Warm-Starting Collision-Free Model Predictive Control With Object-Centric Diffusion

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Haffemayer, Arthur, Chapin, Alexandre, Jordana, Armand, Wojciechowski, Krzysztof, Lamiraux, Florent, Mansard, Nicolas, Petrik, Vladimir
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Haffemayer, Arthur
Chapin, Alexandre
Jordana, Armand
Wojciechowski, Krzysztof
Lamiraux, Florent
Mansard, Nicolas
Petrik, Vladimir
author_facet Haffemayer, Arthur
Chapin, Alexandre
Jordana, Armand
Wojciechowski, Krzysztof
Lamiraux, Florent
Mansard, Nicolas
Petrik, Vladimir
contents Acting in cluttered environments requires predicting and avoiding collisions while still achieving precise control. Conventional optimization-based controllers can enforce physical constraints, but they struggle to produce feasible solutions quickly when many obstacles are present. Diffusion models can generate diverse trajectories around obstacles, yet prior approaches lacked a general and efficient way to condition them on scene structure. In this paper, we show that combining diffusion-based warm-starting conditioned with a latent object-centric representation of the scene and with a collision-aware model predictive controller (MPC) yields reliable and efficient motion generation under strict time limits. Our approach conditions a diffusion transformer on the system state, task, and surroundings, using an object-centric slot attention mechanism to provide a compact obstacle representation suitable for control. The sampled trajectories are refined by an optimal control problem that enforces rigid-body dynamics and signed-distance collision constraints, producing feasible motions in real time. On benchmark tasks, this hybrid method achieved markedly higher success rates and lower latency than sampling-based planners or either component alone. Real-robot experiments with a torque-controlled Panda confirm reliable and safe execution with MPC.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_02873
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Warm-Starting Collision-Free Model Predictive Control With Object-Centric Diffusion
Haffemayer, Arthur
Chapin, Alexandre
Jordana, Armand
Wojciechowski, Krzysztof
Lamiraux, Florent
Mansard, Nicolas
Petrik, Vladimir
Robotics
Acting in cluttered environments requires predicting and avoiding collisions while still achieving precise control. Conventional optimization-based controllers can enforce physical constraints, but they struggle to produce feasible solutions quickly when many obstacles are present. Diffusion models can generate diverse trajectories around obstacles, yet prior approaches lacked a general and efficient way to condition them on scene structure. In this paper, we show that combining diffusion-based warm-starting conditioned with a latent object-centric representation of the scene and with a collision-aware model predictive controller (MPC) yields reliable and efficient motion generation under strict time limits. Our approach conditions a diffusion transformer on the system state, task, and surroundings, using an object-centric slot attention mechanism to provide a compact obstacle representation suitable for control. The sampled trajectories are refined by an optimal control problem that enforces rigid-body dynamics and signed-distance collision constraints, producing feasible motions in real time. On benchmark tasks, this hybrid method achieved markedly higher success rates and lower latency than sampling-based planners or either component alone. Real-robot experiments with a torque-controlled Panda confirm reliable and safe execution with MPC.
title Warm-Starting Collision-Free Model Predictive Control With Object-Centric Diffusion
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.02873