Vector Fields

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3 papers in the last 28 days · 0.0% of indexed attention

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Period ending 2026-09-21

2 new papers

A weekly snapshot of new work published in Vector Fields.

Period ending 2026-09-14

1 new paper

A weekly snapshot of new work published in Vector Fields.

26 papers

Latest in Vector Fields

Sep 17, 2026cs.RO

Decoupling Physical Speed from Path Parameterization in Singularity-Free Guiding Vector Fields

The existing singularity-free guiding vector field (SF-GVF) with an additional virtual coordinate can eliminate singular points (i.e., points where the vector field vanishes) inherent in conventional GVFs and guarantee global convergence of robot trajectories to closed and self-intersecting desired paths. However, the desired speed given by the GVF along the desired path in the original lower-dimensional space cannot be arbitrarily specified but depends on path parameterizations. One possible workaround is to partially normalize the physical projection of the SF-GVF and assign a user-designed speed. However, we show that this workaround may introduce new singularities since the normalization denominator can become zero. To address this issue, we propose a new SF-GVF with prescribed physical speed (PPS). The integral curves of the new SF-GVF converge exponentially to the desired path from any initial condition in the higher-dimensional space (including virtual dimension); more importantly, the robot's physical speed converges to the PPS, while the path-error dynamics remain invariant under regular reparameterizations of the desired path. We further develop a saturated acceleration control law for second-order kinematic models. Finally, comparative simulations and 3D path-following experiments with a quadrotor under different PPS profiles validate the theoretical results and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Zhouru Xiao, Sha Luo, Yang Lu +5
Sep 14, 2026cs.RO

Distributed Safe Cooperative Vector Field for Trajectory Curvature Constrained Multi-Robot Systems

Trajectory curvature constraints are inherent in practical multi-robot systems due to the limited turning capabilities of the robots. Without properly accounting for these constraints, robots may fail to accomplish assigned tasks, and their trajectories may diverge from the intended paths. This paper proposes a distributed safe cooperative vector field approach for multi-robot systems subject to trajectory curvature constraints. The proposed approach is composed of a cooperative vector field and a safety-oriented collision avoidance vector field, aiming to address the problems of cooperative motion and safe collision avoidance in multi-robot path-following tasks. A safety-oriented collision avoidance vector field with adaptively adjustable reactive boundary is developed to accommodate the kinematic curvature constraints of robots, thereby ensuring the physical feasibility of collision avoidance maneuvers. The proposed vector field requires only a single virtual variable from each neighboring robot to achieve cooperative motion and ensure both obstacle avoidance and inter-robot collision avoidance. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is validated through both simulations and real-world experiments on an actual multi-robot platform.
Zhouru Xiao, Tao Teng, Weijia Yao +3
Sep 7, 2026cs.RO

Singularity-Free Guiding Vector Fields on SO(3) with Designer-Specified Progression Behavior

This paper develops a singularity-free guiding vector field (SF-GVF) for path following on the special orthogonal group SO(3). First, we lift the Euclidean SF-GVF construction to SO(3), integrating the augmented-state approach with the intrinsic Lie-group geometry and obtaining a closed-form geometric guidance law whose integral curves converge to a designer-specified attitude path. The field is defined on a dense open subset of SO(3), excluding only the measure-zero antipodal set - a manifestation of the topological obstruction to continuous global stabilization on SO(3). The construction requires no per-step optimization and produces a control input intrinsically in so(3) as body angular rates. Second, we formalize the progression behavior along the path as a designer-supplied function ν(ξ), promoting the parametric speed from an implicitly resolved degree of freedom to a first-class design specification. In contrast to the Euclidean condition v = 0, which excludes vehicles with minimum-speed constraints, the corresponding condition ω= 0 on SO(3) is physically admissible for most platforms with active attitude control, making the progression behavior a design freedom structurally available on SO(3) but absent in the Euclidean setting. The framework's structural results are established under a bi-invariant Riemannian metric and hold uniformly across choices of path, progression, and Lyapunov gain. The framework is illustrated in simulation on self-intersecting paths under both constant and point-convergence progression behaviors.
Jesus Bautista, Hector Garcia de Marina
Aug 5, 2026cs.LG

