Interpreting Physics in Video Encoders using Multi-Object Interaction Videos

Ayushi Mehrotra, Sai Vidyaranya Nuthalapati

Video encoder models are increasingly used as world models for physical AI, where a policy plans by rolling out the latent, so what physics the latent holds bounds what the agent can plan over. Moreover, existing interpretability work probes quantities belonging to a single object; the quantities that make physics relational, such as momentum transfer, restitution, and friction, are defined between bodies and have not been examined. We probe relational physics attributes in two frozen self-supervised video encoders (V-JEPA2 and VideoMAE) under two-body settings and test if they transfer across environments. Our early findings are mixed. Both encoders separate elastic from inelastic collisions reliably. V-JEPA2's own predictor is less likely to predict a collision that creates kinetic energy compared to one that loses it. Momentum-violation detection appears in only one of the two encoders, a kinetic-energy readout survives a change of environment for V-JEPA2 but not for VideoMAE, and neither model holds a friction coefficient that survives a change of geometry.