# Diffusion and flow policies for robotics

Area: [Diffusion models](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/index.md). HTML: https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/diffusion-and-flow-policies-for-robotics/

## Key facts

- Diffusion and flow policies for robotics: 1,490 papers on arXiv since 2022 (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- 616 of its 1,490 mapped papers (41%) cite “Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion” (2023, arXiv 2303.04137).
- 252 of its 1,490 mapped papers (17%) cite “Training Diffusion Models with Reinforcement Learning” (2023, arXiv 2305.13301).
- 112 new papers 17 Sep–14 Oct.

## Most cited here

- [Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04137/) (2023), cited by 616 papers here
- [Training Diffusion Models with Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13301/) (2023), cited by 252 papers here
- [Diffusion Policies as an Expressive Policy Class for Offline Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.06193/) (2022), cited by 237 papers here
- [Is Conditional Generative Modeling all you need for Decision-Making?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.15657/) (2022), cited by 228 papers here
- [Diffusion Model Alignment Using Direct Preference Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12908/) (2023), cited by 182 papers here
- [IDQL: Implicit Q-Learning as an Actor-Critic Method with Diffusion Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.10573/) (2023), cited by 137 papers here
- [Directly Fine-Tuning Diffusion Models on Differentiable Rewards](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.17400/) (2023), cited by 134 papers here
- [Imitating Human Behaviour with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.10677/) (2023), cited by 125 papers here
- [Goal-Conditioned Imitation Learning using Score-based Diffusion Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02532/) (2023), cited by 125 papers here
- [DPOK: Reinforcement Learning for Fine-tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16381/) (2023), cited by 125 papers here

## New (17 Sep–14 Oct)

- [Representation Conditioning for Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.20608/) (2026-10-14)
- [Modeling and Understanding Neural Weights of Humanoid Policies with Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.20606/) (2026-10-14)
- [Physical Time as a Missing Dimension of Robot Policy Memory Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.20524/) (2026-10-14)
- [Self-Conditioning Enables Deep Sequential Reasoning in Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.19628/) (2026-10-14)
- [Interaction Latents as Actions for Contact-Rich Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.18855/) (2026-10-13)
- [Collaborative Planning for UAV-UGV Teams under Operational Constraints via Masked Error-bounded Neuro-Symbolic Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.18850/) (2026-10-13)
- [EqC: Equilibrium Energy Control for Introspective Lifelong Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.18790/) (2026-10-13)
- [Walk Like This: Stylized Locomotion for Physics-Based Characters through Example-Driven Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.18147/) (2026-10-13)
- [ForeTac: Predictive Contact Guidance for Generative Robot Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.18118/) (2026-10-13)
- [OccWAM: Occupancy World-Action Models with Joint Scene-to-Ego Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.17688/) (2026-10-13)
- [PrT-Flow: Probability-Tractable Flow Matching for Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.17667/) (2026-10-13)
- [Size Generalization for Diffusion Routing Solvers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.17192/) (2026-10-12)
- [MOSAIC: Mode- and Support-Aware Inference-Time Control of Robot Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.17001/) (2026-10-12)
- [DiTSG: Context-Aware Air Traffic Scene Generation with Multi-Agent Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.16959/) (2026-10-12)
- [DR-APO: Decoupled-Representation Advantage-Guided Policy Optimization from Continuous Control to Embodied Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.16618/) (2026-10-12)
- [A Survey of Flow Matching in Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.16275/) (2026-10-12)
- [DiffNash: Finding Nash Equilibrium in High-Dimensional Continuous Action Spaces with Diffusion Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.15932/) (2026-10-11)
- [GuidanceNFT: NFT-Based Reward Fine-Tuning of Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.15856/) (2026-10-11)
- [Delta Flow Matching for Robot Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.15794/) (2026-10-11)
- [StreamingWAM: Streaming World Action Modeling via Chunk-Wise Staircase Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.15585/) (2026-10-11)
- [Compositional Average Velocity Modeling for Efficient Diffusion Offline Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.14941/) (2026-10-10)
- [CFG-Policy: Unified Diffusion Policy Learning Framework via Classifier-free Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.14936/) (2026-10-10)
- [Verify, Act, Distill: Turning Test-Time Compute into Test-Time Adaptation for Vision-Language-Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.14885/) (2026-10-10)
- [PRISM: Precision Forcing for Generalist Vision-Language-Action Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.14704/) (2026-10-10)
- [ConicFlow: constrained Inference-time optimal control for flow matching models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.14307/) (2026-10-09)
- [Akule: Fast and Scalable Multi-Robot Motion Planning via Sparse Interaction Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.14248/) (2026-10-09)
- [Reinforcement Learning via Fixed-point Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.12848/) (2026-10-09)
- [DiffusionART: Efficient, Stable and Scalable Reinforcement of Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.12572/) (2026-10-08)
- [Control-Ready Uncertainty for Trajectory Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.12431/) (2026-10-08)
- [Residual Modeling Closes the Regression and Generative Policy Gap in Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.12231/) (2026-10-08)