Training Crossroads for Recurrent Vision Transformers: Recurrence, Neural ODEs, and Deep Supervision

Vision Transformers (ViTs) achieve strong image-recognition performance, but their parameter count grows linearly with depth when each block is independently parameterized. Single-block recurrent ViTs (bViT) remove this growth by repeatedly applying one shared block. Rather than proposing a new architecture, we fix a bViT and provide a controlled empirical characterization of three training and inference regimes under a common CIFAR-100 protocol, asking: (i)~when does recurrence beat independently parameterized depth---at matched FLOPs or at matched parameter memory? (ii)~when a residual recurrent block is trained through an ODE solver, does solver order act as numerical refinement or as an architectural bias? and (iii)~what does robustness beyond the training horizon cost in nominal accuracy? We find that standard ViTs remain preferable when FLOPs are the primary constraint, whereas recurrent ViTs offer a better accuracy--parameter trade-off under memory constraints. Consistent with the standard view of residual networks as Euler discretizations of ODEs, the continuous-time analogue of a residual recurrent block is the state-subtracted vector field z˙=Fθ(z)z\dot{z}=F_θ(z)-z; although known in principle, this distinction is easy to violate when the block is wrapped as a black-box vector field, and we qualify the cost at few accuracy points. Because the vector field is learned jointly with the solver, higher-order solvers act as a solver-induced architectural bias rather than a numerical-accuracy improvement, and their gains are not uniform. Finally, stage-wise deep supervision traces an accuracy--robustness frontier: it does not improve nominal accuracy, but degrades gracefully far beyond the training horizon, where naive recurrence collapses to near-random performance.
Grzegorz Gruszczynski, Pawel Olszowiec, Michal Byra +2
Jul 30, 2026cs.LG

Enhancing Irregular Time Series Forecasting with Continuous-Time Modeling Framework

Irregular multivariate time series are widely encountered in applications such as healthcare monitoring, human activity recognition, and environmental sensing. Their core challenges stem from asynchronous observations, non-uniform sampling intervals, and the fact that temporal patterns themselves carry critical dynamic information. Existing approaches either rely on discretization-based preprocessing (e.g., interpolation, imputation, or aggregation), which disrupts the underlying continuous-time semantics, or adopt continuous-time modeling via ODE-based frameworks, which typically require specialized architectures and incur substantial computational overhead due to numerical solvers. To address these limitations, we propose WrapFlow, a continuous-time modeling framework for irregular time series forecasting. On the input side, WrapFlow introduces Continuous-Time Tokenization, which directly encodes raw observation events and explicitly models long unobserved intervals via gap-aware tokens. The resulting continuous-time tokens are then processed by a standard Transformer backbone to capture long-range temporal dependencies. On the output side, we develop a simulation-free training paradigm for Residual Flow Matching, which learns conditional residual vector fields around base predictions while avoiding numerical-solver simulation and backpropagation during training. This design enables high-quality continuous forecasting using only a small number of fixed rollout steps at inference. Extensive experiments on multiple real-world datasets demonstrate that WrapFlow achieves state-of-the-art performance.
Tianen Shen, Zhengyu Li, Yutong Li +4
Jul 28, 2026cs.CV

