One-Step Flow Policy: Self-Distillation for Fast Visuomotor Policies
On the map: Diffusion models → Diffusion and flow policies for robotics
Abstract (arXiv)
Generative flow and diffusion models provide the continuous, multimodal action distributions needed for high-precision robotic policies. However, their reliance on iterative sampling introduces severe inference latency, degrading control frequency and harming performance in time-sensitive manipulation. To address this problem, we propose the One-Step Flow Policy (OFP), a from-scratch self-distillation framework for high-fidelity, single-step action generation without a pre-trained teacher. OFP unifies a self-consistency loss to enforce coherent transport across time intervals, and a self-guided regularization to sharpen predictions toward high-density expert modes. In addition, a warm-start mechanism leverages temporal action correlations to minimize the generative transport distance. Evaluations across 56 diverse simulated manipulation tasks demonstrate that a one-step OFP achieves state-of-the-art results, outperforming 100-step diffusion and flow policies while accelerating action generation by over 100×. We further integrate OFP into the π0.5 model on RoboTwin 2.0, where one-step OFP surpasses the original 10-step policy. These results establish OFP as a practical, scalable solution for highly accurate and low-latency robot control.
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 61 of its 64 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 12 Mar 2026.
Builds on
61 of 64 references.
Closest ancestors · 16
Same direction, newest first
- 2024FlowPolicy: Enabling Fast and Robust 3D Flow-based Policy via Consistency Flow Matching for Robot Manipulation6 Dec
- 2024One-Step Diffusion Policy: Fast Visuomotor Policies via Diffusion Distillation28 Oct
- 2024RDT-1B: a Diffusion Foundation Model for Bimanual Manipulation10 Oct
- 2024Learning Robotic Manipulation Policies from Point Clouds with Conditional Flow Matching11 Sep
- 2024ActionFlow: Equivariant, Accurate, and Efficient Policies with Spatially Symmetric Flow Matching6 Sep
- 2024Affordance-based Robot Manipulation with Flow Matching2 Sep
- 2024Streaming Diffusion Policy: Fast Policy Synthesis with Variable Noise Diffusion Models7 Jun
- 2024ManiCM: Real-time 3D Diffusion Policy via Consistency Model for Robotic Manipulation3 Jun
- 2024Consistency Policy: Accelerated Visuomotor Policies via Consistency Distillation13 May
- 2024Riemannian Flow Matching Policy for Robot Motion Learning15 Mar
- 2024Hierarchical Diffusion Policy for Kinematics-Aware Multi-Task Robotic Manipulation6 Mar
- 20243D Diffuser Actor: Policy Diffusion with 3D Scene Representations16 Feb
4 more
- 2023Boosting Continuous Control with Consistency Policy10 Oct
- 2023Crossway Diffusion: Improving Diffusion-based Visuomotor Policy via Self-supervised Learning4 Jul
- 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion7 Mar
- 2022Is Conditional Generative Modeling all you need for Decision-Making?28 Nov
Other references · 45
- 2020Denoising Diffusion Implicit Modelscited by 9,655
- 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 5,931
- 2022Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidancecited by 5,717
- 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,426
- 2022Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flowcited by 3,550
- 2024π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Controlcited by 2,297
- 2022DPM-Solver: A Fast ODE Solver for Diffusion Probabilistic Model Sampling in Around 10 Stepscited by 1,961
- 2025π0.5: a Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Generalizationcited by 1,653
- 2019Meta-World: A Benchmark and Evaluation for Multi-Task and Meta Reinforcement Learningcited by 1,168
- 2025GR00T N1: An Open Foundation Model for Generalist Humanoid Robotscited by 1,167
- 2022Planning with Diffusion for Flexible Behavior Synthesiscited by 1,023
- 2023One-step Diffusion with Distribution Matching Distillationcited by 978
33 more
- 2022DPM-Solver++: Fast Solver for Guided Sampling of Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 924
- 2024Improved Distribution Matching Distillation for Fast Image Synthesiscited by 648
- 2025Mean Flows for One-step Generative Modelingcited by 524
- 2025RoboTwin 2.0: A Scalable Data Generator and Benchmark with Strong Domain Randomization for Robust Bimanual Robotic Manipulationcited by 477
