mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

NoMaD: Goal Masked Diffusion Policies for Navigation and Exploration

arXiv 2310.07896 ↗First posted 11 Oct 2023cs.RO cs.CV cs.LGcited by 234

On the map: Diffusion models → Diffusion and flow policies for robotics

Abstract (arXiv)

Robotic learning for navigation in unfamiliar environments needs to provide policies for both task-oriented navigation (i.e., reaching a goal that the robot has located), and task-agnostic exploration (i.e., searching for a goal in a novel setting). Typically, these roles are handled by separate models, for example by using subgoal proposals, planning, or separate navigation strategies. In this paper, we describe how we can train a single unified diffusion policy to handle both goal-directed navigation and goal-agnostic exploration, with the latter providing the ability to search novel environments, and the former providing the ability to reach a user-specified goal once it has been located. We show that this unified policy results in better overall performance when navigating to visually indicated goals in novel environments, as compared to approaches that use subgoal proposals from generative models, or prior methods based on latent variable models. We instantiate our method by using a large-scale Transformer-based policy trained on data from multiple ground robots, with a diffusion model decoder to flexibly handle both goal-conditioned and goal-agnostic navigation. Our experiments, conducted on a real-world mobile robot platform, show effective navigation in unseen environments in comparison with five alternative methods, and demonstrate significant improvements in performance and lower collision rates, despite utilizing smaller models than state-of-the-art approaches. For more videos, code, and pre-trained model checkpoints, see https://general-navigation-models.github.io/nomad/

Key facts. Cited by 234 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Diffusion and flow policies for robotics, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 35 of its 47 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 11 Oct 2023.

Builds on

35 of 47 references.

Closest ancestors · 5

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023IDQL: Implicit Q-Learning as an Actor-Critic Method with Diffusion Policies20 Apr
  2. 2023Goal-Conditioned Imitation Learning using Score-based Diffusion Policies5 Apr
  3. 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion7 Mar
  4. 2023Imitating Human Behaviour with Diffusion Models25 Jan
  5. 2022Diffusion Policies as an Expressive Policy Class for Offline Reinforcement Learning12 Aug

Other references · 30

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
  2. 2020An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scalecited by 29,915
  3. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
  4. 2019EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networkscited by 6,415
  5. 2021Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 3,736
  6. 2013Estimating or Propagating Gradients Through Stochastic Neurons for Conditional Computationcited by 2,031
  7. 2022RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scalecited by 2,007
  8. 2017Curiosity-driven Exploration by Self-supervised Predictioncited by 1,173
  9. 2022Planning with Diffusion for Flexible Behavior Synthesiscited by 1,023
  10. 2021Implicit Behavioral Cloningcited by 442
  11. 2022Behavior Transformers: Cloning k modes with one stonecited by 299
  12. 2022Wayformer: Motion Forecasting via Simple & Efficient Attention Networkscited by 279
18 more
  1. 2019Learning to Navigate Unseen Environments: Back Translation with Environmental Dropoutcited by 241
  2. 2023ViNT: A Foundation Model for Visual Navigationcited by 210
  3. 2020Neural Topological SLAM for Visual Navigationcited by 193
  4. 2022GNM: A General Navigation Model to Drive Any Robotcited by 161
  5. 2023Q-Transformer: Scalable Offline Reinforcement Learning via Autoregressive Q-Functionscited by 129
  6. 2021Rapid Exploration for Open-World Navigation with Latent Goal Modelscited by 118
  7. 2019Learning Exploration Policies for Navigationcited by 113
  8. 2022Navigating to Objects in the Real Worldcited by 104
  9. 2020ViNG: Learning Open-World Navigation with Visual Goalscited by 77
  10. 2017PRM-RL: Long-range Robotic Navigation Tasks by Combining Reinforcement Learning and Sampling-based Planningcited by 64
  11. 2022ViKiNG: Vision-Based Kilometer-Scale Navigation with Geographic Hintscited by 55
  12. 2019HRL4IN: Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning for Interactive Navigation with Mobile Manipulatorscited by 52
  13. 2017Discrete Sequential Prediction of Continuous Actions for Deep RLcited by 50
  14. 2020Semantic Curiosity for Active Visual Learningcited by 44
  15. 2019Scaling Local Control to Large-Scale Topological Navigationcited by 37
  16. 2022Generalization with Lossy Affordances: Leveraging Broad Offline Data for Learning Visuomotor Taskscited by 24
  17. 2021What Can I Do Here? Learning New Skills by Imagining Visual Affordancescited by 22
  18. 2021Continuous Control with Action Quantization from Demonstrationscited by 21

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 2; 2024: 39; 2025: 99; 2026: 94.

234 papers.