ScaleResfusion: Residual Rectified Flow based on Residual Vector Field

Real-world Image Restoration (Real-IR) aims to recover high-quality (HQ) images from complex and unknown degradations. Recent diffusion-based methods have substantially improved perceptual quality, yet two obstacles remain: methods that sample from Gaussian noise require many steps and are often less faithful to the degraded input, whereas residual-based methods that start from the low-quality (LQ) image typically train task-specific models from scratch, with optimization objectives coupled to a particular noise scheduler, and therefore cannot reuse modern pre-trained generative priors. We present \textbf{ScaleResfusion}, which rewrites residual restoration as a scheduler-independent adaptation interface for pre-trained text-to-image rectified-flow models. Its core, \textbf{Residual Rectified Flow} (RRF), inserts the residual term RR into the linear transport path of Rectified Flow, so that sampling starts from noisy LQ at an exact acceleration point, where the signal-to-noise ratio of the starting state is continuously controlled by the residual ratio γγ. The resulting optimization target, the \textbf{residual vector field}, contains no scheduler-specific coefficients and differs from the pre-trained rectified-flow target only by the residual offset γRγR; adapting a frozen billion-scale backbone therefore reduces to fitting this compact residual correction with LoRA-only training. A knowledge-distillation pipeline built around RRF further reduces sampling to as few as 4 steps. Experiments on real-world super-resolution across multiple benchmarks show that ScaleResfusion achieves state-of-the-art restoration quality and transfers consistently across pre-trained rectified-flow backbones from 2B to 9B parameters.
Zhenning Shi, Chen Xu, Junhao Zhang +4
Jul 27, 2026cs.LG

Perturbative-NeuSA: A Structured Spectral Framework for Time-Dependent PDEs

Neural spectral PDE solvers often learn an entire unresolved vector field even when an inexpensive approximate model can already capture most of the trajectory. Here we introduce Perturbative-NeuSA, a residual formulation that decomposes the target solution into a low-fidelity background and a high-resolution perturbation, so that only the unresolved dynamics is learned. Starting from the exact perturbation equation, the method combines a fixed spectral operator, a background-dependent correction, the background defect in the target PDE, and an optional neural closure. This construction makes the roles of physical structure and neural closure separately measurable. Across 2D Burgers, Klein-Gordon, and heterogeneous 2D wave equations, the deterministic structured solver outperforms the trained NeuSA baseline while requiring no neural-network training. The largest gains occur on Burgers, where the deterministic correction reduces training and extrapolation errors by factors of 24 and 44, respectively. In addition, a Klein-Gordon sweep over seven background resolutions shows that the effect of the closure is conditional: it improves a poor background by 3.6 times, becomes neutral at intermediate resolutions, and degrades a well-resolved background. For the wave equation, however, the closure provides an additional 18% reduction when the remaining residual is interface-localized. Multi-initial-condition diagnostics further show that the useful closure regime depends on the initial-condition spectrum and can disappear in extrapolation when structured correction already captures the dominant Burgers dynamics. Perturbative-NeuSA therefore reframes neural closure as a conditional, diagnosable correction governed by background fidelity, residual organization, and compatibility with the closure model.
Xianli Zhu, Jia Yin
Jul 20, 2026cs.RO

Finite-Time Curvature-Constrained Vector Field for Saturation-Free Motion Planning of Nonholonomic Robots

Accurately steering a robot to a target configuration is fundamental in engineering, yet remains challenging for nonholonomic mobile robots. Vector fields (VFs) provide a natural framework by specifying desired motion directions throughout the workspace and enabling direct integration with feedback control. However, most existing VF-based methods cannot explicitly generate trajectories satisfying curvature constraints. Actuator limits are therefore often enforced by input saturation, which may invalidate stability guarantees and degrade closed-loop performance when not considered in controller design. In addition, these methods usually ensure only asymptotic convergence without an explicit settling-time bound. To address these issues, we propose a generalized motion planning and control framework consisting of a finite-time curvature-constrained vector field (FT-C2VF) and a saturation-free control law. Depending on the motion objective, the framework drives the robot to the target configuration in finite time or through it periodically. First, the FT-C2VF is constructed using complementary gains to achieve finite-time convergence while ensuring that the curvature of its integral curves is continuous, bounded, and monotonically decreasing with the radial ratio. Second, an almost globally C1-smooth, saturation-free controller is developed to track the FT-C2VF without Jacobian information, while keeping all control inputs within prescribed actuator limits. Third, dynamical-systems analysis establishes almost-global finite-time stability of the target equilibrium. Numerical simulations show improved performance over representative VF-based methods, and outdoor experiments on an Ackermann-steered vehicle confirm the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed approach.
Zhouru Xiao, Sha Luo, Yang Lu +5
Jul 15, 2026cs.CV

