# L-SDPPO: Policy Optimization of Spiking Diffusion Policy for Intra-vehicular Robotic Manipulation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.06049 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.06049/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Diffusion and flow policies for robotics, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 15 of its 39 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Jun 2026.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Diffusion and flow policies for robotics](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/diffusion-and-flow-policies-for-robotics/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04137/) (2023)
- [Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12213/) (2024)
- [Planning with Diffusion for Flexible Behavior Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.09991/) (2022)
- [Overcoming Exploration in Reinforcement Learning with Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.10089/) (2017)
- [Leveraging Demonstrations for Deep Reinforcement Learning on Robotics Problems with Sparse Rewards](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.08817/) (2017)
- [Diffusion Policy Policy Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.00588/) (2024)
- [Deep Learning in Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.08150/) (2018)
- [Training Spiking Neural Networks Using Lessons From Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.12894/) (2021)
- [Hierarchical Diffusion Policy for Kinematics-Aware Multi-Task Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03890/) (2024)
- [D3P: Dynamic Denoising Diffusion Policy via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.06804/) (2025)
- [Diffusion Policies for Generative Modeling of Spacecraft Trajectories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.00915/) (2025)
- [Imitation Learning for Autonomous Trajectory Learning of Robot Arms in Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.04007/) (2020)
- [Imitation learning-based spacecraft rendezvous and docking method with Expert Demonstration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.12952/) (2026)
- [Multimodal Spiking Neural Network for Space Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.07287/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Intra-vehicular robots in spacecraft help reduce astronaut workload and improve mission efficiency. Recent research focuses on using deep learning methods to achieve the acute control required for operations in these complex environments. However, objects exhibit unpredictable, unconstrained drift without gravitational damping. These factors demand robustness against complex multimodal action distributions. Diffusion policies (DP) can model these complex actions, but their iterative sampling process consumes too much energy for the limited power budgets of spacecraft. We therefore propose a low-energy intra-vehicular robotic manipulation framework, L-SDPPO, in which the Spiking Diffusion Policy (SDP) is optimized with a reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm. Furthermore, to address the insufficient perception of dynamic spatiotemporal features in microgravity, we propose the statedependent latency injection (SDLI) mechanism, which mimics biological neural delays to dynamically regulate the timing of input information. Evaluation on five representative intra-vehicular daily tasks (e.g., hatch opening and precision container capping) shows that our method consistently achieves higher success rates and lower energy consumption, compared to the state-of-the-art robotic manipulation methods. These results demonstrate our method is a viable intra-vehicular robotic manipulation method.
