# Shortcut Trajectory Planning for Efficient Offline Reinforcement Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.09336 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.09336/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Diffusion and flow policies for offline RL, one of 13 directions in Offline RL and imitation learning from data.
- Builds on 29 of its 31 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Jul 2026.

## Placed in

- Offline RL and imitation learning from data / [Diffusion and flow policies for offline RL](https://mlsanity.com/offlinerl/diffusion-and-flow-policies-for-offline-rl/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Flow Matching for Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02747/) (2022)
- [Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03003/) (2022)
- [Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00364/) (2022)
- [Offline Reinforcement Learning: Tutorial, Review, and Perspectives on Open Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.01643/) (2020)
- [Consistency Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01469/) (2023)
- [Conservative Q-Learning for Offline Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.04779/) (2020)
- [D4RL: Datasets for Deep Data-Driven Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.07219/) (2020)
- [Off-Policy Deep Reinforcement Learning without Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.02900/) (2018)
- [Planning with Diffusion for Flexible Behavior Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.09991/) (2022)
- [Latent Consistency Models: Synthesizing High-Resolution Images with Few-Step Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.04378/) (2023)
- [MOPO: Model-based Offline Policy Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.13239/) (2020)
- [MOReL : Model-Based Offline Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.05951/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Policies as an Expressive Policy Class for Offline Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.06193/) (2022)
- [Is Conditional Generative Modeling all you need for Decision-Making?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.15657/) (2022)
- [Consistency Trajectory Models: Learning Probability Flow ODE Trajectory of Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02279/) (2023)
- [One Step Diffusion via Shortcut Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.12557/) (2024)
- [Learning to Poke by Poking: Experiential Learning of Intuitive Physics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.07419/) (2016)
- [Training Agents Inside of Scalable World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.24527/) (2025)
- [Zero-Shot Visual Imitation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.08606/) (2018)
- [Consistency Models as a Rich and Efficient Policy Class for Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16984/) (2023)
- [What Makes a Good Diffusion Planner for Decision Making?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.00535/) (2025)
- [Scaling Offline RL via Efficient and Expressive Shortcut Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22866/) (2025)
- [AlignIQL: Policy Alignment in Implicit Q-Learning through Constrained Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.18187/) (2024)
- [Model-based Offline Reinforcement Learning with Lower Expectile Q-Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.00699/) (2024)
- [Accelerating Diffusion Planners in Offline RL via Reward-Aware Consistency Trajectory Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07822/) (2025)
- [Consistency Trajectory Planning: High-Quality and Efficient Trajectory Optimization for Offline Model-Based Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.09534/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Diffusion-based trajectory planners have shown strong performance in offline reinforcement learning, but their iterative denoising process often incurs high inference cost. Consistency-based planners reduce the number of sampling steps, yet they typically rely on a two-stage teacher--student distillation pipeline that increases training cost and may introduce instability. We propose Shortcut Trajectory Planning (STP), an offline model-based reinforcement learning framework that incorporates shortcut models as efficient trajectory generators. STP trains a conditional shortcut trajectory model in a single stage, supports adjustable one-step and few-step inference through step-size conditioning, and selects candidate plans using a critic augmented with feasibility-aware correction. Across standard D4RL benchmarks, including locomotion, navigation, manipulation, and dexterous control tasks, STP achieves strong performance while simplifying the training pipeline for fast generative planning.