Beyond scalar losses: calibrating segmentation models via gradient vector field surgery

Region-based loss functions, such as the Dice loss, have established themselves as the de facto standard for highly class- and region-imbalanced segmentation tasks. However, models trained using region-based loss functions are notoriously miscalibrated and typically yield over-confident predictions. In medical imaging applications, such as defining tumor resection margins, this miscalibration is hindering clinical adoption. In this work, we outline a novel gradient perspective on this overconfidence and show how it affects region-based loss functions. We propose a "surgery" on the gradient vector field as a simple, yet effective intervention to mitigate calibration issues. This surgery adds a factor to the loss's partial derivative, scaling the gradient's magnitude linearly with the prediction error. In empirical evaluations across 2D and 3D medical segmentation tasks, we demonstrate the effectiveness of this intervention while maintaining high prediction accuracy when used in conjunction with any region-based loss function.
Laurin Lux, Alexander H. Berger, Moritz Knolle +2
Jul 6, 2026cs.LG

Advances in Neural Controlled Differential Equations

Many real-world systems evolve continuously, yet most machine learning models interpret time series as discrete sequences. Continuous-time approaches instead treat time series as samples from an underlying input path, a formulation that naturally accommodates irregularly sampled or oversampled data. Among these, Neural Controlled Differential Equations (NCDEs) are a maximally expressive class of models that parametrise a vector field using a neural network and evolve their hidden state by solving a dynamical system driven by the input path. NCDEs typically use a non-linear vector field, so their expressive power and continuous-time flexibility come at the cost of a forward pass that is both computationally expensive and inherently sequential, limiting their scalability and practical applicability. This thesis advances the training and scalability of NCDEs through three complementary contributions. First, building on neural rough differential equations, Log-NCDEs apply the Log-ODE method to efficiently approximate an NCDE's solution during training, improving both computational speed and empirical performance. Second, Linear NCDEs replace the non-linear vector field with a linear one, enabling closed-form solutions and parallel-in-time computation without sacrificing theoretical expressivity. Third, Structured Linear NCDEs use structured linear vector fields to further enhance efficiency while maintaining theoretical expressiveness and empirical performance. Collectively, these methods reduce the time per training step for an NCDE by up to three orders of magnitude while achieving state-of-the-art performance across diverse time series benchmarks.
Benjamin Walker
Jun 19, 2026math.PR

Central limit theorem for the averaged Adam optimizer

In this article, we analyse convergence of the averaged Adam optimizer to an attracting zero of the Adam vector field. We provide a central limit theorem that, in particular, quantifies exactly the speed of convergence. The order of convergence is n1/2n^{-1/2} in the number of steps of the algorithm which coincides with the order observed for classical stochastic approximation algorithms. The covariance in the central limit theorem is given in terms of properties of the Adam algorithm in the state of the attractor.
Steffen Dereich, Arnulf Jentzen
Jun 18, 2026cs.CV

TriFlow: Generating Artist-Like 3D Mesh Topology via Nearest-Vertex Vector Fields

We present TriFlow, a new generative approach for producing compact 3D meshes with artist-like triangle topology directly from input geometry conditions such as signed distance fields. Our key insight is to represent mesh topology as a nearest-vertex vector field (NVF) defined over the surface, where each point encodes its association to the nearest triangle vertex in the local barycentric frame. We train a latent flow-matching model to synthesize this field, enabling topology generation conditioned on the input geometry. To extract a coherent mesh, we cluster surface regions using the generated NVF and guide a constrained quadric error metric (QEM) mesh simplification with topology-aware optimization. This yields output meshes that closely match the input geometry while exhibiting structured, artist-like connectivity. Experiments demonstrate that TriFlow achieves stronger generalization and significantly improved topology quality compared to state-of-the-art learning-based approaches, alongside 90% lower Chamfer Distance and an 8x speedup.
Haoxuan Li, Ziya Erkoç, Daniele Sirigatti +4
Jun 3, 2026cs.RO

