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Unifying Model Predictive Path Integral Control, Reinforcement Learning, and Diffusion Models for Optimal Control and Planning

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arxiv 2502.20476 v2 pith:UZUYT4FV submitted 2025-02-27 cs.LG

Unifying Model Predictive Path Integral Control, Reinforcement Learning, and Diffusion Models for Optimal Control and Planning

classification cs.LG
keywords mppidiffusionmodelscontroloptimizationestablishfunctiongradient
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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Model Predictive Path Integral (MPPI) control, Reinforcement Learning (RL), and Diffusion Models have each demonstrated strong performance in trajectory optimization, decision-making, and motion planning. However, these approaches have traditionally been treated as distinct methodologies with separate optimization frameworks. In this work, we establish a unified perspective that connects MPPI, RL, and Diffusion Models through gradient-based optimization on the Gibbs measure. We first show that MPPI can be interpreted as performing gradient ascent on a smoothed energy function. We then demonstrate that Policy Gradient methods reduce to MPPI by applying an exponential transformation to the objective function. Additionally, we establish that the reverse sampling process in diffusion models follows the same update rule as MPPI.

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Cited by 3 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. GRACE: Gradient-Free Robot Action Generation via Combined Diffusion-MPPI Posterior Mean Estimation

    cs.RO 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0

    GRACE guides pretrained diffusion policies through cost-weighted MPPI rollouts, enabling nondifferentiable deployment-time constraints such as binary collision checks to steer action generation.

  2. Online World Modeling Enables Real-World Inverse Reinforcement Learning from Observation

    cs.RO 2026-02 conditional novelty 6.0

    MPAIL2 demonstrates real-world manipulation learning from observation alone, without rewards or action labels, plus positive online transfer.

  3. Learning to Plan, Planning to Learn: Adaptive Hierarchical RL-MPC for Sample-Efficient Decision Making

    cs.LG 2025-12 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    An adaptive RL-MPC framework uses RL to inform MPPI sampling and aggregates MPPI samples for value estimation, delivering up to 72% higher success rates and 2.1x faster convergence on tasks like race driving and Lunar...