# DynaGuide: Steering Diffusion Polices with Active Dynamic Guidance

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.13922 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.13922/

## Key facts

- Cited by 44 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 53 of its 59 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Jun 2025.

## Placed in

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

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 53)

- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15818/) (2023)
- [Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04137/) (2023)
- [π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.24164/) (2024)
- [RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06817/) (2022)
- [Dream to Control: Learning Behaviors by Latent Imagination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01603/) (2019)
- [Mastering Atari, Go, Chess and Shogi by Planning with a Learned Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.08265/) (2019)
- [Learning Latent Dynamics for Planning from Pixels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.04551/) (2018)
- [Hindsight Experience Replay](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.01495/) (2017)
- [Planning with Diffusion for Flexible Behavior Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.09991/) (2022)
- [Mastering Atari with Discrete World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02193/) (2020)
- [What Matters in Learning from Offline Human Demonstrations for Robot Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.03298/) (2021)
- [CALVIN: A Benchmark for Language-Conditioned Policy Learning for Long-Horizon Robot Manipulation Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03227/) (2021)
- [BC-Z: Zero-Shot Task Generalization with Robotic Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.02005/) (2022)
- [Is Conditional Generative Modeling all you need for Decision-Making?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.15657/) (2022)
- [DayDreamer: World Models for Physical Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.14176/) (2022)
- [Temporal Difference Learning for Model Predictive Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04955/) (2022)
- [Universal Manipulation Interface: In-The-Wild Robot Teaching Without In-The-Wild Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10329/) (2024)
- [DINO-WM: World Models on Pre-trained Visual Features enable Zero-shot Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.04983/) (2024)
- [Transformers are Sample-Efficient World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.00588/) (2022)
- [Learning Latent Plans from Play](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.01973/) (2019)
- [Deep Visual Foresight for Planning Robot Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.00696/) (2016)
- [Zero-Shot Robotic Manipulation with Pretrained Image-Editing Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10639/) (2023)
- [Visual Reinforcement Learning with Imagined Goals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.04742/) (2018)
- [Goal-Conditioned Imitation Learning using Score-based Diffusion Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02532/) (2023)
- [Stochastic Latent Actor-Critic: Deep Reinforcement Learning with a Latent Variable Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.00953/) (2019)
- [Visual Foresight: Model-Based Deep Reinforcement Learning for Vision-Based Robotic Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.00568/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 44)

- [DreamDojo: A Generalist Robot World Model from Large-Scale Human Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.06949/) (2026)
- [PointWorld: Scaling 3D World Models for In-The-Wild Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.03782/) (2026)
- [Do World Action Models Generalize Better than VLAs? A Robustness Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.22078/) (2026)
- [Seeing to Act, Prompting to Specify: A Bayesian Factorization of Vision Language Action Policy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.11218/) (2025)
- [VLS: Steering Pretrained Robot Policies via Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.03973/) (2026)
- [MoE-DP: An MoE-Enhanced Diffusion Policy for Robust Long-Horizon Robotic Manipulation with Skill Decomposition and Failure Recovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.05007/) (2025)
- [RFS: Reinforcement Learning with Residual Flow Steering for Dexterous Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.01789/) (2026)
- [Compose Your Policies! Improving Diffusion-based or Flow-based Robot Policies via Test-time Distribution-level Composition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.01068/) (2025)
- [Feedback World Model Enables Precise Guidance of Diffusion Policy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.15705/) (2026)
- [OmniGuide: Universal Guidance Fields for Enhancing Generalist Robot Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.10052/) (2026)
- [Breaking Lock-In: Preserving Steerability under Low-Data VLA Post-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.23121/) (2026)
- [You've Got a Golden Ticket: Improving Generative Robot Policies With A Single Noise Vector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.15757/) (2026)
- [Seeing Farther and Smarter: Value-Guided Multi-Path Reflection for VLM Policy Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.19372/) (2026)
- [Spatial Memory for Out-of-Vision Manipulation in Vision-Language-Action](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.22283/) (2026)
- [EVE: A Generator-Verifier System for Generative Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.21430/) (2025)
- [Dreaming the Unseen: World Model-regularized Diffusion Policy for Out-of-Distribution Robustness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.21017/) (2026)
- [QPILOTS: Efficient Test-Time Q-Steering for Flow Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.14801/) (2026)
- [Compositional Visual Planning via Inference-Time Diffusion Scaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.02646/) (2026)
- [PPGuide: Steering Diffusion Policies with Performance Predictive Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.10980/) (2026)
- [Lifting Embodied World Models for Planning and Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.26182/) (2026)
- [Beyond Action Residuals: Real-World Robot Policy Steering via Bottleneck Latent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.19919/) (2026)
- [Reinforcement Learning for Flow-Matching Policies with Density Transport](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.08602/) (2026)
- [Robot Self-Improvement via Human-Video Dynamics Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.21406/) (2026)
- [Grounding Generative Policies in Physics: Optimization-Guided Diffusion for Robot Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.24208/) (2026)
- [DEFLECT: Temporal Counterfactual Preference Learning for Delay-Robust Asynchronous VLAs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.19294/) (2026)
- [SAPS: Shared Autonomy for Policy Steering by Blending Teleoperation with a Pretrained VLA](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.15568/) (2026)
- [Behavior Uncloning: Distilling Mode Redirection into Policy Weights without Inference-Time Steering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.29201/) (2026)
- [Beyond Noise Steering: Dual-Latent Space Reinforcement Learning for Generative Robot Policy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.11270/) (2026)
- [TraceFlow: Guiding Frozen Flow-Matching Robot Policies with Success and Failure Traces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.20646/) (2026)
- [Conflict-Aware Additive Guidance for Flow Models under Compositional Rewards](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.20758/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Deploying large, complex policies in the real world requires the ability to steer them to fit the needs of a situation. Most common steering approaches, like goal-conditioning, require training the robot policy with a distribution of test-time objectives in mind. To overcome this limitation, we present DynaGuide, a steering method for diffusion policies using guidance from an external dynamics model during the diffusion denoising process. DynaGuide separates the dynamics model from the base policy, which gives it multiple advantages, including the ability to steer towards multiple objectives, enhance underrepresented base policy behaviors, and maintain robustness on low-quality objectives. The separate guidance signal also allows DynaGuide to work with off-the-shelf pretrained diffusion policies. We demonstrate the performance and features of DynaGuide against other steering approaches in a series of simulated and real experiments, showing an average steering success of 70% on a set of articulated CALVIN tasks and outperforming goal-conditioning by 5.4x when steered with low-quality objectives. We also successfully steer an off-the-shelf real robot policy to express preference for particular objects and even create novel behavior. Videos and more can be found on the project website: https://dynaguide.github.io