Efficient Computation of Distance Functions for Navigation Vector Fields in Lie Groups

Vector-field-based methods are widely used for robot control and are often applied to the path-tracking problem. Some vector field approaches require repeatedly computing the distance between the robot configuration and the curve, as well as the corresponding closest point. Recently, vector fields have been extended to Lie Groups. In this case, this computation can be expensive, especially when performed at high control frequencies on embedded platforms. This paper proposes a method for efficiently computing the distance between a point and a curve represented as what is called a G-polynomial curve, which is a curve representation that generalizes polynomial curves to matrix Lie groups. The proposed approach exploits the structure of these curves to reduce the problem to a small number of polynomial root-finding computations. Simulation results show that the method significantly reduces computation time while maintaining accuracy compared to existing optimization-based approaches. Practical formulas are also provided for the case of the group SE(3), and the method is validated experimentally on a robotic manipulator. The methodology is implemented in a computational package, available online.
Vinicius M. Gonçalves, João Baião, Felipe Bartelt +4
May 31, 2026cs.RO

Implicit Drifting Policy: One-Step Action Generation via Conditional Expert Geometry

Generative action policies based on diffusion or flow matching excel in behavior cloning, yet their iterative sampling is prohibitive for high-frequency robot control. While recent one-step formulations alleviate this latency, they inevitably discard the intermediate trajectory evolution that provides crucial action correction. Directly recovering this mechanism by explicitly estimating a training-time drifting field is mathematically ill-posed due to extreme conditional demonstration sparsity. We introduce Implicit Drifting Policy (IDP), a one-step imitation learning framework that brings the training-time correction of Drifting into policy learning without explicit vector field estimation. IDP extracts a conditional expert geometry from the local variation of observation-similar expert actions, and compares it against a global reference geometry to isolate condition-specific constraints. This local geometric structure adaptively weights a scalar potential objective. Combined with an expert-proximal terminal evaluation, IDP directly enforces manifold constraints on the one-step generator during training. Extensive evaluations across 2D, 3D, and real-world manipulation tasks show IDP effectively maintains adherence to valid action manifolds, improving upon explicit drifting methods and achieving competitive performance with strong one-step baselines.
Zemin Yang, Yaoyu He, Yiming Zhong +5
May 27, 2026cs.LG

Parameter-Efficient Generative Modeling with Controlled Vector Fields

We introduce a continuous-time generative modeling framework, motivated by the Chow-Rashevskii theorem, that builds expressive flows from a small set of fixed vector fields and learned scalar controls. Instead of learning an unconstrained high-dimensional vector field, our framework constructs the velocity by modulating fixed vector fields with learned scalar control functions. When the fixed fields are bracket-generating, their Lie algebra spans the ambient space, providing a mechanism for expressive transport with only a small number of learned control channels and offering a parameter-efficient geometric alternative to standard vector-field parameterizations. This decoupled formulation yields a structured and interpretable generative model in which the number of learned scalar output channels can be chosen independently of the ambient dimension. We formulate an expressivity principle showing that, under suitable controllability and well-posedness assumptions, such controlled flows can transport a source distribution to a target distribution. We train the resulting model using a continuous-normalizing-flow likelihood objective and present proof-of-concept experiments on synthetic distributions.
Peyman Morteza
May 25, 2026cs.CV

Mosaic: Compositional Multi-Concept Erasure via Vector Field Blending

Concept erasure has emerged as a key research direction for ensuring safe and ethical image synthesis in Text-to-Image (T2I) models. While existing studies have explored concept erasure across multiple concepts, they typically assume only a single target concept per image, a limitation increasingly exposed by modern flow-based T2I models, which can generate complex scenes with multiple concepts simultaneously. To address this gap, we introduce compositional multi-concept erasure, a new task that aims to simultaneously remove multiple target concepts within a single scene. We propose CoME-Bench, a benchmark for evaluating compositional multi-concept erasure, which covers both intra- and cross-category scenarios. We further propose Mosaic, a novel framework for multi-concept erasure in flow-based T2I models, which exploits the spatial locality of target concepts in the vector field by dynamically constructing concept-specific masks and selectively blending them without additional optimization. Extensive experiments demonstrate that Mosaic effectively removes multiple target concepts in complex compositional scenes while preserving non-target contexts.
Junseok Ko, Jungwoo Kim, Jong-Seok Lee
May 24, 2026cs.LG

