations help, and its limits.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

MuZero and Value-Equivalent Models

Jul 16, 2026·57 min read

Explains how MuZero plans with learned latent dynamics and no reconstruction loss, plus a tutorial probing value equivalence and search targets.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

The Dreamer Family

Jul 15, 2026·53 min read

Explains how Dreamer learns behaviors by latent imagination: RSSM dynamics, actor-critic training, and the V1, V2, and V3 design changes.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

World Models, SimPLe, and PlaNet

Jul 14, 2026·52 min read

Compare World Models, SimPLe, and PlaNet: latent dynamics, video prediction, and CEM planning for model-based reinforcement learning.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

PILCO, PETS, Ensembles, and MBPO

Jul 13, 2026·44 min read

Compare PILCO, PETS, and MBPO for decision-centric model-based reinforcement learning, covering deep ensembles, uncertainty, planning, and policy optimization.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Hierarchical, Symbolic, Language, and Multi-Agent Planning

Jul 12, 2026·56 min read

Explains how options, symbolic STRIPS planning, language grounding, and multi-agent belief models structure long-horizon planning and where abstractions fail.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Active Perception, Dual Control, and Exploration

Jul 11, 2026·55 min read

Explains how agents trade reward for information using dual control, information gain, curiosity, and safe exploration in world-model decision making.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Policies Learned in Imagination

Jul 10, 2026·64 min read

Explains how actor-critic policies train inside learned world models, covering latent rollouts, lambda-returns, value expansion, and model exploitation.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Search and Belief-Space Planning

Jul 9, 2026·86 min read

Covers MCTS, UCT, PUCT, belief-space planning, and POMCP for decision-making under uncertainty with a hidden-state maze and tiger problem.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Differentiable Planning

Jul 8, 2026·73 min read

Explains how gradients flow through world-model rollouts, from adjoint backpropagation to action optimization, terminal values, and long-horizon stability.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Sampling-Based Planning and Model Predictive Control

Jul 7, 2026·56 min read

Explains how sampling-based planning and model predictive control turn black-box world models into controllers, using random shooting, CEM.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Pretraining, Post-Training, Scaling, and Adaptation

Jul 6, 2026·55 min read

Explains how world models are pretrained on diverse data, post-trained with preference objectives.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Online, Offline, and Continual Learning

Jul 5, 2026·72 min read

Explains how world models adapt over time through offline, online, and continual learning, covering replay, catastrophic forgetting, and safe drift guardrails.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Data Curation and Synthetic Data

Jul 4, 2026·47 min read

Curation determines what a world model can learn. Examines deduplication, filtering, balancing, synthetic data, mixture weights, and contamination risks.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Interaction Data and Passive Observation

Jul 3, 2026·40 min read

Explains how interaction data and passive observation shape world models, covering coverage, behavior policies, interventions, and data mixing strategies.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Actions, Inverse Dynamics, and Latent Actions

Jul 2, 2026·55 min read

World models define and learn actions through inverse dynamics, controllability, and latent variables discovered in unlabeled video and aligned to controls.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Predictive and Generative Objectives

Jul 1, 2026·61 min read

Compare reconstruction, contrastive, masked, and multi-step objectives, including how each loss shapes rollout fidelity and control-relevant state.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Hierarchical, Hybrid, and Omnimodal Models

Jun 30, 2026·58 min read

Examines hierarchical, hybrid, and omnimodal world models, covering temporal abstraction, neural-symbolic hybrids, multimodal fusion.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Predictive Embeddings, JEPA, and Energy-Based Models

Jun 29, 2026·56 min read

Explains how JEPA predicts in latent space instead of pixels, why joint-embedding objectives collapse.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Diffusion and Flow World Models

Jun 28, 2026·42 min read

Explains how diffusion and flow world models represent multimodal futures via conditional denoising, trajectory diffusion, flow matching, guidance, and latency.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Autoregressive Token World Models

Jun 27, 2026·66 min read

Explains how causal transformers predict world dynamics from tokenized observations and actions.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Transformers and Neural State-Space Architectures

