mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Learning Multimodal One-step Flow Policy via Value-weighted Optimal Transport

arXiv 2609.15883 ↗First posted 14 Sep 2026cs.LG cs.AIcited by 0

On the map: Offline RL and imitation learning from data → Diffusion and flow policies for offline RL

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Abstract (arXiv)

Offline reinforcement learning aims to learn a policy solely from fixed datasets, which often contain multimodal action distributions. Flow policies can naturally represent such multimodal behaviors, but learning an efficient one-step flow policy remains challenging: standard value guidance often leads to mode collapse or exploits overestimation bias in out-of-distribution regions. To address this, we introduce One-step Flow policy via Optimal Transport (OptiFlow), a framework for one-step flow policy learning as a structured sample-allocation problem. OptiFlow jointly trains a value-aware reference flow policy and an efficient one-step policy, coupling their action samples through state-wise entropic optimal transport. For each state, critic-estimated values define the priority of distillation target actions, while the action-distance cost ensures geometrically compatible pairings. By avoiding direct critic maximization, our transport-guided approach enables in-distribution exploitation by anchoring the one-step policy to high-value, dataset-supported modes without the risk of out-of-distribution divergence. Experimental results demonstrate that OptiFlow effectively captures optimal multimodal behaviors and achieves strong performance across diverse offline RL benchmarks. Our code is available at https://github.com/Yonsei-DILLab/OptiFlow.

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 32 of its 37 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 14 Sep 2026.

Builds on

32 of 37 references.

Closest ancestors · 4

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Guided Flow Policy: Learning from High-Value Actions in Offline Reinforcement Learning3 Dec
  2. 2025Flow Q-Learning4 Feb
  3. 2024OGBench: Benchmarking Offline Goal-Conditioned RL26 Oct
  4. 2022Diffusion Policies as an Expressive Policy Class for Offline Reinforcement Learning12 Aug

Other references · 28

  1. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 21,076
  2. 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,702
  3. 2016Layer Normalizationcited by 5,669
  4. 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,181
  5. 2022Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flowcited by 3,700
  6. 2016Gaussian Error Linear Units (GELUs)cited by 3,502
  7. 2013Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 3,274
  8. 2013Sinkhorn Distances: Lightspeed Computation of Optimal Transportation Distancescited by 2,316
  9. 2020Offline Reinforcement Learning: Tutorial, Review, and Perspectives on Open Problemscited by 1,920
  10. 2020Conservative Q-Learning for Offline Reinforcement Learningcited by 1,809
  11. 2020D4RL: Datasets for Deep Data-Driven Reinforcement Learningcited by 1,427
  12. 2021Offline Reinforcement Learning with Implicit Q-Learningcited by 1,293
16 more
  1. 2022Building Normalizing Flows with Stochastic Interpolantscited by 995
  2. 2021A Minimalist Approach to Offline Reinforcement Learningcited by 899
  3. 2018IMPALA: Scalable Distributed Deep-RL with Importance Weighted Actor-Learner Architecturescited by 883
  4. 2019Advantage-Weighted Regression: Simple and Scalable Off-Policy Reinforcement Learningcited by 782
  5. 2017Reinforcement Learning with Deep Energy-Based Policiescited by 669
  6. 2019Behavior Regularized Offline Reinforcement Learningcited by 662
  7. 2024One Step Diffusion via Shortcut Modelscited by 391
  8. 2020Critic Regularized Regressioncited by 275
  9. 2019AlgaeDICE: Policy Gradient from Arbitrary Experiencecited by 188
  10. 2023Revisiting the Minimalist Approach to Offline Reinforcement Learningcited by 126
  11. 2021OptiDICE: Offline Policy Optimization via Stationary Distribution Correction Estimationcited by 121
  12. 2024Is Value Learning Really the Main Bottleneck in Offline RL?cited by 89
  13. 2023Optimal Transport for Offline Imitation Learningcited by 42
  14. 2023Policy Regularization with Dataset Constraint for Offline Reinforcement Learningcited by 34
  15. 2024Rethinking Optimal Transport in Offline Reinforcement Learningcited by 9
  16. 2023Imitation Learning from Observation through Optimal Transportcited by 7

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Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025Flow Matching Policy Gradients
  2. 2026Truncated Rectified Flow Policy for Reinforcement Learning with One-Step Sampling
  3. 2025Unleashing Flow Policies with Distributional Critics
  4. 2026Q-Flow: Stable and Expressive Reinforcement Learning with Flow-Based Policy
  5. 2025Flow-Based Single-Step Completion for Efficient and Expressive Policy Learning
  6. 2025FlowQ: Energy-Guided Flow Policies for Offline Reinforcement Learning
  7. 2026VINE: Taming Generative Control Policies for Reinforcement Learning
  8. 2024Preferred-Action-Optimized Diffusion Policies for Offline Reinforcement Learning