Interpreting Physics in Video Encoders using Multi-Object Interaction Videos

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---momentum transfer, restitution, friction---are defined \emph{between} bodies and have not been examined. We probe relational physics attributes in two frozen self-supervised video encoders on two-body collisions 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 by 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.