Robotics & World Models Reading Club 25: . Sunnyvale 8/29

Robotics & World Models Reading Club 25: . Sunnyvale 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 21's Core Theme

Keynote:

​​​​​​​​​Pre-Readings

​​​​​​​Location

Sunnyvale

​​​​​​​​​​Date & Time

Saturday, August 29, 2026 | 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM

​​​​​​​​​​​Join Discord Community

https://discord.gg/WH7DrTHRXK

​​​​​​​​​​Follow Saturday Robotics on X

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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 – 3:30 PM Keynote by

YouTube Recording: TBD (We are looking for recording volunteers)

3:30 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.

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Past events

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 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

• https://x.com/junfanzhu98/status/2068743219685560453?s=20

• 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: https://www.youtube.com/live/P_3gSC-5cYM?si=530zqf2NscCq643O

• 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

Tongzhou Mu (Rhoda AI)

• 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: https://youtu.be/RVy6oQXNDgc?si=u2VLtCBjfdMvXaf-

#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: https://www.youtube.com/@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: https://www.youtube.com/@saturdayrobotic

#reading-club-02-0404: JEPA Zoo

Julian Saks (https://x.com/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

Join Discord Community

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Follow Saturday Robotics

https://x.com/saturdayrobotic

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Subscribe to Luma Calendar

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​​​​​​​​​​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.