Leveraging Gauge Freedom for Learning Non-Gradient Population Dynamics of Stochastic Systems

Existing work on population dynamics inference often focuses on flows arising from vector fields that are the gradients of scalar potentials. Among all admissible flows that are compatible with the population dynamics, gradient flows are optimal in a specific sense: they minimize kinetic energy. The selection of fields based on different criteria corresponds to a gauge freedom when determining population dynamics, which we leverage in this work. We propose Non-Gradient Inference Flows (NGIF), an algorithm to infer non-gradient population dynamics using a weak formulation of the continuity equation. This allows us to parameterize general vector fields and choose other selection criteria beyond minimal kinetic energy. We demonstrate on a variety of low- and high-dimensional physics problems that this more general approach improves distributional accuracy over gradient-restricted baselines and better captures non-potential transport.
Jules Berman, Tobias Blickhan, Benjamin Peherstorfer
May 22, 2026cs.LG

PrismFlow: Residual Dynamics for Flow Matching in Time-Series Generation

Generating high-quality time-series data is challenging because real-world signals often exhibit multimodal patterns and multiscale dynamics, including oscillations and high-frequency variations. Flow Matching (FM) offers an efficient alternative to diffusion models, but practical implementations typically rely on a single finite-capacity global vector-field estimator. In such heterogeneous temporal distributions, distinct regimes may pass through nearby flow states while requiring incompatible conditional velocities. A monolithic estimator trained with the standard 2\ell_2 velocity-matching objective may therefore learn an overly smoothed approximation of the local transport field. This estimator-level smoothing can attenuate branch-specific dynamics, leading to spectral distortion and poor mode coverage. To address this, we propose PrismFlow, a new FM method with Koopman-inspired dynamical experts. Each expert learns residual corrections in a latent space where local nonlinear temporal evolution can be approximated by linear transitions. We further propose a confidence-aware Winner-Take-All (WTA) objective that updates only the expert best aligned with each sample while masking gradients to the others, encouraging mode-specific specialization. During sampling, the selected expert adds a residual dynamical correction to the global transport field, preserving FM stability while recovering fine-grained and high-frequency temporal structures. Across various benchmarks, PrismFlow effectively mitigates the spectral contraction in standard FM and achieves state-of-the-art performance, with a 15.6% gain in Context-FID and a 38.6% improvement in Discriminative Score, while remaining robust in low-data settings and effective for forecasting and imputation.
Junru Zhang, Lang Feng, Jinbo Wang +6
May 18, 2026physics.data-an

A Unified Framework for Structured Flow Modeling: From Representation to Verification and Model Discovery

Many dynamical systems can be described in terms of structured flows combining source/sink behavior, cyclic dynamics, and topology-constrained transport. These features arise across a wide range of physical, engineered, and data-driven systems. The objective of this work is to establish a unified perspective on such systems, to identify modeling approaches that balance expressivity, interpretability, computational complexity, and data requirements, and to investigate how highly expressive models can be used to uncover the dominant mechanisms underlying observed dynamics. Starting from the Helmholtz-Hodge decomposition of continuous vector fields, we review the recently proposed Graph Vector Field (GVF) framework and its discrete representation on simplicial complexes. We then introduce a hierarchy of alternative approaches, including parametric conditional models, linear graph dynamical systems, and reduced Hodge representations. Finally, we propose a verification and validation methodology based on benchmark datasets from well-understood physical systems and on systematic model-reduction and ablation studies. The resulting family of structured-flow models within a common framework, ranging from low-dimensional parametric representations to full GVF formulations, supports a diagnostic methodology in which gradient, curl, harmonic, and topological contributions are systematically assessed through ablation studies. This process enables the identification of dominant mechanisms underlying the observed dynamics and guides the construction of simplified models tailored to the available data and operational constraints. By separating structural verification, behavioral verification, and domain-specific validation, the proposed approach provides a foundation for scalable and interpretable analysis of complex dynamical systems across multiple application domains.
Diego Casadei
May 13, 2026cs.LG

