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arXiv · 2603.02765

Next Embedding Prediction Makes World Models Stronger

George Bredis·Nikita Balagansky·Daniil Gavrilov·Ruslan Rakhimov
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Abstract

Capturing temporal dependencies is critical for model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) in partially observable, high-dimensional domains. We introduce NE-Dreamer, a decoder-free MBRL agent that leverages a temporal transformer to predict next-step encoder embeddings from latent state sequences, directly optimizing temporal predictive alignment in representation space. This approach enables NE-Dreamer to learn coherent, predictive state representations without reconstruction losses or auxiliary supervision. On the DeepMind Control Suite, NE-Dreamer matches or exceeds the performance of DreamerV3 and leading decoder-free agents. On a challenging subset of DMLab tasks involving memory and spatial reasoning, NE-Dreamer achieves substantial gains. These results establish next-embedding prediction with temporal transformers as an effective, scalable framework for MBRL in complex, partially observable environments.

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George Bredis, Nikita Balagansky, Daniil Gavrilov, Ruslan Rakhimov. 2026-03-03. Next Embedding Prediction Makes World Models Stronger. https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.02765

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