Hosts: Junfan Zhu, Aurora Feng
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SIGGRAPH x Saturday Robotics — World Models for Robotics: Bridging Graphics, Simulation & Physical Intelligence | Reading Club 19, LA 07/22
Robotics & World Models Reading Club 19: World Models for Robotics: Bridging Graphics, Simulation, and Physical Intelligence — Los Angeles 07/22
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, Dyna, Physical Intelligence, Tesla, Generalist, Rhoda AI, and leading Bay Area robotics startups.
SIGGRAPH 2026 Birds of a Feather (BOF) listings: https://s2026.conference-schedule.org/presentation/?id=bof_186&sess=sess486
Reading Club 19's Core Theme & Agenda
World Models for Robotics: Bridging Graphics, Simulation, and Physical Intelligence
TBD
Call for Lightning Talks & Media Coverage — @saturdayrobotic x @siggraph Birds of a Feather
👉🏻 RSVP: https://luma.com/yh2212ac
World Models for Robotics: Bridging Graphics, Simulation, and Physical Intelligence
👉🏻 @siggraph website: https://s2026.conference-schedule.org/presentation/?id=bof_186&sess=sess486
📅 SIGGRAPH 2026 📍 Los Angeles Convention Center 🏛️ Room 510 – Fishbowl Theater (70 seats) 🕞 Wednesday, July 22 | 3:30–6:00 PM
World models are rapidly emerging as a unifying paradigm across computer graphics, simulation, spatial intelligence, embodied AI, and robotics. As generative world models, digital twins, neural simulation, and foundation models continue to advance, the boundaries between these communities are becoming increasingly blurred.
To encourage technical discussion and community exchange, we're opening a limited number of lightning talk slots.
Lightning Talks
~10 minutes each
Technical and research-focused
A few slides are sufficient
Frontier papers, emerging ideas, open problems, or practical lessons
Curated to cover diverse topics across: World Models Physical AI Robotics Graphics & Rendering Simulation & Digital Twins 3D Foundation Models Active Perception Robot Learning Spatial Intelligence Computer Vision
If you'd like to give a talk, please reply to @junfanzhu98 or email junfanzhu98@gmail.com with:
• Talk title + abstract • Name + affiliation • Relevant pre-readings (arXiv paper, slides, GitHub repository, blog posts, etc.)
Priority will be given to talks with strong technical depth, novel perspectives, and research insights that can stimulate discussion across graphics, simulation, and robotics communities.
Media Coverage
If you're involved with AI or robotics media, podcasts, newsletters, research communities, or other technical publications, we'd also love to collaborate.
If you can help spread the word—or would like to interview speakers or cover the event—please reach out to @junfanzhu98 or email junfanzhu98@gmail.com.
Community support helps @saturdayrobotic continue connecting researchers, engineers, founders, and students working at the frontier of world models and physical intelligence.
Looking forward to seeing everyone at @siggraph!
Location
Los Angeles Convention Center
Room: Room 510 – Fishbowl theater for 70 people
Date & Time
Wednesday, July 22nd | 3:30pm-6pm
Join Discord Community
Follow Saturday Robotics on X
Agenda
3:30 PM – 4:00 PM Door Opens & Social
Food 😋, beverages🧋 and UNLIMITED strawberries 🍓 (our official reading club fruits ☺️😄).
4:00 PM – 5:30 PM Lightning Talks and Keynotes (Calling for lightning talks / keynote abstracts! 📧 junfanzhu98@gmail.com)
5:30 PM – 6:00 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
#reading-club-20-0725: Agentic Robotics Models (ENPIRE and Cap-X), Mountain View 07/25
Session 20 Luma: https://luma.com/5ltk12w5
Past events
#reading-club-18-0718: Causal World Models For Real-World Intelligence. SF 07/18
Session 18 Luma: https://luma.com/f74eguvr
#reading-club-17-0711: Soft Tactile-Centric Multimodal Intelligence Toward Safe and Dexterous Manipulation. SF 07/11
Session 17 Luma: https://luma.com/e53zawq2
#reading-club-16-0704: The Embodied AI Hardware Stack — Supply Chain, Sensors, and the Data Flywheel — SF 07/04
Session 16 Luma: https://luma.com/cgzyfpeb
#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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Hosts: Junfan Zhu, Aurora Feng
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