In recent years, deep generative models have been shown to'imagine' convincing high-dimensional observations such as images, audio, and even video, learning directly from raw data. In this work, we ask how to imagine goal-directed visual plans -- a plausible sequence of observations that transition a dynamical system from its current configuration to a desired goal state, which can later be used as a reference trajectory for control. We focus on systems with high-dimensional observations, such as images, and propose an approach that naturally combines representation learning and planning. Our framework learns a generative model of sequential observations, where the generative process is induced by a transition in a low-dimensional planning model, and an additional noise. By maximizing the mutual information between the generated observations and the transition in the planning model, we obtain a low-dimensional representation that best explains the causal nature of the data. We structure the planning model to be compatible with efficient planning algorithms, and we propose several such models based on either discrete or continuous states. Finally, to generate a visual plan, we project the current and goal observations onto their respective states in the planning model, plan a trajectory, and then use the generative model to transform the trajectory to a sequence of observations. We demonstrate our method on imagining plausible visual plans of rope manipulation.

In recent years, deep generative models have been shown to'imagine' convincing high-dimensional observations such as images, audio, and even video, learning directly from raw data. In this work, we ask how to imagine goal-directed visual plans -- a plausible sequence of observations that transition a dynamical system from its current configuration to a desired goal state, which can later be used as a reference trajectory for control. We focus on systems with high-dimensional observations, such as images, and propose an approach that naturally combines representation learning and planning. Our framework learns a generative model of sequential observations, where the generative process is induced by a transition in a low-dimensional planning model, and an additional noise. By maximizing the mutual information between the generated observations and the transition in the planning model, we obtain a low-dimensional representation that best explains the causal nature of the data. We structure the planning model to be compatible with efficient planning algorithms, and we propose several such models based on either discrete or continuous states. Finally, to generate a visual plan, we project the current and goal observations onto their respective states in the planning model, plan a trajectory, and then use the generative model to transform the trajectory to a sequence of observations. We demonstrate our method on imagining plausible visual plans of rope manipulation.

Graphical User Interface (GUI) task automation constitutes a critical frontier in artificial intelligence research. While effective GUI agents synergistically integrate planning and grounding capabilities, current methodologies exhibit two fundamental limitations: (1) insufficient exploitation of cross-model synergies, and (2) over-reliance on synthetic data generation without sufficient utilization. To address these challenges, we propose Co-EPG, a self-iterative training framework for Co -E volution of P lanning and G rounding. Co-EPG establishes an iterative positive feedback loop: through this loop, the planning model explores superior strategies under grounding-based reward guidance via Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO), generating diverse data to optimize the grounding model. Concurrently, the optimized Grounding model provides more effective rewards for subsequent GRPO training of the planning model, fostering continuous improvement. Co-EPG thus enables iterative enhancement of agent capabilities through self-play optimization and training data distillation. On the Multimodal-Mind2Web and AndroidControl benchmarks, our framework outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods after just three iterations without requiring external data. The agent consistently improves with each iteration, demonstrating robust self-enhancement capabilities. This work establishes a novel training paradigm for GUI agents, shifting from isolated optimization to an integrated, self-driven co-evolution approach.

Adaptive agent design offers a way to improve human-AI collaboration on time-sensitive tasks in rapidly changing environments. In such cases, to ensure the human maintains an accurate understanding of critical task elements, an assistive agent must not only identify the highest priority information but also estimate how and when this information can be communicated most effectively, given that human attention represents a zero-sum cognitive resource where focus on one message diminishes awareness of other or upcoming information. We introduce a theoretical framework for adaptive signalling which meets these challenges by using principles of rational communication, formalised as Bayesian reference resolution using the Rational Speech Act (RSA) modelling framework, to plan a sequence of messages which optimise timely alignment between user belief and a dynamic environment. The agent adapts message specificity and timing to the particulars of a user and scenario based on projections of how prior-guided interpretation of messages will influence attention to the interface and subsequent belief update, across several timesteps out to a fixed horizon. In a comparison to baseline methods, we show that this effectiveness depends crucially on combining multi-step planning with a realistic model of user awareness. As the first application of RSA for communication in a dynamic environment, and for human-AI interaction in general, we establish theoretical foundations for pragmatic communication in human-agent teams, highlighting how insights from cognitive science can be capitalised to inform the design of assistive agents.

