mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Do Diffusion Models Dream of Electric Planes? Discrete and Continuous Simulation-Based Inference for Aircraft Design

arXiv 2603.13284 ↗First posted 27 Feb 2026cs.LG stat.MLcited by 2

On the map: Diffusion models → Flow matching, time series and science

Abstract (arXiv)

In this paper, we generate conceptual engineering designs of electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. We follow the paradigm of simulation-based inference (SBI), whereby we look to learn a posterior distribution over the full eVTOL design space. To learn this distribution, we sample over discrete aircraft configurations (topologies) and their corresponding set of continuous parameters. Therefore, we introduce a hierarchical probabilistic model consisting of two diffusion models. The first model leverages recent work on Riemannian Diffusion Language Modeling (RDLM) and Unified World Models (UWMs) to enable us to sample topologies from a discrete and continuous space. For the second model we introduce a masked diffusion approach to sample the corresponding parameters conditioned on the topology. Our approach rediscovers known trends and governing physical laws in aircraft design, while significantly accelerating design generation.

Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Flow matching, time series and science, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 31 of its 48 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 27 Feb 2026.

Builds on

31 of 48 references.

References · 31

  1. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
  2. 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 5,931
  3. 2021RoFormer: Enhanced Transformer with Rotary Position Embeddingcited by 4,581
  4. 2021Structured Denoising Diffusion Models in Discrete State-Spacescited by 1,665
  5. 2024Simple and Effective Masked Diffusion Language Modelscited by 800
  6. 2024Simplified and Generalized Masked Diffusion for Discrete Datacited by 606
  7. 2016Revisiting Classifier Two-Sample Testscited by 258
  8. 2025Unified World Models: Coupling Video and Action Diffusion for Pretraining on Large Robotic Datasetscited by 218
  9. 2018Sequential Neural Likelihood: Fast Likelihood-free Inference with Autoregressive Flowscited by 217
  10. 2019Automatic Posterior Transformation for Likelihood-Free Inferencecited by 216
  11. 2017Flexible statistical inference for mechanistic models of neural dynamicscited by 162
  12. 2021Benchmarking Simulation-Based Inferencecited by 160
19 more
  1. 2015Approximating Likelihood Ratios with Calibrated Discriminative Classifierscited by 87
  2. 2019Integer Discrete Flows and Lossless Compressioncited by 82
  3. 2016Likelihood-free inference by ratio estimationcited by 80
  4. 2022AirfRANS: High Fidelity Computational Fluid Dynamics Dataset for Approximating Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes Solutionscited by 77
  5. 2024DrivAerNet++: A Large-Scale Multimodal Car Dataset with Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulations and Deep Learning Benchmarkscited by 74
  6. 2024All-in-one simulation-based inferencecited by 71
  7. 2019Discrete Flows: Invertible Generative Models of Discrete Datacited by 68
  8. 2024Exponential Moving Average of Weights in Deep Learning: Dynamics and Benefitscited by 65
  9. 2025Simulation-Based Inference: A Practical Guidecited by 30
  10. 2025Continuous Diffusion Model for Language Modelingcited by 29
  11. 2023Generative Modeling on Manifolds Through Mixture of Riemannian Diffusion Processescited by 21
  12. 2024Real-time gravitational-wave inference for binary neutron stars using machine learningcited by 21
  13. 2024DeepJEB: 3D Deep Learning-based Synthetic Jet Engine Bracket Datasetcited by 16
  14. 2025BlendedNet: A Blended Wing Body Aircraft Dataset and Surrogate Model for Aerodynamic Predictionscited by 16
  15. 2023AircraftVerse: A Large-Scale Multimodal Dataset of Aerial Vehicle Designscited by 13
  16. 2022Graphically Structured Diffusion Modelscited by 11
  17. 2023Fusion of ML with numerical simulation for optimized propeller designcited by 5
  18. 2023Direct Amortized Likelihood Ratio Estimationcited by 5
  19. 2025BikeBench: A Bicycle Design Benchmark for Generative Models with Objectives and Constraintscited by 5

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 2.

2 papers.

  1. 2026Mixed neural posterior estimation for simulators with discrete and continuous parameterscited by 0
  2. 2026Diffusion Language Models for Mobile Edge Agentic AI: Foundations, Applications, and Challengescited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2023Aligning Optimization Trajectories with Diffusion Models for Constrained Design Generation
  2. 2024Generative Aerodynamic Design with Diffusion Probabilistic Models
  3. 2025Evolvable Conditional Diffusion
  4. 2025A Reward-Directed Diffusion Framework for Generative Design Optimization
  5. 2024Airfoil Diffusion: Denoising Diffusion Model For Conditional Airfoil Generation
  6. 2025Censored Sampling for Topology Design: Guiding Diffusion with Human Preferences
  7. 2026RePaint-Enhanced Conditional Diffusion Model for Parametric Engineering Designs under Performance and Parameter Constraints
  8. 2024Compositional Generative Inverse Design