Jun 26, 2026·43 min read

Compare attention-based transformers, structured state-space models, and hybrid architectures for world models.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Recurrent State-Space Models

Jun 25, 2026·64 min read

Explains how recurrent state-space models combine deterministic memory with stochastic latents for filtering and imagination, and train them with the ELBO.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Compositionality and Systematic Generalization

Jun 24, 2026·64 min read

Explains how compositional world models reuse mechanisms, objects, and skills to generalize systematically to novel combinations.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Stochasticity and Uncertainty

Jun 23, 2026·46 min read

Aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty shape world models, from multimodal transitions and ensembles to calibration and uncertainty propagation through rollouts.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Structured Simulators and Neural Operators

Jun 22, 2026·60 min read

Differentiable simulators, graph networks, neural ODEs, and operator learning add physical structure to world models for efficient data use and planning.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Causal Models and Interventions

Jun 21, 2026·56 min read

Covers structural causal models, the do-operator, counterfactuals, confounding, and invariance.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Physical Dynamics and Constraints

Jun 20, 2026·39 min read

Embed physics into world models using Lagrangian and Hamiltonian architectures, contact and friction constraints, conservation laws.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Geometry, Mapping, and 3D/4D State

Jun 19, 2026·81 min read

Explains how coordinate frames, depth estimation, SLAM, occupancy grids, and neural fields give world models geometric state that stays stable under egomotion.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Self-Models, Body Schemas, and Affordances

Jun 18, 2026·60 min read

Explains how world models represent the agent itself: agent-environment boundaries, learned body schemas, capabilities, affordances.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Object-Centric and Relational Worlds

Jun 17, 2026·52 min read

Explains how object-centric and relational world models use slots, graphs, and message passing to predict object dynamics, track identity.

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Machine LearningData, Analytics & AISoftware Engineeringworld-models-handbook

Temporal State and Memory

Jun 16, 2026·56 min read

Explains how world models maintain state under partial observability using recurrent memory, gated LSTMs and GRUs, attention, episodic storage.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Sufficient State and State Abstraction

Jun 14, 2026·53 min read

Explains what a world model's state must preserve and discard: predictive versus control sufficiency, bisimulation, minimal abstractions.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Observations, Sensors, and Multimodal Data

Jun 13, 2026·47 min read

Explains how sensors shape world models: calibration, synchronization, noise, missing and delayed observations.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Model-Based Reinforcement Learning

Jun 12, 2026·42 min read

Explains how learned world models power planning, policy optimization, and value learning in RL, plus model bias, rollout error.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Control as Inference and Active Inference

Jun 11, 2026·58 min read

Covers control as inference, optimality variables, soft Bellman updates, variational free energy, active inference, preferences, ambiguity, and epistemic value.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Classical Planning and Optimal Control

Jun 10, 2026·54 min read

Covers classical planning and optimal control: state-space search with A*, dynamic programming, LQR.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

System Identification

Jun 9, 2026·67 min read

Covers system identification through excitation, regression, prediction-error and subspace methods, neural dynamics, rollout tests, and model validation.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Bayesian Filtering and Belief States

Jun 8, 2026·60 min read

Bayesian filters turn noisy observations into belief states. Covers Kalman, extended Kalman, unscented Kalman, particle, and learned update methods.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Markov and Partially Observable Decision Processes

Jun 7, 2026·58 min read

Explains how MDPs, POMDPs, policies, values, and belief states formalize sequential decisions when dynamics are uncertain and observations hide the true state.

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Data, Analytics & AISoftware EngineeringMachine Learningworld-models-handbook

Mathematical and Dynamical Foundations

Jun 6, 2026·55 min read

Covers math behind world models: conditional distributions, Markov transitions, stability, attractors, and information theory for sufficient states.

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Community

Learn with the community

Create a free account to keep your reading organized, join thoughtful discussions, and get more from every chapter.

  • Keep your place across books and articles
  • Ask questions and take part in discussions
  • Read with fewer interruptions

Free to join · Takes less than a minute

Why

I created this space so readers can learn together, ask questions, and make sense of difficult ideas.

Michael Brenndoerfer
From readers1 / 12