Robotics & World Models Reading Club 05: World Models for Physical Intelligence: From Predictive Brains to Embodied Robots — San Francisco
Robotics & World Models Reading Club 05: World Models for Physical Intelligence: From Predictive Brains to Embodied Robots — San Francisco
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, NVIDIA, Stanford, UC Berkeley, CMU, Dyna, ByteDance, Tesla, and leading Bay Area robotics startups.
Hosted by Junfan Zhu & Aurora Feng.
Supported by Neural Motion, a universal cross-embodiment data representation layer for embodied AI.
Reading Club 05's Core Theme
World Models for Physical Intelligence: From Predictive Brains to Embodied Robots
In this session, Daniel Dugas and Sergio Arnaud (META FAIR) will talk about their journey in world modeling and where it leads...
Can world models enable online learning?
Why is the brain so predictive?
The embodiment gap
Predicting trends in physical intelligence
Pre-Readings
A Computational Framework for Modeling Emergence of Color Vision in the Human Brain
https://distill.pub/2019/paths-perspective-on-value-learning/
Robometer: Scaling General-Purpose Robotic Reward Models via Trajectory Comparisons
WorldPlanner: Monte Carlo Tree Search and MPC with Action-Conditioned Visual World Models
DayDreamer: World Models for Physical Robot Learning
Interactive World Simulator for Robot Policy Training and Evaluation
Location
San Francisco (Downtown)
Date & Time
Saturday, Apr 25, 2026 | 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Join Discord Community
https://discord.gg/WH7DrTHRXK
Follow Saturday Robotics on X
https://x.com/saturdayrobotic
Agenda
2:00 PM – 2:30 PM Door Opens & Social
Food 😋, beverages🧋 and UNLIMITED strawberries 🍓 (our official reading club fruits ☺️😄).
2:30 PM – 3:00 PM Keynote by Daniel Dugas and Sergio Arnaud (META FAIR)
Online access via Zoom: TBD
YouTube Recording: TBD (We are looking for recording volunteers)
3:00 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.
Past events
#reading-club-03-0411: Robotic Policy Adaptation
Session 03 Luma: https://luma.com/561xgirg
Reading Club 03 Review: https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2043243484568768519?s=20
YouTube recording: https://www.youtube.com/@saturdayrobotic
#reading-club-02-0404: JEPA Zoo
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
Logistics
Spots are limited. Please arrive by 2:00 PM for check-in. Keynote will begin promptly at 2:30 PM.
We currently do not have volunteers available to assist with late check-ins. Given the high volume of inquiries and 100+ attendees (both online and onsite), we kindly ask that you arrive on time to ensure smooth entry.