- 2023Consistency Trajectory Models: Learning Probability Flow ODE Trajectory of Diffusioncited by 448
- 2024One Step Diffusion via Shortcut Modelscited by 373
- 2024TraceVLA: Visual Trace Prompting Enhances Spatial-Temporal Awareness for Generalist Robotic Policiescited by 298
- 2024GR-2: A Generative Video-Language-Action Model with Web-Scale Knowledge for Robot Manipulationcited by 290
- 2025π*0.6: a VLA That Learns From Experiencecited by 280
- 2022Rectified Flow: A Marginal Preserving Approach to Optimal Transportcited by 277
- 2025AutoVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model for End-to-End Autonomous Driving with Adaptive Reasoning and Reinforcement Fine-Tuningcited by 252
- 2025Hi Robot: Open-Ended Instruction Following with Hierarchical Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 216
- 2022Masked World Models for Visual Controlcited by 169
- 2020Implicit Under-Parameterization Inhibits Data-Efficient Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 134
- 2025OneTwoVLA: A Unified Vision-Language-Action Model with Adaptive Reasoningcited by 105
- 2025Improved Mean Flows: On the Challenges of Fastforward Generative Modelscited by 102
- 2024Consistency Flow Matching: Defining Straight Flows with Velocity Consistencycited by 101
- 2023Compositional Foundation Models for Hierarchical Planningcited by 92
- 2023DexArt: Benchmarking Generalizable Dexterous Manipulation with Articulated Objectscited by 64
- 2024AdaFlow: Imitation Learning with Variance-Adaptive Flow-Based Policiescited by 50
- 2025Interleave-VLA: Enhancing Robot Manipulation with Interleaved Image-Text Instructionscited by 50
- 2025One-step Diffusion Models with f-Divergence Distribution Matchingcited by 43
- 2024Score Distillation via Reparametrized DDIMcited by 41
- 2024DiffuserLite: Towards Real-time Diffusion Planningcited by 40
- 2025Adversarial Distribution Matching for Diffusion Distillation Towards Efficient Image and Video Synthesiscited by 39
- 2025Decoupled DMD: CFG Augmentation as the Spear, Distribution Matching as the Shieldcited by 38
- 2023Taming Mode Collapse in Score Distillation for Text-to-3D Generationcited by 35
- 2025MP1: MeanFlow Tames Policy Learning in 1-step for Robotic Manipulationcited by 32
- 2025AutoDrive-R2: Incentivizing Reasoning and Self-Reflection Capacity for VLA Model in Autonomous Drivingcited by 32
- 2024Flow Matching Imitation Learning for Multi-Support Manipulationcited by 29
- 2024Bi-VLA: Vision-Language-Action Model-Based System for Bimanual Robotic Dexterous Manipulationscited by 20
- 2024Score and Distribution Matching Policy: Advanced Accelerated Visuomotor Policies via Matched Distillationcited by 12
- 2025Self-Evaluation Unlocks Any-Step Text-to-Image Generationcited by 3
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 5.
5 papers.
- 2026FASTER: Rethinking Real-Time Flow VLAscited by 20
- 2026DriftingVLA: Native One-Step Vision-Language-Action Generation via Per-Dimension Temporal Driftingcited by 2
- 2026Implicit Drifting Policy: One-Step Action Generation via Conditional Expert Geometrycited by 1
- 2026The Speedup Paradox: Rethinking Inference Speed-Quality Trade-off in Embodied Taskscited by 0
- 2026DriftOPD: Sequence-Level Reverse-KL Distillation for One-Step VLA Policiescited by 0
- 2026DriftOPD: Sequence-Level Reverse-KL Distillation for One-Step VLA Policies29 Sep 2026
- 2026DriftingVLA: Native One-Step Vision-Language-Action Generation via Per-Dimension Temporal Drifting30 Aug 2026
- 2026The Speedup Paradox: Rethinking Inference Speed-Quality Trade-off in Embodied Tasks26 Jun 2026
- 2026Implicit Drifting Policy: One-Step Action Generation via Conditional Expert Geometry31 May 2026
- 2026FASTER: Rethinking Real-Time Flow VLAs19 Mar 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026High-Fidelity One-Step Generative Visuomotor Policy via Recursive Correction, Frequency Consistency, and Contrastive Flow Matching
- 2025FreqPolicy: Efficient Flow-based Visuomotor Policy via Frequency Consistency
- 2026STEP: Warm-Started Visuomotor Policies with Spatiotemporal Consistency Prediction
- 2026FLASH: Efficient Visuomotor Policy via Sparse Sampling
- 2026HybridFlow: A 2-NFE Generative Policy for Real-Time Robotic Manipulation
- 20253D Flow Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Generating Flow in 3D Space
- 2025Fast Flow-based Visuomotor Policies via Conditional Optimal Transport Couplings
- 2025Masked Generative Policy for Robotic Control