mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Hierarchical Diffusion Policy for Kinematics-Aware Multi-Task Robotic Manipulation

arXiv 2403.03890 ↗First posted 6 Mar 2024cs.RO cs.AI cs.CVcited by 93

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

Abstract (arXiv)

This paper introduces Hierarchical Diffusion Policy (HDP), a hierarchical agent for multi-task robotic manipulation. HDP factorises a manipulation policy into a hierarchical structure: a high-level task-planning agent which predicts a distant next-best end-effector pose (NBP), and a low-level goal-conditioned diffusion policy which generates optimal motion trajectories. The factorised policy representation allows HDP to tackle both long-horizon task planning while generating fine-grained low-level actions. To generate context-aware motion trajectories while satisfying robot kinematics constraints, we present a novel kinematics-aware goal-conditioned control agent, Robot Kinematics Diffuser (RK-Diffuser). Specifically, RK-Diffuser learns to generate both the end-effector pose and joint position trajectories, and distill the accurate but kinematics-unaware end-effector pose diffuser to the kinematics-aware but less accurate joint position diffuser via differentiable kinematics. Empirically, we show that HDP achieves a significantly higher success rate than the state-of-the-art methods in both simulation and real-world.

Key facts. Cited by 93 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Diffusion and flow policies for robotics, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 37 of its 45 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 6 Mar 2024.

Builds on

37 of 45 references.

Closest ancestors · 4

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023Efficient Diffusion Policies for Offline Reinforcement Learning31 May
  2. 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion7 Mar
  3. 2022Is Conditional Generative Modeling all you need for Decision-Making?28 Nov
  4. 2022Diffusion Policies as an Expressive Policy Class for Offline Reinforcement Learning12 Aug

Other references · 33

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 60,361
  2. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,744
  3. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 21,076
  4. 2015U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentationcited by 19,713
  5. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,863
  6. 2022Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latentscited by 6,585
  7. 2022Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidancecited by 5,847
  8. 2017PointNet++: Deep Hierarchical Feature Learning on Point Sets in a Metric Spacecited by 4,401
  9. 2016Gaussian Error Linear Units (GELUs)cited by 3,502
  10. 2022DPM-Solver: A Fast ODE Solver for Diffusion Probabilistic Model Sampling in Around 10 Stepscited by 1,979
  11. 2022Imagen Video: High Definition Video Generation with Diffusion Modelscited by 1,778
  12. 2022Make-A-Video: Text-to-Video Generation without Text-Video Datacited by 1,742
21 more
  1. 2023Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardwarecited by 1,568
  2. 2022Planning with Diffusion for Flexible Behavior Synthesiscited by 1,061
  3. 2018QT-Opt: Scalable Deep Reinforcement Learning for Vision-Based Robotic Manipulationcited by 743
  4. 2019RLBench: The Robot Learning Benchmark & Learning Environmentcited by 689
  5. 2021Perceiver IO: A General Architecture for Structured Inputs & Outputscited by 629
  6. 2022Perceiver-Actor: A Multi-Task Transformer for Robotic Manipulationcited by 551
  7. 2022Novel View Synthesis with Diffusion Modelscited by 300
  8. 2019DiffTaichi: Differentiable Programming for Physical Simulationcited by 258
  9. 2023RVT: Robotic View Transformer for 3D Object Manipulationcited by 225
  10. 2018Sim-to-Real Reinforcement Learning for Deformable Object Manipulationcited by 131
  11. 2021Coarse-to-Fine Q-attention: Efficient Learning for Visual Robotic Manipulation via Discretisationcited by 122
  12. 2022Accelerated Policy Learning with Parallel Differentiable Simulationcited by 104
  13. 2021PlasticineLab: A Soft-Body Manipulation Benchmark with Differentiable Physicscited by 103
  14. 2021Q-attention: Enabling Efficient Learning for Vision-based Robotic Manipulationcited by 85
  15. 2019Learning to Manipulate Deformable Objects without Demonstrationscited by 77
  16. 2017Transferring End-to-End Visuomotor Control from Simulation to Real World for a Multi-Stage Taskcited by 66
  17. 2022DaXBench: Benchmarking Deformable Object Manipulation with Differentiable Physicscited by 24
  18. 2022On the Effectiveness of Fine-tuning Versus Meta-reinforcement Learningcited by 19
  19. 2022Coarse-to-Fine Q-attention with Learned Path Rankingcited by 13
  20. 2022Coarse-to-fine Q-attention with Tree Expansioncited by 9
  21. 2022Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning under Mixed Observabilitycited by 4

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 20; 2025: 43; 2026: 30.

93 papers.

