Flow Matching for Offline Reinforcement Learning with Discrete Actions
On the map: Diffusion models → Diffusion and flow policies for robotics
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Abstract (arXiv)
Generative policies based on diffusion models and flow matching have shown strong promise for offline reinforcement learning (RL), but their applicability remains largely confined to continuous action spaces. To address a broader range of offline RL settings, we extend flow matching to a general framework that supports discrete action spaces with multiple objectives. Specifically, we replace continuous flows with continuous-time Markov chains, trained using a Q-weighted flow matching objective. We then extend our design to multi-agent settings, mitigating the exponential growth of joint action spaces via a factorized conditional path. We theoretically show that, under idealized conditions, optimizing this objective recovers the optimal policy. Extensive experiments further demonstrate that our method performs robustly across diverse settings and benchmarks, including high-dimensional control, multi-agent games, and dynamically changing preferences over multiple objectives, while outperforming traditional offline RL methods in practical multi-modal decision-making scenarios. Our discrete framework can also be applied to continuous-control problems through action quantization, providing a flexible trade-off between representational complexity and performance.
Key facts. Cited by 5 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 23 of its 34 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 5 Feb 2026.
Builds on
23 of 34 references.
Closest ancestors · 2
Same direction, newest first
- 2024MODULI: Unlocking Preference Generalization via Diffusion Models for Offline Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning28 Aug
- 2023Contrastive Energy Prediction for Exact Energy-Guided Diffusion Sampling in Offline Reinforcement Learning25 Apr
Other references · 21
- 2021Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesiscited by 8,185
- 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,426
- 2020Conservative Q-Learning for Offline Reinforcement Learningcited by 1,777
- 2020D4RL: Datasets for Deep Data-Driven Reinforcement Learningcited by 1,406
- 2018Off-Policy Deep Reinforcement Learning without Explorationcited by 1,227
- 2019Advantage-Weighted Regression: Simple and Scalable Off-Policy Reinforcement Learningcited by 750
- 2017Reinforcement Learning with Deep Energy-Based Policiescited by 659
- 2019The StarCraft Multi-Agent Challengecited by 589
- 2020Monotonic Value Function Factorisation for Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 475
- 2022A Continuous Time Framework for Discrete Denoising Modelscited by 437
- 2024Generative Flows on Discrete State-Spaces: Enabling Multimodal Flows with Applications to Protein Co-Designcited by 294
- 2024Flow Matching Guide and Codecited by 291
9 more
- 2022Rectified Flow: A Marginal Preserving Approach to Optimal Transportcited by 277
- 2024DeFoG: Discrete Flow Matching for Graph Generationcited by 76
- 2021Plan Better Amid Conservatism: Offline Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning with Actor Rectificationcited by 59
- 2023Offline Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning with Implicit Global-to-Local Value Regularizationcited by 42
- 2023Counterfactual Conservative Q Learning for Offline Multi-agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 36
- 2023Action-Quantized Offline Reinforcement Learning for Robotic Skill Learningcited by 34
- 2025Multi-Objective-Guided Discrete Flow Matching for Controllable Biological Sequence Designcited by 13
- 2025A Theoretical Analysis of Discrete Flow Matching Generative Modelscited by 13
- 2025Discrete Guidance Matching: Exact Guidance for Discrete Flow Matchingcited by 6
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 5.
5 papers.
- 2026Path-Coupled Bellman Flows for Distributional Reinforcement Learningcited by 1
- 2026Discrete Flow Matching Policy Optimizationcited by 0
- 2026Discrete Flow Matching for Offline-to-Online Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
- 2026Discrete MeanFlow: One-Step Generation via Conditional Transition Kernelscited by 0
- 2026Reinforcement Learning for Flow-Matching Policies with Density Transportcited by 0
- 2026Reinforcement Learning for Flow-Matching Policies with Density Transport7 Jun 2026
- 2026Discrete MeanFlow: One-Step Generation via Conditional Transition Kernels12 May 2026
- 2026Discrete Flow Matching for Offline-to-Online Reinforcement Learning12 May 2026
- 2026Path-Coupled Bellman Flows for Distributional Reinforcement Learning7 May 2026
- 2026Discrete Flow Matching Policy Optimization7 Apr 2026
Similar, not cited
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- 2025Controllable Flow Matching for Online Reinforcement Learning
- 2026Causal Flow Q-Learning for Robust Offline Reinforcement Learning
- 2026VGFM: Expressive Robot Policies via Dense Value Guidance in Flow Matching
- 2025Flow-Based Single-Step Completion for Efficient and Expressive Policy Learning