Generative Control as Optimization: Time Unconditional Flow Matching for Adaptive and Robust Robotic Control

Fuente: arXiv
Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: Zhang, Zunzhe, Huang, Runhan, Liu, Yicheng, Zhu, Shaoting, Mou, Linzhan, Zhao, Hang
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_version_ 1866911622322192384
author Zhang, Zunzhe
Huang, Runhan
Liu, Yicheng
Zhu, Shaoting
Mou, Linzhan
Zhao, Hang
author_facet Zhang, Zunzhe
Huang, Runhan
Liu, Yicheng
Zhu, Shaoting
Mou, Linzhan
Zhao, Hang
contents Diffusion models and flow matching have become a cornerstone of robotic imitation learning, yet they suffer from a structural inefficiency where inference is often bound to a fixed integration schedule that is agnostic to state complexity. This paradigm forces the policy to expend the same computational budget on trivial motions as it does on complex tasks. We introduce Generative Control as Optimization (GeCO), a time-unconditional framework that transforms action synthesis from trajectory integration into iterative optimization. GeCO learns a stationary velocity field in the action-sequence space where expert behaviors form stable attractors. Consequently, test-time inference becomes an adaptive process that allocates computation based on convergence--exiting early for simple states while refining longer for difficult ones. Furthermore, this stationary geometry yields an intrinsic, training-free safety signal, as the field norm at the optimized action serves as a robust out-of-distribution (OOD) detector, remaining low for in-distribution states while significantly increasing for anomalies. We validate GeCO on standard simulation benchmarks and demonstrate seamless scaling to pi0-series Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models. As a plug-and-play replacement for standard flow-matching heads, GeCO improves success rates and efficiency with an optimization-native mechanism for safe deployment. Video and code can be found at https://hrh6666.github.io/GeCO/
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_17834
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Generative Control as Optimization: Time Unconditional Flow Matching for Adaptive and Robust Robotic Control
Zhang, Zunzhe
Huang, Runhan
Liu, Yicheng
Zhu, Shaoting
Mou, Linzhan
Zhao, Hang
Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Diffusion models and flow matching have become a cornerstone of robotic imitation learning, yet they suffer from a structural inefficiency where inference is often bound to a fixed integration schedule that is agnostic to state complexity. This paradigm forces the policy to expend the same computational budget on trivial motions as it does on complex tasks. We introduce Generative Control as Optimization (GeCO), a time-unconditional framework that transforms action synthesis from trajectory integration into iterative optimization. GeCO learns a stationary velocity field in the action-sequence space where expert behaviors form stable attractors. Consequently, test-time inference becomes an adaptive process that allocates computation based on convergence--exiting early for simple states while refining longer for difficult ones. Furthermore, this stationary geometry yields an intrinsic, training-free safety signal, as the field norm at the optimized action serves as a robust out-of-distribution (OOD) detector, remaining low for in-distribution states while significantly increasing for anomalies. We validate GeCO on standard simulation benchmarks and demonstrate seamless scaling to pi0-series Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models. As a plug-and-play replacement for standard flow-matching heads, GeCO improves success rates and efficiency with an optimization-native mechanism for safe deployment. Video and code can be found at https://hrh6666.github.io/GeCO/
title Generative Control as Optimization: Time Unconditional Flow Matching for Adaptive and Robust Robotic Control
topic Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.17834