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  1. 2024Learning Robotic Manipulation Policies from Point Clouds with Conditional Flow Matchingcited by 65
  2. 2024ManiCM: Real-time 3D Diffusion Policy via Consistency Model for Robotic Manipulationcited by 57
  3. 2024Sparse Diffusion Policy: A Sparse, Reusable, and Flexible Policy for Robot Learningcited by 57
  4. 2024Bidirectional Decoding: Improving Action Chunking via Guided Test-Time Samplingcited by 52
  5. 2025VidBot: Learning Generalizable 3D Actions from In-the-Wild 2D Human Videos for Zero-Shot Robotic Manipulationcited by 46
  6. 2025Generative Trajectory Stitching through Diffusion Compositioncited by 41
  7. 2025Diffusion Models for Robotic Manipulation: A Surveycited by 41
  8. 2024Deep Generative Models in Robotics: A Survey on Learning from Multimodal Demonstrationscited by 35
  9. 2024A Survey of Embodied Learning for Object-Centric Robotic Manipulationcited by 35
  10. 2024BiGym: A Demo-Driven Mobile Bi-Manual Manipulation Benchmarkcited by 30
  11. 2024M2Diffuser: Diffusion-based Trajectory Optimization for Mobile Manipulation in 3D Scenescited by 27
  12. 2025UniPhys: Unified Planner and Controller with Diffusion for Flexible Physics-Based Character Controlcited by 25
38 more
  1. 2025Spatial-Temporal Graph Diffusion Policy with Kinematic Modeling for Bimanual Robotic Manipulationcited by 24
  2. 2024Render and Diffuse: Aligning Image and Action Spaces for Diffusion-based Behaviour Cloningcited by 20
  3. 2024Generative Image as Action Modelscited by 18
  4. 2024Manipulation Facing Threats: Evaluating Physical Vulnerabilities in End-to-End Vision Language Action Modelscited by 18
  5. 2025Chain-of-Action: Trajectory Autoregressive Modeling for Robotic Manipulationcited by 17
  6. 2025Reinforcement Learning for Flow-Matching Policiescited by 15
  7. 2024Language-Guided Object-Centric Diffusion Policy for Generalizable and Collision-Aware Robotic Manipulationcited by 14
  8. 2024Score and Distribution Matching Policy: Advanced Accelerated Visuomotor Policies via Matched Distillationcited by 13
  9. 2025FreqPolicy: Efficient Flow-based Visuomotor Policy via Frequency Consistencycited by 13
  10. 2025FlowRAM: Grounding Flow Matching Policy with Region-Aware Mamba Framework for Robotic Manipulationcited by 13
  11. 2025Rethinking Bimanual Robotic Manipulation: Learning with Decoupled Interaction Frameworkcited by 12
  12. 2024Green Screen Augmentation Enables Scene Generalisation in Robotic Manipulationcited by 11
  13. 2024Effective Tuning Strategies for Generalist Robot Manipulation Policiescited by 10
  14. 2025BFA: Best-Feature-Aware Fusion for Multi-View Fine-grained Manipulationcited by 10
  15. 2025D3P: Dynamic Denoising Diffusion Policy via Reinforcement Learningcited by 10
  16. 2026GuidedVLA: Specifying Task-Relevant Factors via Plug-and-Play Action Attention Specializationcited by 10
  17. 2025Latent Theory of Mind: A Decentralized Diffusion Architecture for Cooperative Manipulationcited by 9
  18. 20253D Flow Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Generating Flow in 3D Spacecited by 9
  19. 2025Guided Flow Policy: Learning from High-Value Actions in Offline Reinforcement Learningcited by 9
  20. 2026AdaWorldPolicy: World-Model-Driven Diffusion Policy with Online Adaptive Learning for Robotic Manipulationcited by 9
  21. 2025cVLA: Towards Efficient Camera-Space VLAscited by 8
  22. 2024Diffusion Meets Options: Hierarchical Generative Skill Composition for Temporally-Extended Taskscited by 7
  23. 2026STEP: Warm-Started Visuomotor Policies with Spatiotemporal Consistency Predictioncited by 7
  24. 2026One-Step Flow Policy: Self-Distillation for Fast Visuomotor Policiescited by 7
  25. 2024MATCH POLICY: A Simple Pipeline from Point Cloud Registration to Manipulation Policiescited by 6
  26. 2024BiKC: Keypose-Conditioned Consistency Policy for Bimanual Robotic Manipulationcited by 5
  27. 2025PRISM-DP: Spatial Pose-based Observations for Diffusion-Policies via Segmentation, Mesh Generation, and Pose Trackingcited by 5
  28. 2025A Practical Guide for Incorporating Symmetry in Diffusion Policycited by 5
  29. 2025UniConFlow: A Unified Constrained Flow-Matching Framework for Certified Motion Planningcited by 5
  30. 2025Time-Unified Diffusion Policy with Action Discrimination for Robotic Manipulationcited by 5
  31. 2025Learning to See and Act: Task-Aware Virtual View Exploration for Robotic Manipulationcited by 5
  32. 2025A Knowledge-Driven Diffusion Policy for End-to-End Autonomous Driving Based on Expert Routingcited by 5
  33. 2025BiFold: Bimanual Cloth Folding with Language Guidancecited by 4
  34. 2025DAgger Diffusion Navigation: DAgger Boosted Diffusion Policy for Vision-Language Navigationcited by 4
  35. 2025OMP: One-step Meanflow Policy with Directional Alignmentcited by 4
  36. 2026SeedPolicy: Horizon Scaling via Self-Evolving Diffusion Policy for Robot Manipulationcited by 4
  37. 2025Efficient Task-specific Conditional Diffusion Policies: Shortcut Model Acceleration and SO(3) Optimizationcited by 3
  38. 2025Few-Shot Vision-Language Action-Incremental Policy Learningcited by 3

50 most cited of 93 All 93 (JSON)

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  1. 2024Hierarchical Diffusion Policy: manipulation trajectory generation via contact guidance
  2. 2026Beyond Flat Policies: Hierarchical Post-Training for Embodied Agents in Robotic Manipulation
  3. 2026Unifying Object-Centric World Models and Diffusion Policy: A Hierarchical Framework for Multi-Stage Robotic Tasks
  4. 2026Learning Diffusion Policy from Primitive Skills for Robot Manipulation
  5. 2026SADP: Subgoal-Aware Diffusion Policy for Long-Horizon Manipulation Learned from Foundation Model Generated Demonstrations
  6. 2025AnchorDP3: 3D Affordance Guided Sparse Diffusion Policy for Robotic Manipulation
  7. 2025ISS Policy : Scalable Diffusion Policy with Implicit Scene Supervision
  8. 2026GHOST: Hierarchical Sub-Goal Policies for Generalizing Robot Manipulation