# Akule: Fast and Scalable Multi-Robot Motion Planning via Sparse Interaction Diffusion

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.14248 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.14248/

## 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 21 of its 37 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Oct 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, 21 of 21)

- [Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04137/) (2023)
- [Deep Sets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06114/) (2017)
- [Planning with Diffusion for Flexible Behavior Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.09991/) (2022)
- [Compositional Visual Generation with Composable Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.01714/) (2022)
- [Is Conditional Generative Modeling all you need for Decision-Making?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.15657/) (2022)
- [Interaction Networks for Learning about Objects, Relations and Physics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00222/) (2016)
- [Motion Planning Diffusion: Learning and Planning of Robot Motions with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.01557/) (2023)
- [DiffCollage: Parallel Generation of Large Content with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17076/) (2023)
- [Generative Skill Chaining: Long-Horizon Skill Planning with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.03360/) (2023)
- [Learning Sampling Distributions for Robot Motion Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.05448/) (2017)
- [Motion Planning Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.05767/) (2018)
- [MADiff: Offline Multi-agent Learning with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17330/) (2023)
- [EECBS: A Bounded-Suboptimal Search for Multi-Agent Path Finding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.01367/) (2020)
- [Priority Inheritance with Backtracking for Iterative Multi-agent Path Finding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.11282/) (2019)
- [LaCAM: Search-Based Algorithm for Quick Multi-Agent Pathfinding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.13432/) (2022)
- [Multi-Robot Motion Planning with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03072/) (2024)
- [Simultaneous Multi-Robot Motion Planning with Projected Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.03607/) (2025)
- [Generative Factor Chaining: Coordinated Manipulation with Diffusion-based Factor Graph](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.16275/) (2024)
- [InterAgent: Physics-based Multi-agent Command Execution via Diffusion on Interaction Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.07410/) (2025)
- [Factored Diffusion Policies:Compositionally Generalized Robot Control with a Single Score Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.22596/) (2026)
- [Distributed Model-Based Diffusion For Scalable Multi-Robot Trajectory Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.20992/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Diffusion models provide expressive trajectory priors for multi-robot motion planning (MRMP), but scaling them to large teams requires coordinating individual motions without expensive joint computation. We introduce Akule, a sparse interaction diffusion framework that augments a frozen single-robot prior with three learned modules: a reusable pairwise correction model Rφ, a contextual selector Upsi that determines which corrections to evaluate, and a composer Gω that combines their effects through context-dependent signed weights. This decomposition separates which interactions merit computation from how their effects should be combined into coordinated denoising updates. We train Rφ using matched pairwise trajectory optimizations, then learn Gω and Upsi from physically optimized joint trajectories without requiring a prescribed ground-truth interaction graph. The resulting joint proposals are passed to a downstream search-based planner for validation and repair. Across diverse MRMP benchmarks, Akule achieves competitive planning success, complete-planner speedups of up to 25×, zero-shot population transfer, and successful planning with up to 256 robots. Ablations further demonstrate that learned selection and composition reduce pre-repair conflicts and downstream repair effort relative to heuristic selection and uniform summation.