Implicit Maximum Likelihood Estimation for Real-time Generative Model Predictive Control

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Lee, Grayson, Bui, Minh, Zhou, Shuzi, Li, Yankai, Chen, Mo, Li, Ke
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866910062445854720
author Lee, Grayson
Bui, Minh
Zhou, Shuzi
Li, Yankai
Chen, Mo
Li, Ke
author_facet Lee, Grayson
Bui, Minh
Zhou, Shuzi
Li, Yankai
Chen, Mo
Li, Ke
contents Diffusion-based models have recently shown strong performance in trajectory planning, as they are capable of capturing diverse, multimodal distributions of complex behaviors. A key limitation of these models is their slow inference speed, which results from the iterative denoising process. This makes them less suitable for real-time applications such as closed-loop model predictive control (MPC), where plans must be generated quickly and adapted continuously to a changing environment. In this paper, we investigate Implicit Maximum Likelihood Estimation (IMLE) as an alternative generative modeling approach for planning. IMLE offers strong mode coverage while enabling inference that is two orders of magnitude faster, making it particularly well suited for real-time MPC tasks. Our results demonstrate that IMLE achieves competitive performance on standard offline reinforcement learning benchmarks compared to the standard diffusion-based planner, while substantially improving planning speed in both open-loop and closed-loop settings. We further validate IMLE in a closed-loop human navigation scenario, operating in real-time, demonstrating how it enables rapid and adaptive plan generation in dynamic environments. Real-world videos and code are available at https://gmpc-imle.github.io/.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_13733
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Implicit Maximum Likelihood Estimation for Real-time Generative Model Predictive Control
Lee, Grayson
Bui, Minh
Zhou, Shuzi
Li, Yankai
Chen, Mo
Li, Ke
Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Diffusion-based models have recently shown strong performance in trajectory planning, as they are capable of capturing diverse, multimodal distributions of complex behaviors. A key limitation of these models is their slow inference speed, which results from the iterative denoising process. This makes them less suitable for real-time applications such as closed-loop model predictive control (MPC), where plans must be generated quickly and adapted continuously to a changing environment. In this paper, we investigate Implicit Maximum Likelihood Estimation (IMLE) as an alternative generative modeling approach for planning. IMLE offers strong mode coverage while enabling inference that is two orders of magnitude faster, making it particularly well suited for real-time MPC tasks. Our results demonstrate that IMLE achieves competitive performance on standard offline reinforcement learning benchmarks compared to the standard diffusion-based planner, while substantially improving planning speed in both open-loop and closed-loop settings. We further validate IMLE in a closed-loop human navigation scenario, operating in real-time, demonstrating how it enables rapid and adaptive plan generation in dynamic environments. Real-world videos and code are available at https://gmpc-imle.github.io/.
title Implicit Maximum Likelihood Estimation for Real-time Generative Model Predictive Control
topic Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.13733