# MotionStreamer: Streaming Motion Generation via Diffusion-based Autoregressive Model in Causal Latent Space

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.15451 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.15451/

## Key facts

- Cited by 86 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 63 of its 83 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Mar 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 63)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10683/) (2019)
- [LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13971/) (2023)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [Neural Discrete Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00937/) (2017)
- [RoFormer: Enhanced Transformer with Rotary Position Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.09864/) (2021)
- [AMASS: Archive of Motion Capture as Surface Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03278/) (2019)
- [MaskGIT: Masked Generative Image Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.04200/) (2022)
- [Human Motion Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14916/) (2022)
- [MotionDiffuse: Text-Driven Human Motion Generation with Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.15001/) (2022)
- [Autoregressive Image Generation using Residual Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.01941/) (2022)
- [Keep it SMPL: Automatic Estimation of 3D Human Pose and Shape from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.08128/) (2016)
- [Autoregressive Image Generation without Vector Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11838/) (2024)
- [Language Model Beats Diffusion -- Tokenizer is Key to Visual Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05737/) (2023)
- [T2M-GPT: Generating Human Motion from Textual Descriptions with Discrete Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.06052/) (2023)
- [Executing your Commands via Motion Diffusion in Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04048/) (2022)
- [MultiDiffusion: Fusing Diffusion Paths for Controlled Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08113/) (2023)
- [MotionGPT: Human Motion as a Foreign Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.14795/) (2023)
- [TEMOS: Generating diverse human motions from textual descriptions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.14109/) (2022)
- [MoMask: Generative Masked Modeling of 3D Human Motions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00063/) (2023)
- [TM2T: Stochastic and Tokenized Modeling for the Reciprocal Generation of 3D Human Motions and Texts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.01696/) (2022)
- [Human Motion Diffusion as a Generative Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01418/) (2023)
- [Query-Key Normalization for Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.04245/) (2020)
- [BABEL: Bodies, Action and Behavior with English Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09696/) (2021)
- [TMR: Text-to-Motion Retrieval Using Contrastive 3D Human Motion Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.00976/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 86)

- [Go to Zero: Towards Zero-shot Motion Generation with Million-scale Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.07095/) (2025)
- [TokenHSI: Unified Synthesis of Physical Human-Scene Interactions through Task Tokenization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.19901/) (2025)
- [HY-Motion 1.0: Scaling Flow Matching Models for Text-To-Motion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.23464/) (2025)
- [Absolute Coordinates Make Motion Generation Easy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19377/) (2025)
- [SkillMimic-V2: Learning Robust and Generalizable Interaction Skills from Sparse and Noisy Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.02094/) (2025)
- [From Language to Locomotion: Retargeting-free Humanoid Control via Motion Latent Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.14952/) (2025)
- [FloodDiffusion: Tailored Diffusion Forcing for Streaming Motion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.03520/) (2025)
- [TextOp: Real-time Interactive Text-Driven Humanoid Robot Motion Generation and Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.07439/) (2026)
- [SIGMAN:Scaling 3D Human Gaussian Generation with Millions of Assets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.06982/) (2025)
- [CoDA: Coordinated Diffusion Noise Optimization for Whole-Body Manipulation of Articulated Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21437/) (2025)
- [LLaMo: Scaling Pretrained Language Models for Unified Motion Understanding and Generation with Continuous Autoregressive Tokens](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.12370/) (2026)
- [Towards Interactive Intelligence for Digital Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.13674/) (2025)
- [Causal Motion Diffusion Models for Autoregressive Motion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.22594/) (2026)
- [Text-driven Motion Generation: Overview, Challenges and Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09379/) (2025)
- [Pulp Motion: Framing-aware multimodal camera and human motion generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.05097/) (2025)
- [Interact2Ar: Full-Body Human-Human Interaction Generation via Autoregressive Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.19692/) (2025)
- [CoMoVi: Co-Generation of 3D Human Motions and Realistic Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.10632/) (2026)
- [ActionPlan: Future-Aware Streaming Motion Synthesis via Frame-Level Action Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.13500/) (2026)
- [UMO: Unified In-Context Learning Unlocks Motion Foundation Model Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.15975/) (2026)
- [Heracles: Bridging Precise Tracking and Generative Synthesis for General Humanoid Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.27756/) (2026)
- [LottieGPT: Tokenizing Vector Animation for Autoregressive Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.11792/) (2026)
- [X-MoGen: Unified Motion Generation across Humans and Animals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.05162/) (2025)
- [BiMotion: B-spline Motion for Text-guided Dynamic 3D Character Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.18873/) (2026)
- [MotionHiFlow: Text-to-motion via hierarchical flow matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.23264/) (2026)
- [Think Before You Move: Latent Motion Reasoning for Text-to-Motion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.24100/) (2025)
- [ProAct: Harnessing Streaming Motion Generation and Agentic Reasoning for Real-Time Embodied Social Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.14048/) (2026)
- [PRISM: Streaming Human Motion Generation with Per-Joint Latent Decomposition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.08590/) (2026)
- [Gloria: Consistent Character Video Generation via Content Anchors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.29931/) (2026)
- [Endowing GPT-4 with a Humanoid Body: Building the Bridge Between Off-the-Shelf VLMs and the Physical World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.00041/) (2025)
- [MoLingo: Motion-Language Alignment for Text-to-Human Motion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.13840/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper addresses the challenge of text-conditioned streaming motion generation, which requires us to predict the next-step human pose based on variable-length historical motions and incoming texts. Existing methods struggle to achieve streaming motion generation, e.g., diffusion models are constrained by pre-defined motion lengths, while GPT-based methods suffer from delayed response and error accumulation problem due to discretized non-causal tokenization. To solve these problems, we propose MotionStreamer, a novel framework that incorporates a continuous causal latent space into a probabilistic autoregressive model. The continuous latents mitigate information loss caused by discretization and effectively reduce error accumulation during long-term autoregressive generation. In addition, by establishing temporal causal dependencies between current and historical motion latents, our model fully utilizes the available information to achieve accurate online motion decoding. Experiments show that our method outperforms existing approaches while offering more applications, including multi-round generation, long-term generation, and dynamic motion composition. Project Page: https://zju3dv.github.io/MotionStreamer/