Path-independent Flow Matching for Multi-parameter Generative Dynamics

Flow Matching is a powerful framework for learning transport maps between probability distributions. Yet its standard single-parameter formulation is not designed to capture multi-parameter variations where the resulting transport should be path-independent. Path independence is crucial because it ensures that transformations depend only on the initial and target distributions, not on the specific path. In this work, we introduce Path-independent Flow Matching (PiFM), a method for learning vector fields whose induced flows yield path-independent transport between distributions. We show that PiFM generalizes Flow Matching to higher-dimensional parameter domains while enforcing structural conditions that ensure consistency of composed transformations. In addition, we show that, under suitable assumptions, PiFM approximates the Wasserstein barycenter, linking the framework to a notion of distributional interpolation. To enable practical training, we propose a tractable, simulation-free objective that regresses onto multi-parameter conditional probability paths. We showcase empirically that PiFM outperforms other approaches on both synthetic and real world data in interpolating path-independent trajectories and generating desired out of distribution samples.
Francisco Téllez, AmirHossein Zamani, Philippe Martin +5
May 12, 2026cs.CV

Vector Scaffolding: Inter-Scale Orchestration for Differentiable Image Vectorization

Differentiable vector graphics have enabled powerful gradient-based optimization of vector primitives directly from raster images. However, existing frameworks formulate this as a flat optimization problem, forcing hundreds to thousands of randomly initialized curves to blindly compete for pixel-level error reduction. This disordered optimization leads to topology collapse, where macroscopic structures are distorted by internal high-frequency noise, resulting in a redundant and uneditable "polygon soup" that limits practical editability. To address this limitation, we propose Vector Scaffolding, a novel hierarchical optimization framework that shifts from flat pixel-matching to structured topological construction tailored for vector graphics. By identifying a key cause of topology collapse as the mathematical imbalance between area and boundary gradients, we introduce Interior Gradient Aggregation to stabilize the learning dynamics of multi-scale curve mixtures. Upon this stabilized landscape, we employ Progressive Stratification and Rapid Inflation Scheduling to progressively densify vector primitives with extremely high learning rates (×50\times 50). Experiments demonstrate that our approach accelerates optimization by 2.5×2.5\times while simultaneously improving PSNR by up to 1.4 dB over the previous state of the art.
Jaerin Lee, Kanggeon Lee, Kyoung Mu Lee
May 8, 2026cs.LG

Generative Modeling with Flux Matching

We introduce Flux Matching, a new paradigm for generative modeling that generalizes existing score-based models to a broader family of vector fields that need not be conservative. Rather than requiring the model to equal the data score, the Flux Matching objective imposes a weaker condition that admits infinitely many vector fields whose stationary distribution is the data. This flexibility enables a class of generative models that cannot be learned under score matching, in which inductive biases, structural priors, and properties of the dynamics can be directly imposed or optimized. We show that Flux Matching performs strongly on high-dimensional image datasets and, more importantly, that our added freedom unlocks a range of applications including faster sampling, interpretable and mechanistic models, and dynamics that encode directed dependencies between variables. More broadly, Flux Matching opens a new dimension in generative modeling by turning the vector field itself into a design choice rather than a fixed target. Code is available at https://github.com/peterpaohuang/flux_matching.
Peter Pao-Huang, Xiaojie Qiu, Stefano Ermon
May 7, 2026cs.LG

A Unified Measure-Theoretic View of Diffusion, Score-Based, and Flow Matching Generative Models