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By area:

  1. 2024Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policycited by 1,427
  2. 2024DiffusionDrive: Truncated Diffusion Model for End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 324
  3. 2024Navigation World Modelscited by 262
  4. 2024Diffusion Policy Policy Optimizationcited by 255
  5. 2024NaVILA: Legged Robot Vision-Language-Action Model for Navigationcited by 201
  6. 2025Steering Your Diffusion Policy with Latent Space Reinforcement Learningcited by 149
  7. 2023Navigation with Large Language Models: Semantic Guesswork as a Heuristic for Planningcited by 88
  8. 2025Vision-Language-Action Models for Robotics: A Review Towards Real-World Applicationscited by 82
  9. 2025Dita: Scaling Diffusion Transformer for Generalist Vision-Language-Action Policycited by 73
  10. 2024Mobility VLA: Multimodal Instruction Navigation with Long-Context VLMs and Topological Graphscited by 72
  11. 2024PoliFormer: Scaling On-Policy RL with Transformers Results in Masterful Navigatorscited by 55
  12. 2024AdaFlow: Imitation Learning with Variance-Adaptive Flow-Based Policiescited by 50
38 more
  1. 2025Can We Detect Failures Without Failure Data? Uncertainty-Aware Runtime Failure Detection for Imitation Learning Policiescited by 49
  2. 2025AutoEval: Autonomous Evaluation of Generalist Robot Manipulation Policies in the Real Worldcited by 46
  3. 2025NavDP: Learning Sim-to-Real Navigation Diffusion Policy with Privileged Information Guidancecited by 46
  4. 2025TrackVLA: Embodied Visual Tracking in the Wildcited by 46
  5. 2025Pure Vision Language Action (VLA) Models: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 46
  6. 2026Learning Latent Action World Models In The Wildcited by 42
  7. 2024Diffusion Transformer Policycited by 41
  8. 2024CityWalker: Learning Embodied Urban Navigation from Web-Scale Videoscited by 40
  9. 2025TartanGround: A Large-Scale Dataset for Ground Robot Perception and Navigationcited by 35
  10. 2025Streaming Flow Policy: Simplifying diffusion/flow-matching policies by treating action trajectories as flow trajectoriescited by 34
  11. 2025OmniVLA: An Omni-Modal Vision-Language-Action Model for Robot Navigationcited by 34
  12. 2025Mem2Ego: Empowering Vision-Language Models with Global-to-Ego Memory for Long-Horizon Embodied Navigationcited by 30
  13. 2025Whole-Body Conditioned Egocentric Video Predictioncited by 30
  14. 2025Learning 3D Persistent Embodied World Modelscited by 29
  15. 2025DiWA: Diffusion Policy Adaptation with World Modelscited by 28
  16. 2025CAST: Counterfactual Labels Improve Instruction Following in Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 28
  17. 2024M2Diffuser: Diffusion-based Trajectory Optimization for Mobile Manipulation in 3D Scenescited by 26
  18. 2024GenDP: 3D Semantic Fields for Category-Level Generalizable Diffusion Policycited by 25
  19. 2025Prior Does Matter: Visual Navigation via Denoising Diffusion Bridge Modelscited by 24
  20. 2025UniPhys: Unified Planner and Controller with Diffusion for Flexible Physics-Based Character Controlcited by 24
  21. 2025Rethinking the Embodied Gap in Vision-and-Language Navigation: A Holistic Study of Physical and Visual Disparitiescited by 24
  22. 2026Improved Baselines with Representation Autoencoderscited by 24
  23. 2024TacDiffusion: Force-domain Diffusion Policy for Precise Tactile Manipulationcited by 23
  24. 2025NaviDiffusor: Cost-Guided Diffusion Model for Visual Navigationcited by 23
  25. 2026ABot-N0: Technical Report on the VLA Foundation Model for Versatile Embodied Navigationcited by 23
  26. 2024Mamba Policy: Towards Efficient 3D Diffusion Policy with Hybrid Selective State Modelscited by 22
  27. 2024CGD: Constraint-Guided Diffusion Policies for UAV Trajectory Planningcited by 21
  28. 2024TidyBot++: An Open-Source Holonomic Mobile Manipulator for Robot Learningcited by 21
  29. 2025Rethinking Progression of Memory State in Robotic Manipulation: An Object-Centric Perspectivecited by 20
  30. 2024DiffuSolve: Diffusion-based Solver for Non-convex Trajectory Optimizationcited by 19
  31. 2025Robust Finetuning of Vision-Language-Action Robot Policies via Parameter Mergingcited by 19
  32. 2024LDP: A Local Diffusion Planner for Efficient Robot Navigation and Collision Avoidancecited by 18
  33. 2025VLNVerse: A Benchmark for Vision-Language Navigation with Versatile, Embodied, Realistic Simulation and Evaluationcited by 17
  34. 2024X-MOBILITY: End-To-End Generalizable Navigation via World Modelingcited by 15
  35. 2024The One RING: a Robotic Indoor Navigation Generalistcited by 15
  36. 2025DreamNav: A Trajectory-Based Imaginative Framework for Zero-Shot Vision-and-Language Navigationcited by 15
  37. 2025RobotArena ∞: Scalable Robot Benchmarking via Real-to-Sim Translationcited by 15
  38. 2024Variational Distillation of Diffusion Policies into Mixture of Expertscited by 14

50 most cited of 234 All 234 (JSON)

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  1. 2025Exploration and Adaptation in Non-Stationary Tasks with Diffusion Policies
  2. 2026ODG-NoMaD: Overhead-Camera Direction-Guided NoMaD
  3. 2026Beyond Imitation: Reinforcement Learning Fine-Tuning for Adaptive Diffusion Navigation Policies
  4. 2024Learning World Models for Unconstrained Goal Navigation
  5. 2025GUIDE: A Diffusion-Based Autonomous Robot Exploration Framework Using Global Graph Inference
  6. 2017One-Shot Reinforcement Learning for Robot Navigation with Interactive Replay
  7. 2025ComposableNav: Instruction-Following Navigation in Dynamic Environments via Composable Diffusion
  8. 2020Vision-Based Goal-Conditioned Policies for Underwater Navigation in the Presence of Obstacles