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Trajectory-Consistent Flow Matching for Robust Visuomotor Policy Learning

Summary

Flow matching policies suffer from a train-inference mismatch that causes compounding trajectory errors. This work proposes four complementary remedies: auxiliary rectified flow velocity regression, multi-step trajectory consistency training, velocity field regularization, and fourth-order Runge-Kutta inference. Paired with a dual-view 3D point cloud encoder, the method achieves substantial gains on real-robot tasks, including raising long-horizon success rates from 0% to 70% and 60%, and reaching 100% on precision tool placement.

SourcearXiv RoboticsAuthor: Riad Ahmed, Sujosh Nag, Moniruzzaman Akash, Mostafa Hussein, Momotaz Begum
Trajectory-Consistent Flow Matching for Robust Visuomotor Policy Learning
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[2605.08511] Trajectory-Consistent Flow Matching for Robust Visuomotor Policy Learning

[Submitted on 8 May 2026]

Title:Trajectory-Consistent Flow Matching for Robust Visuomotor Policy Learning

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Abstract:Flow matching policies learn continuous velocity fields that transport noise to actions, enabling fast deterministic inference for robot manipulation. However, standard training optimizes a pointwise velocity objective while inference requires numerical integration of that field -- a mismatch that causes compounding trajectory errors. We propose four complementary remedies: (1) auxiliary rectified flow velocity regression that provides uniform temporal supervision across the full time interval; (2) multi-step trajectory consistency training that supervises the integrated displacement of the velocity field over trajectory segments, directly closing the train-inference gap; (3) velocity field regularization that enforces temporal smoothness, preventing oscillations that destabilize integration; and (4) fourth-order Runge-Kutta (RK4) inference that reduces global discretization error by orders of magnitude over Euler methods. Critically, these components are not independently sufficient -- RK4 without a smooth velocity field fails, and smoothness without trajectory-level supervision still drifts, as our ablation study confirms. We further pair these with a dual-view 3D point cloud encoder using two independent PointNet encoders for complementary spatial perception. On four real-robot tasks across a Franka arm and a Boston Dynamics Spot, our method achieves 70% and 60% overall success on two long-horizon multi-phase tasks where both baselines score 0%, and reaches 100% on precision tool placement. Three MetaWorld simulation tasks confirm consistent improvements, validating that trajectory-level supervision is essential for reliable policy execution.

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Robotics (cs.RO)

Cite as: arXiv:2605.08511 [cs.RO]

(or arXiv:2605.08511v1 [cs.RO] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.08511

arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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From: Riad Ahmed [view email] [v1] Fri, 8 May 2026 21:44:10 UTC (17,803 KB)

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Key points and analysis

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Key points

  • Standard flow matching optimizes a pointwise velocity objective but inference requires numerical integration, causing trajectory errors
  • Four complementary solutions: auxiliary rectified flow regression, multi-step trajectory consistency, velocity field smoothing, and RK4 inference
  • Dual-view 3D point cloud encoder with two PointNet networks provides complementary spatial perception
  • Experiments on Franka arm and Boston Dynamics Spot show dramatic improvements, with 0% baseline tasks raised to 70% and 60% success

Highlights and analysis are generated automatically and may contain errors. Check the original source.