Hosts: Junfan Zhu, Aurora Feng
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Robotics & World Models Reading Club 26: Video Generation to Robot Manipulation: Bridging Embodiment Gap+Video-Tactile-Action Model. SF 8/29
Robotics & World Models Reading Club 26: Video Generation to Robot Manipulation: Bridging Embodiment Gap + Video-Tactile-Action Models for Complex Physical Interaction Beyond VLAs. SF 8/29
A high-signal reading group for AI researchers & builders pushing the frontiers of robotic world models, WAMs, and embodied intelligence. In our previous sessions, we brought together researchers and engineers from Boston Dynamics, Google DeepMind, NVIDIA, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Physical Intelligence, Tesla, Generalist, Rhoda AI, and leading Bay Area robotics startups.
Hosted by Junfan Zhu & Aurora Feng.
Reading Club 26's Core Theme
Keynote 1: From Video Generation to Robot Manipulation: Bridging the Embodiment Gap
Keynote: Karthik Dharmarajan (UC Berkeley)
Recent advances in video generation models enable zero-shot synthesis of physically plausible object interactions, offering a compelling prior for open-world robot manipulation. However, these models operate in pixel space and work better with human embodiments, making it challenging to translate the generated videos into actionable robot behavior. In this talk, I will present an approach that uses 3D object flow as the interface between video generation and robot control. By extracting object-centric flow directly from generated videos or 4D (3D + time) representations, we convert visual predictions into a reward signal for trajectory optimization and reinforcement learning. This formulation decouples what should happen (object state changes) from how a robot embodiment should achieve those changes, allowing frameworks like Dream2Flow and CHORD to overcome the human–robot embodiment gap. Together, these methods enable zero-shot guidance from pre-trained video models to manipulate a wide range of objects including rigid, articulated, deformable, and granular.
Pre-Readings
Dream2Flow: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.24766
CHORD: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.04194
Keynote 2: VTAM: Video-Tactile-Action Models for Complex Physical Interaction Beyond VLAs
Keynote: Haoran Yuan (UC Berkeley, Applied Intuition)
Recent vision-language-action models commonly incorporate tactile observations through direct feature injection, enabling policies to respond to contact feedback only after physical interaction has occurred. This presentation introduces VTAM, a video-tactile-action framework that instead models the future evolution of both visual and tactile observations. VTAM adopts a continual-learning formulation in which a pretrained visual world model is extended to tactile dynamics through fine-tuning, without requiring a separately pretrained tactile encoder or tactile representation model. By leveraging the shared visual structure of RGB observations and vision-based tactile signals, the model learns a unified visuo-tactile latent dynamics space while preserving the knowledge acquired during visual pretraining. The predicted visuo-tactile dynamics are subsequently integrated into the action model to support contact-aware action generation. Compared with direct tactile injection, which primarily provides reactive feedback from the current observation, tactile world modeling enables the policy to anticipate future contact states, force transitions, and potential slip before action execution. This predictive capability provides a foundation for proactive tactile planning and more robust manipulation in contact-rich environments.
Pre-Readings
VTAM: Video-Tactile-Action Models for Complex Physical Interaction Beyond VLAs
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.23481
Location
San Francisco
Date & Time
Saturday, August 29, 2026 | 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM
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Agenda
2:00 PM – 2:30 PM Door Opens & Social
Food 😋, beverages🧋 and UNLIMITED strawberries 🍓 (our official reading club fruits ☺️😄).
2:30 PM – 4:30 PM Keynote by Karthik Dharmarajan (UC Berkeley), Haoran Yuan (UC Berkeley, Aplied Intuition)
YouTube Recording: TBD (We are looking for recording volunteers)
4:30 PM – 5:00 PM Q&A, open-floor roundtable (10–20 min per topic) on spotlight papers or any paper you’d like to highlight. Feel free to share why the paper matters and its technical details.
