mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Implicit Drifting Policy: One-Step Action Generation via Conditional Expert Geometry

arXiv 2606.01098 ↗First posted 31 May 2026cs.RO cs.AIcited by 1

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

Abstract (arXiv)

Generative action policies based on diffusion or flow matching excel in behavior cloning, yet their iterative sampling is prohibitive for high-frequency robot control. While recent one-step formulations alleviate this latency, they inevitably discard the intermediate trajectory evolution that provides crucial action correction. Directly recovering this mechanism by explicitly estimating a training-time drifting field is mathematically ill-posed due to extreme conditional demonstration sparsity. We introduce Implicit Drifting Policy (IDP), a one-step imitation learning framework that brings the training-time correction of Drifting into policy learning without explicit vector field estimation. IDP extracts a conditional expert geometry from the local variation of observation-similar expert actions, and compares it against a global reference geometry to isolate condition-specific constraints. This local geometric structure adaptively weights a scalar potential objective. Combined with an expert-proximal terminal evaluation, IDP directly enforces manifold constraints on the one-step generator during training. Extensive evaluations across 2D, 3D, and real-world manipulation tasks show IDP effectively maintains adherence to valid action manifolds, improving upon explicit drifting methods and achieving competitive performance with strong one-step baselines.

Key facts. Cited by 1 paper 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 26 of its 31 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 31 May 2026.

Builds on

26 of 31 references.

Closest ancestors · 12

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026One-Step Flow Policy: Self-Distillation for Fast Visuomotor Policies12 Mar
  2. 2025Real-Time Iteration Scheme for Diffusion Policy7 Aug
  3. 2025Falcon: Fast Visuomotor Policies via Partial Denoising1 Mar
  4. 2024FlowPolicy: Enabling Fast and Robust 3D Flow-based Policy via Consistency Flow Matching for Robot Manipulation6 Dec
  5. 2024One-Step Diffusion Policy: Fast Visuomotor Policies via Diffusion Distillation28 Oct
  6. 2024Learning Robotic Manipulation Policies from Point Clouds with Conditional Flow Matching11 Sep
  7. 2024ActionFlow: Equivariant, Accurate, and Efficient Policies with Spatially Symmetric Flow Matching6 Sep
  8. 2024Streaming Diffusion Policy: Fast Policy Synthesis with Variable Noise Diffusion Models7 Jun
  9. 2024ManiCM: Real-time 3D Diffusion Policy via Consistency Model for Robotic Manipulation3 Jun
  10. 2024Consistency Policy: Accelerated Visuomotor Policies via Consistency Distillation13 May
  11. 2024Behavior Generation with Latent Actions5 Mar
  12. 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion7 Mar

Other references · 14

  1. 2019Meta-World: A Benchmark and Evaluation for Multi-Task and Meta Reinforcement Learningcited by 1,204
  2. 2017Learning Complex Dexterous Manipulation with Deep Reinforcement Learning and Demonstrationscited by 715
  3. 2025Mean Flows for One-step Generative Modelingcited by 561
  4. 2021Implicit Behavioral Cloningcited by 452
  5. 2024One Step Diffusion via Shortcut Modelscited by 391
  6. 2026Generative Modeling via Driftingcited by 116
  7. 2025How to build a consistency model: Learning flow maps via self-distillationcited by 103
  8. 2025Align Your Flow: Scaling Continuous-Time Flow Map Distillationcited by 87
  9. 2023DexArt: Benchmarking Generalizable Dexterous Manipulation with Articulated Objectscited by 66
  10. 2017Kernelized Movement Primitivescited by 37
  11. 2025Much Ado About Noising: Dispelling the Myths of Generative Robotic Controlcited by 36
  12. 2025MP1: MeanFlow Tames Policy Learning in 1-step for Robotic Manipulationcited by 35
2 more
  1. 2026A Long-Short Flow-Map Perspective for Drifting Modelscited by 10
  2. 2025Geometry-aware Policy Imitationcited by 2

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.

1 paper.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025ISS Policy : Scalable Diffusion Policy with Implicit Scene Supervision
  2. 2026Drift-Based Policy Optimization: Native One-Step Policy Learning for Online Robot Control
  3. 2025Efficient Task-specific Conditional Diffusion Policies: Shortcut Model Acceleration and SO(3) Optimization
  4. 2026Action-to-Action Flow Matching
  5. 2025Dynamic Rank Adjustment in Diffusion Policies for Efficient and Flexible Training
  6. 2026Learning Foresight without Explicit Trajectories for 3D Diffusion Policies
  7. 2025ADPro: a Test-time Adaptive Diffusion Policy via Manifold-constrained Denoising and Task-aware Initialization for Robotic Manipulation
  8. 2026Trace-Focused Diffusion Policy for Multi-Modal Action Disambiguation in Long-Horizon Robotic Manipulation