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.
@article{arxiv.2603.02765,
title = {Next Embedding Prediction Makes World Models Stronger},
author = {George Bredis and Nikita Balagansky and Daniil Gavrilov and Ruslan Rakhimov},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.02765},
year = {2026}
}