Future events
#iros-reading-club-31-0928: 🍾 IROS 2026 x Saturday Robotics — Robotics Research Night | Reading Club 31. Pittsburgh 9/28
Session 31 Luma: https://luma.com/tzbw7n61
Past events
#reading-club-26-0905: Rethinking Robot Development: Co-Designing Morphology, Sensing, and Learning
Chenyang Ma (Applied Intuition, UNC)
Session 26 Luma: https://luma.com/jm9jceqr
#reading-club-25-0829: Sunnyvale 8/29
Session 25 Luma: https://luma.com/enowqo5v
#reading-club-24-0822: Contact-Rich Robot Learning from Human Videos and Tactile. SF 8/22
Kelin Yu (Maryland, Amazon FAR)
Session 24 Luma: https://luma.com/yl76re1b
#reading-club-23-0815: Engineering Robotic Simulators for Evaluation and Beyond. SF 8/15
Kaifeng Zhang (Columbia, World Labs)
Session 23 Luma: https://luma.com/non72bev
#reading-club-22-0808: ODEWorld: A Continuous Predictive Architecture via Physical-Time Flow. SF 8/8
Haoyi Niu (UC Berkeley)
Session 22 Luma: https://luma.com/7nnl4a5r
Reading Club 22 Review: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2086482247344079100?s=20
Reading Club 22 Recap: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2086484540013560280?s=20
#reading-club-21-0801: Vision-Language-Kinematics Supervision for Perception-Based Humanoid Loco-Manipulation — SF 8/1
Yen-Jen Wang (UC Berkeley, Amazon FAR)
Session 21 Luma: https://luma.com/4xkibxbh
Reading Club 21 Review: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2083948325112533456?s=20
Reading Club 21 Recap: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2083950393734975839?s=20
#reading-club-20-0725: Agentic Robotics Models (ENPIRE and Cap-X), Mountain View 07/25
Haoru Xue (UC Berkeley)
Kris Hauser (Samsung Research America, Robot Intelligence Lab)
Session 20 Luma: https://luma.com/5ltk12w5
Reading Club 20 Review: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2081420671180284190?s=20
Reading Club 20 Recap: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2081423890988044794?s=20
#SIGGRAPH-reading-club-19-0722: SIGGRAPH x Saturday Robotics — World Models for Robotics: Bridging Graphics, Simulation & Physical Intelligence | Reading Club 19, LA 07/22
Session 19 Luma: https://luma.com/yh2212ac
Reading Club 19 Review: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2081923681627079055?s=20
Reading Club 19 Recap: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2081924824709124174?s=20
#reading-club-18-0718: Causal World Models For Real-World Intelligence. SF 07/18
Guanming Wang & Bill (General Instinct, YC P26)
Feng Fan (UCSD, Aether AI)
Session 18 Luma: https://luma.com/f74eguvr
Reading Club 18 Review: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2078738476602884502?s=20
Reading Club 18 Recap: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2078747463058694625?s=20
Autonomous Panel Moderation: Rebuilding the Factory: Physical AI on the Production Line: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2078385948887490814?s=20
#reading-club-17-0711: Soft Tactile-Centric Multimodal Intelligence Toward Safe and Dexterous Manipulation. SF 07/11
Quan Luu, Purdue.
Session 17 Luma: https://luma.com/e53zawq2
Reading Club 17 Review: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2076205508646850819?s=20
Reading Club 17 Recap: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2076207394426917187?s=20
#private-lunch-icml-0709: Saturday Robotics x ICML Private Lunch (Seoul)
Private Lunch: https://luma.com/khqg11gt
#reading-club-16-0704: The Embodied AI Hardware Stack — Supply Chain, Sensors, and the Data Flywheel — SF 07/04
Jerry Huang, Robotics Center of Silicon Valley.
Session 16 Luma: https://luma.com/cgzyfpeb
Reading Club 16 Review: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2073666442512547957?s=20
Reading Club 16 Recap: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2073667174678589620?s=20
#reading-club-15-0627: Scaling Touch: Flexible Tactile Skin for Dexterous Manipulation
Binghao Huang, Columbia, Amazon FAR.
Session 15 Luma: https://luma.com/7lts5ppf
Reading Club 15 Review: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2071129728984273105?s=20
Reading Club 15 Recap: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2071132114226139489?s=20
#deep-tech-week-14-0625: Deep Tech Week Research Night
SPEAR: A Simulator for Photorealistic Embodied AI Research. (ECCV 2026 accepted) by Mike Roberts, Senior Research Scientist, Adobe Research.
Bogdan Cristei, Venture Partner at SHACK15 Ventures.
Simone Totaro, CTO at Saturn Dynamics.
Shumo Chu, CEO at General Intelligence Labs.
Margaret Zhang, CEO at ThirdBrain Labs.
Session 14 Luma: https://luma.com/l1g9c2l1
Deep Tech Week 14 Review: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2070417784560066592?s=20
Deep Tech Week 14 Recap: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2070420270964514923?s=20
#reading-club-13-0620: HumanEgo: Train Robot Policy from 30 min Egocentric Videos — SF 0620
Session 13 Luma: https://luma.com/6vkhxnum
Reading Club 13 Review 1: HumanEgo: Zero-Shot Robot Learning, Human Egocentric Video, Leo Wang, Amazon FAR & UMaryland https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2068603103138713824?s=20
Reading Club 13 Recap 1: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2068605511549743127?s=20
Reading Club 13 Review 2: Causal World Models: Biwei Huang, Aether AI & UCSD
Reading Club 13 Recap 2: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2068746229643936177?s=20
#reading-club-12-0613: Origami Robotics (YC W26) on Dexterity
Session 12 Luma: https://luma.com/5w7c1t2a
Reading Club 12 Review: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2066275974988337178?s=20
Reading Club 12 Recap: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2066278639554245097?s=20
#cvpr-denver-11-0606: 🤖🥘 Saturday Robotics x Manycore Tech x Neural Motion | CVPR 2026 Denver Research Night | Robotics & World Models Reading Club 11
Junfan Zhu & Aurora Feng, Founders of Saturday Robotics
Anthony Zhao, Head of North America at Manycore Tech SpacialVerse
Aurora Feng, Founder at Neural Motion. NM-GenET.
