The paper introduces Diffusion-Augmented Markov Decision Processes (DA‑MDPs), a framework that extends Maximum Entropy Reinforcement Learning to diffusion-based policies. DA‑MDPs treat each reverse‑diffusion step as an RL decision, deriving a tractable reverse‑KL bound that decomposes across denoising transitions and yields diffusion‑augmented soft rewards, value functions, and policy objectives. The authors implement this framework with PPO, REPPO, and a maximum‑entropy WPO variant, showing improved continuous‑control performance, higher success rates on manipulation tasks, and memory‑efficient training with action chunking.
By Sebastian Sanokowski, Kaustubh Patil, Majid Khadiv
arXiv:2601. 00898v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Diffusion-based policies have gained growing popularity in solving a wide range of decision-making tasks due to their superior expressiveness and controllable generation during inference.
By Ruiming Liang, Yinan Zheng, Kexin Zheng, Tianyi Tan, Jianxiong Li, Liyuan Mao, Zhihao Wang, Guang Chen, Hangjun Ye, Jingjing Liu, Jinqiao Wang, Xianyuan Zhan
arXiv:2608. 20208v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Offline reinforcement learning improves robotic policies using previously collected data without further environment interaction.
By Shaoxuan Wang, Guangting Zheng, Rui Huang, Zhipeng Tang, Sha Zhang, Jiajun Deng, Yanyong Zhang
arXiv:2607. 15273v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: MeanFlow generators achieve fast few-step sampling by predicting average velocities over time intervals, making them attractive for efficient generation.
By Yushi Huang, Xiangxin Zhou, Jun Zhang, Liefeng Bo, Tianyu Pang
The book "The Principles of Diffusion Models" outlines the foundational concepts behind diffusion models, tracing their evolution from a forward process that corrupts data into noise to a reverse process that reconstructs data. It presents three complementary perspectives—variational, score-based, and flow-based—each describing how a time-dependent velocity field transports a simple prior to the data distribution. The text also covers practical guidance for controllable generation, efficient solvers, and diffusion-inspired flow-map models, providing a mathematically grounded framework for readers with basic deep‑learning knowledge.
By Chieh-Hsin Lai, Yang Song, Dongjun Kim, Yuki Mitsufuji, Stefano Ermon
arXiv:2603. 27450v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Thanks to their remarkable flexibility, diffusion models and flow models have emerged as promising candidates for policy representation.
By Chenxiao Gao, Edward Chen, Tianyi Chen, Bo Dai