Ada-Diffuser: Latent-Aware Adaptive Diffusion for Decision-Making

Fan Feng, Selena Ge, Minghao Fu, Zijian Li, Yujia Zheng, Zeyu Tang, Yingyao Hu, Biwei Huang, Kun Zhang

Keywords: Latent Variable Models; Identification; Diffusion-based RL; POMDP

TL;DR: We present a unified framework that provides both theoretical identification guarantees and a practical generative modeling approach for identifying and learning with latent factors in decision-making.

Abstract: Recent work has framed decision-making as a sequence modeling problem using generative models such as diffusion models. Although promising, these approaches often overlook latent factors that exhibit evolving dynamics, elements that are fundamental to environment transitions, reward structures, and high-level agent behavior. Explicitly modeling these hidden processes is essential for both precise dynamics modeling and effective decision-making. In this paper, we propose a unified framework that explicitly incorporates latent dynamics inference into generative decision-making from minimal yet sufficient observations. We theoretically show that under mild conditions, the latent process can be identified from small temporal blocks of observations. Building on this insight, we introduce Ada-Diffuser, a causal diffusion model that learns the temporal structure of observed interactions and the underlying latent dynamics simultaneously and leverages them for planning and control. With a proper modular design, Ada-Diffuser supports both planning and policy learning tasks, enabling adaptation to latent variations in dynamics, rewards, and even recovering hidden action variables from action-free demonstrations. Extensive experiments on locomotion and robotic manipulation benchmarks demonstrate the model’s effectiveness in accurate latent inference, long-horizon planning, and adaptive policy learning.

Submission Number: 19