Max Zhaoshuo Li, Robotics and World Model Tech Lead at NVIDIA Cosmos. Cosmos 3.
Xiaofan Li, World Model Tech Lead at X Square Robot. WALL-WM.
Zesen Zhao, University of Michigan. Test-Time Scaling for World Action Models via Zero-Shot Geometric Verification.
Pengyi Liao. VGGT-Ω: From 3D Reconstruction to Scalable Spatial Representation.
Jie Wang, University of Pennsylvania, GRASP Lab. Toward a Robotics MMLU: Lessons from Sim & Real Evaluations of Generalist Policies.
Gordon Qian, Senior AI Researcher at Snap. Diffusion-DRF: Free, Rich, and Differentiable Reward for Video Diffusion Fine-Tuning.
YouTube livestream: Watch on YouTube
CVPR Denver Research Night Luma: https://luma.com/zamm9g2g
CVPR Denver Research Night Lightning Talks Review: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2065102150418788581?s=20
CVPR Denver Research Night Lightning Talks Recap: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2065104616497524843?s=20
CVPR Hot Takes Review: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2065234892653547904?s=20
CVPR Hot Takes Recap: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2065236892988416166?s=20
#reading-club-10-0530: Bringing Robots to Life — Learning Humanoid Instincts from the Body Up | San Francisco 0530
Haochen Shi (Stanford, co-advised by Karen Liu & Shuran Song)
Session 10 Luma: https://luma.com/czz76qe1
Reading Club 10 Recap: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2061145697693683878?s=20
#private-dinner-01-0529: Robo Plov x Saturday Robotics
Private Dinner 01 Luma: https://luma.com/3rzqwond
Private Dinner 01 Review: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/junfan-zhu_saturday-robotics-was-excited-to-host-its-activity-7466384182190182400-Zgnv?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAABxP-p0BpUNGDf347aKh_1uJAPzG4er0As8
#reading-club-09-0523: CVPR Warm-up & Founders Spotlight — DeltaWorld + VisuoTactile Dexterous Hands
Tommie Kerssies (Amazon Frontier AI & Robotics)
Arjun Subramaniam (Factory Intelligence)
Session 09 Luma: https://luma.com/wooiz0bf
Reading Club 09 Review: Part 1: Robotics & World Model Reading Club 9.1: CVPR Warm-up— A Frame is Worth 1 Token: DeltaToken. https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2058449627184267621?s=20
Reading Club 09 Review: Part 2: Robotics & World Model Reading Club 9.2: Tactile Sensor & Reliable Manipulation in Production. https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2058461947637694948?s=20
#reading-club-08-0516: Embodied Human Data as the “Internet of Motion and Behavior”
Ryan Punamiya (NVIDIA Gear, Georgia Tech)
Session 08 Luma: https://luma.com/qoxioge7
Reading Club 08 Review: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2055913563743830229?s=20
Reading Club 08 Recap: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2055915875493204439?s=20
#reading-club-07-0509: Learning to Dream: World Models, Imagination, Path to Foundation Models for Control
Ahmet Şemi ASARKAYA (Agility Robotics)
Session 07 Luma: https://luma.com/srhe0vuo
Reading Club 07 Review: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2053387034241454397?s=20
#reading-club-06-0502: Evolution of Video World Models for Robotics
Session 06 Luma: https://luma.com/sdrd4zwr
Reading Club 06 Review: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2050834699275383008?s=20
#reading-club-05-0425: World Models for Physical Intelligence: From Predictive Brains to Embodied Robots
Daniel Dugas & Sergio Arnaud (Meta FAIR)
Session 05 Luma: https://luma.com/p7zvpyvg
Reading Club 05 Review: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2048315020946317710?s=20
YouTube Recording: Watch on YouTube
#reading-club-04-0418: Abstractions of the Physical World for Decision-Making
Siming He (UC Berkeley)
Session 04 Luma: https://luma.com/atv7bm3i
Reading Club 04 Review: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2045770010979905862
YouTube Recording: saturdayrobotic
#reading-club-03-0411: Robotic Policy Adaptation
Haoyi Niu (UC Berkeley)
Session 03 Luma: https://luma.com/561xgirg
Reading Club 03 Review: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2043243484568768519?s=20
YouTube Recording: saturdayrobotic
#reading-club-02-0404: JEPA Zoo
Julian Saks (JulianSaks)
Session 02 Luma: https://luma.com/g3qrrti0
Reading Club 02 Review (liked by Yann LeCun on X): https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2040716119259164673?s=20
#reading-club-01-0328
Session 01 Luma: https://luma.com/8s4w1wu6
Reading Club 01 Review (liked by Yann LeCun on X): https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2038153945219305812
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