End-to-end autonomous driving has been recently seen rapid development, exerting a profound influence on both industry and academia. However, the existing work places excessive focus on ego-vehicle status as their sole learning objectives and lacks of planning-oriented understanding, which limits the robustness of the overall decision-making prcocess. In this work, we introduce DistillDrive, an end-to-end knowledge distillation-based autonomous driving model that leverages diversified instance imitation to enhance multi-mode motion feature learning. Specifically, we employ a planning model based on structured scene representations as the teacher model, leveraging its diversified planning instances as multi-objective learning targets for the end-to-end model. Moreover, we incorporate reinforcement learning to enhance the optimization of state-to-decision mappings, while utilizing generative modeling to construct planning-oriented instances, fostering intricate interactions within the latent space. We validate our model on the nuScenes and NAVSIM datasets, achieving a 50\% reduction in collision rate and a 3-point improvement in closed-loop performance compared to the baseline model. Code and model are publicly available at https://github.com/YuruiAI/DistillDrive

Motion planning is a crucial component of autonomous robot driving. While various trajectory datasets exist, effectively utilizing them for a target domain remains challenging due to differences in agent interactions and environmental characteristics. Conventional approaches, such as domain adaptation or ensemble learning, leverage multiple source datasets but suffer from domain imbalance, catastrophic forgetting, and high computational costs. T o address these challenges, we propose Interaction-Merged Motion Planning (IMMP), a novel approach that leverages parameter checkpoints trained on different domains during adaptation to the target domain. IMMP follows a two-step process: pre-merging to capture agent behaviors and interactions, sufficiently extracting diverse information from the source domain, followed by merging to construct an adaptable model that efficiently transfers diverse interactions to the target domain. Our method is evaluated on various planning benchmarks and models, demonstrating superior performance compared to conventional approaches.

This paper presents a method that addresses the conservatism, computational effort, and limited numerical accuracy of existing frameworks and methods that ensure safety in online model-based motion generation, commonly referred to as fast and safe tracking. Computational limitations restrict online motion planning to low-fidelity models. However, planning with low-fidelity models compromises safety, as the dynamic feasibility of resulting reference trajectories is not ensured. This potentially leads to unavoidable tracking errors that may cause safety-critical constraint violations. Existing frameworks mitigate this safety risk by augmenting safety-critical constraints in motion planning by a safety margin that prevents constraint violations under worst-case tracking errors. However, the methods employed in these frameworks determine the safety margin based on a heuristically selected performance of the planning model, which likely results in overly conservative reference trajectories. Furthermore, these methods are computationally intensive, and the state-of-the-art method is limited in numerical accuracy. We adopt a different perspective and address these limitations with a method that mitigates conservatism in existing frameworks by adapting the planning model performance to a given safety margin. Our method achieves numerical accuracy and requires significantly less computation time than existing methods by leveraging a captivity-escape game, which is a specific zero-sum differential game formulated in this paper. We demonstrate our method using a numerical example and compare it to the state of the art.

Large Language Models (LLMs) excel in various natural language tasks but often struggle with long-horizon planning problems requiring structured reasoning. This limitation has drawn interest in integrating neuro-symbolic approaches within the Automated Planning (AP) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) communities. However, identifying optimal AP deployment frameworks can be daunting. This paper aims to provide a timely survey of the current research with an in-depth analysis, positioning LLMs as tools for extracting and refining planning models to support reliable AP planners. By systematically reviewing the current state of research, we highlight methodologies, and identify critical challenges and future directions, hoping to contribute to the joint research on NLP and Automated Planning.

Control architectures are often implemented in a layered fashion, combining independently designed blocks to achieve complex tasks. Providing guarantees for such hierarchical frameworks requires considering the capabilities and limitations of each layer and their interconnections at design time. To address this holistic design challenge, we introduce the notion of Bezier Reachable Polytopes -- certificates of reachable points in the space of Bezier polynomial reference trajectories. This approach captures the set of trajectories that can be tracked by a low-level controller while satisfying state and input constraints, and leverages the geometric properties of Bezier polynomials to maintain an efficient polytopic representation. As a result, these certificates serve as a constructive tool for layered architectures, enabling long-horizon tasks to be reasoned about in a computationally tractable manner.

We introduce MarDini, a new family of video diffusion models that integrate the advantages of masked auto-regression (MAR) into a unified diffusion model (DM) framework. Here, MAR handles temporal planning, while DM focuses on spatial generation in an asymmetric network design: i) a MAR-based planning model containing most of the parameters generates planning signals for each masked frame using low-resolution input; ii) a lightweight generation model uses these signals to produce high-resolution frames via diffusion de-noising. MarDini's MAR enables video generation conditioned on any number of masked frames at any frame positions: a single model can handle video interpolation (e.g., masking middle frames), image-to-video generation (e.g., masking from the second frame onward), and video expansion (e.g., masking half the frames). The efficient design allocates most of the computational resources to the low-resolution planning model, making computationally expensive but important spatio-temporal attention feasible at scale. MarDini sets a new state-of-the-art for video interpolation; meanwhile, within few inference steps, it efficiently generates videos on par with those of much more expensive advanced image-to-video models.