mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

ProjFlow: Projection Sampling with Flow Matching for Zero-Shot Exact Spatial Motion Control

arXiv 2602.22742 ↗First posted 26 Feb 2026cs.CVcited by 4

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

Abstract (arXiv)

Generating human motion with precise spatial control is a challenging problem. Existing approaches often require task-specific training or slow optimization, and enforcing hard constraints frequently disrupts motion naturalness. Building on the observation that many animation tasks can be formulated as a linear inverse problem, we introduce ProjFlow, a training-free sampler that achieves zero-shot, exact satisfaction of linear spatial constraints while preserving motion realism. Our key advance is a novel kinematics-aware metric that encodes skeletal topology. This metric allows the sampler to enforce hard constraints by distributing corrections coherently across the entire skeleton, avoiding the unnatural artifacts of naive projection. Furthermore, for sparse inputs, such as filling in long gaps between a few keyframes, we introduce a time-varying formulation using pseudo-observations that fade during sampling. Extensive experiments on representative applications, motion inpainting, and 2D-to-3D lifting, demonstrate that ProjFlow achieves exact constraint satisfaction and matches or improves realism over zero-shot baselines, while remaining competitive with training-based controllers.

Key facts. Cited by 4 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 56 of its 66 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 26 Feb 2026.

Builds on

56 of 66 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023Trace and Pace: Controllable Pedestrian Animation via Guided Trajectory Diffusion4 Apr
  2. 2023Diffusion-based Generation, Optimization, and Planning in 3D Scenes15 Jan

Other references · 54

  1. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
  2. 2020Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 8,964
  3. 2023Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 5,466
  4. 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,426
  5. 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,094
  6. 2022Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flowcited by 3,550
  7. 2022Diffusion Posterior Sampling for General Noisy Inverse Problemscited by 1,375
  8. 2019AMASS: Archive of Motion Capture as Surface Shapescited by 1,208
  9. 2022Human Motion Diffusion Modelcited by 1,062
  10. 2022Building Normalizing Flows with Stochastic Interpolantscited by 964
  11. 2022Denoising Diffusion Restoration Modelscited by 951
  12. 2022MotionDiffuse: Text-Driven Human Motion Generation with Diffusion Modelcited by 768
38 more
  1. 2022Zero-Shot Image Restoration Using Denoising Diffusion Null-Space Modelcited by 574
  2. 2021AI Choreographer: Music Conditioned 3D Dance Generation with AIST++cited by 479
  3. 2020Action2Motion: Conditioned Generation of 3D Human Motionscited by 438
  4. 2023Human Motion Diffusion as a Generative Priorcited by 354
  5. 2022EDGE: Editable Dance Generation From Musiccited by 284
  6. 2023ReMoDiffuse: Retrieval-Augmented Motion Diffusion Modelcited by 282
  7. 2023OmniControl: Control Any Joint at Any Time for Human Motion Generationcited by 233
  8. 2023Guided Motion Diffusion for Controllable Human Motion Synthesiscited by 221
  9. 2022MoFusion: A Framework for Denoising-Diffusion-based Motion Synthesiscited by 218
  10. 2022Bailando: 3D Dance Generation by Actor-Critic GPT with Choreographic Memorycited by 210
  11. 2023InterGen: Diffusion-based Multi-human Motion Generation under Complex Interactionscited by 205
  12. 2023Solving Inverse Problems with Latent Diffusion Models via Hard Data Consistencycited by 180
  13. 2024MotionLCM: Real-time Controllable Motion Generation via Latent Consistency Modelcited by 164
  14. 2024Improving Diffusion Inverse Problem Solving with Decoupled Noise Annealingcited by 157
  15. 2023Solving Linear Inverse Problems Provably via Posterior Sampling with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 156
  16. 2023CG-HOI: Contact-Guided 3D Human-Object Interaction Generationcited by 137
  17. 2023MMM: Generative Masked Motion Modelcited by 129
  18. 2021DanceFormer: Music Conditioned 3D Dance Generation with Parametric Motion Transformercited by 111
  19. 2023Controllable Human-Object Interaction Synthesiscited by 107
  20. 2023Avatars Grow Legs: Generating Smooth Human Motion from Sparse Tracking Inputs with Diffusion Modelcited by 104
  21. 2023Optimizing Diffusion Noise Can Serve As Universal Motion Priorscited by 97
  22. 2023TLControl: Trajectory and Language Control for Human Motion Synthesiscited by 93
  23. 2024PnP-Flow: Plug-and-Play Image Restoration with Flow Matchingcited by 92
  24. 2024Multi-Track Timeline Control for Text-Driven 3D Human Motion Generationcited by 88
  25. 2024Text2HOI: Text-guided 3D Motion Generation for Hand-Object Interactioncited by 84
  26. 2024Move as You Say, Interact as You Can: Language-guided Human Motion Generation with Scene Affordancecited by 79
  27. 2023NIFTY: Neural Object Interaction Fields for Guided Human Motion Synthesiscited by 78
  28. 2024Rethinking Diffusion for Text-Driven Human Motion Generation: Redundant Representations, Evaluation, and Masked Autoregressioncited by 78
  29. 2024Flexible Motion In-betweening with Diffusion Modelscited by 69
  30. 2025FlowDPS: Flow-Driven Posterior Sampling for Inverse Problemscited by 65
  31. 2023OMG: Towards Open-vocabulary Motion Generation via Mixture of Controllerscited by 47
  32. 2024FreeMotion: A Unified Framework for Number-free Text-to-Motion Synthesiscited by 42
  33. 2024SMooDi: Stylized Motion Diffusion Modelcited by 37
  34. 2023Motion Flow Matching for Human Motion Synthesis and Editingcited by 36
  35. 2025Absolute Coordinates Make Motion Generation Easycited by 27
  36. 2024WANDR: Intention-guided Human Motion Generationcited by 26
  37. 2024Programmable Motion Generation for Open-Set Motion Control Taskscited by 20
  38. 2025Sketch2Anim: Towards Transferring Sketch Storyboards into 3D Animationcited by 16

50 most cited of 54 All 54 (JSON)

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 4.

4 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025Joint Flow Trajectory Optimization For Feasible Robot Motion Generation from Video Demonstrations
  2. 2026Action-to-Action Flow Matching
  3. 2025MOVE: A Simple Motion-Based Data Collection Paradigm for Spatial Generalization in Robotic Manipulation
  4. 2026ActCam: Zero-Shot Joint Camera and 3D Motion Control for Video Generation
  5. 2026Flow-Enabled Generalization to Human Demonstrations in Few-Shot Imitation Learning
  6. 2026RFM-Pose:Reinforcement-Guided Flow Matching for Fast Category-Level 6D Pose Estimation
  7. 2025A Scalable Whole-body Motion Transfer via Implicit Kinodynamic Motion Retargeting
  8. 2026Sketch2Colab: Sketch-Conditioned Multi-Human Animation via Controllable Flow Distillation