{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/diffusion-models-for-reinforcement-learning-a","title":"Diffusion Models for Reinforcement Learning: A Survey","arxiv_id":"2311.01223","date":"2023-11-02","proceeding":null,"authors":["Zhengbang Zhu","Hanye Zhao","Haoran He","Yichao Zhong","Shenyu Zhang","Haoquan Guo","Tingting Chen","Weinan Zhang"],"abstract":"Diffusion models surpass previous generative models in sample quality and training stability. Recent works have shown the advantages of diffusion models in improving reinforcement learning (RL) solutions. This survey aims to provide an overview of this emerging field and hopes to inspire new avenues of research. First, we examine several challenges encountered by RL algorithms. Then, we present a taxonomy of existing methods based on the roles of diffusion models in RL and explore how the preceding challenges are addressed. We further outline successful applications of diffusion models in various RL-related tasks. Finally, we conclude the survey and offer insights into future research directions. We are actively maintaining a GitHub repository for papers and other related resources in utilizing diffusion models in RL: https://github.com/apexrl/Diff4RLSurvey.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.01223v4","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2311.01223v4.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"diffusion-models-for-reinforcement-learning-a","repo_url":"https://github.com/apexrl/diff4rlsurvey","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"none","reach":{"status":"ok","spdx":"Apache-2.0"}}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"reinforcement-learning","task_name":"Reinforcement Learning"},{"task_slug":"reinforcement-learning-1","task_name":"Reinforcement Learning (RL)"},{"task_slug":"survey","task_name":"Survey"},{"task_slug":"reinforcement-learning-2","task_name":"reinforcement-learning"}],"methods":[{"method_slug":"diffusion","method_name":"Diffusion"}],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2311.01223","mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}