We survey continuous-time generative modeling methods based on transporting a simple reference distribution to a data distribution via stochastic or deterministic dynamics. We present a unified framework in which diffusion models, score-based generative models, and flow matching are instances of learning a time-dependent vector field that induces a family of marginals (ρt)t[0,1](ρ_t)_{t \in [0,1]} governed by continuity and Fokker-Planck equations. Such a unified theory is timely because these methods are converging methodologically, yet fragmented notation and competing derivations continue to obscure their shared structure and the practical tradeoffs governing sampling, stability, and computation. Within this framework, we (i) derive reverse-time sampling for diffusion and score-based models as controlled stochastic dynamics, (ii) show that the probability flow ODE yields identical marginals and connects diffusion to likelihood-based normalizing flows, and (iii) interpret flow matching as direct regression of the velocity field under a chosen interpolation, clarifying when it coincides with or differs from score-based training. We compare objectives, sampling schemes, and discretization errors under unified notation, discuss connections to Schrodinger bridges and entropic optimal transport, and summarize theoretical guarantees and open problems on approximation, stability, and scalability.
Aditya Ranganath, Mukesh Singhal
Apr 27, 2026cs.RO

Guiding Vector Field Generation via Score-based Diffusion Model

Guiding Vector Fields (GVFs) are a powerful tool for robotic path following. However, classical methods assume smooth, ordered curves and fail when paths are unordered, multi-branch, or generated by probabilistic models. We propose a unified framework, termed the Score-Induced Guiding Vector Field (SGVF), which leverages score-based generative modeling to construct vector fields directly from data distributions. SGVF learns tangent fields from point clouds with unit-norm, orthogonality, and directional-consistency losses, ensuring geometric fidelity and control feasibility. This approach removes the reliance on ad-hoc path segmentation and enables guidance along complex topologies such as branching and pseudo-manifolds. The study establishes a correspondence between score vanishing in diffusion models and GVF singularities and highlights representational capacity near sharp path curvatures. Experiments on robotic navigation in planar environments demonstrate that SGVF achieves reliable path following in scenarios where classical GVFs fail, underscoring its potential as a bridge between generative modeling and geometric control. Code and experiment video are available at https://github.com/czr-gif/Guiding-Vector-Field-Generation-via-Score-based-Diffusion-Model.
Zirui Chen, Shiliang Guo, Shiyu Zhao
Apr 19, 2026cs.RO

Planning Smooth and Safe Control Laws for a Unicycle Robot Among Obstacles

This paper presents a framework for safe navigation of a unicycle point robot to a goal position in an environment populated with obstacles from almost any admissible state, considering input limits. We introduce a novel QP formulation to create a Cinfinity-smooth vector field with reduced total bending and total turning. Then we design an analytic, non-linear feedback controller that inherently satisfies the conditions of Nagumo's theorem, ensuring forward invariance of the safe set without requiring any online optimization. We have demonstrated that our controller, even under hard input limits, safely converges to the goal position. Simulations confirm the effectiveness of the proposed framework, resulting in a twice faster arrival time with over 50% lower angular control effort compared to the baseline.
Aref Amiri, Basak Sakcak, Steven M. LaValle
Apr 3, 2026cs.CV

ProtoFlow: Mitigating Forgetting in Class-Incremental Remote Sensing Segmentation via Low-Curvature Prototype Flow

Remote sensing segmentation in real deployment is inherently continual: new semantic categories emerge, and acquisition conditions shift across seasons, cities, and sensors. Despite recent progress, many incremental approaches still treat training steps as isolated updates, which leaves representation drift and forgetting insufficiently controlled. We present ProtoFlow, a time-aware prototype dynamics framework that models class prototypes as trajectories and learns their evolution with an explicit temporal vector field. By jointly enforcing low-curvature motion and inter-class separation, ProtoFlow stabilizes prototype geometry throughout incremental learning. Experiments on standard class- and domain-incremental remote sensing benchmarks show consistent gains over strong baselines, including up to 1.5-2.0 points improvement in mIoUall, together with reduced forgetting. These results suggest that explicitly modeling temporal prototype evolution is a practical and interpretable strategy for robust continual remote sensing segmentation. Open-source code:https://github.com/dudududke/protoflow.
Jiekai Wu, Rong Fu, Chuangqi Li +10