Making object-level predictions of the future state of a physical system

A system implemented by one or more computers comprises a visual encoder component configured to receive as input data representing a sequence of image frames, in particular representing objects in a scene of the sequence, and to output a sequence of corresponding state codes, each state code comprising vectors, one for each of the objects. Each vector represents a respective position and velocity of its corresponding object. The system also comprises a dynamic predictor component configured to take as input a sequence of state codes, for example from the visual encoder, and predict a state code for a next unobserved frame. The system further comprises a state decoder component configured to convert the predicted state code, to a state, the state comprising a respective position and velocity vector for each object in the scene. This state may represent a predicted position and velocity vector for each of the objects.