SwarmDiff: Swarm Robotic Trajectory Planning in Cluttered Environments via Diffusion Transformer

Swarm robotic trajectory planning faces challenges in efficiency, scalability, and safety, particularly in complex, obstacle-dense environments. To address these issues, we propose SwarmDiff, a hierarchical and scalable generative framework for swarm robots. We model the swarm’s macroscopic state using Probability Density Functions (PDFs) and leverage conditional diffusion models to generate risk-aware macroscopic trajectory distributions, which then guide the refinement of individual robot's trajectories at the microscopic level. To ensure a balance between the swarm's optimal transportation and risk awareness, we integrate Wasserstein metrics and Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR). Additionally, we introduce a Diffusion Transformer (DiT) to improve sampling efficiency and generation quality by capturing long-range dependencies. Extensive simulations and real-world experiments demonstrate that SwarmDiff outperforms existing methods in computational efficiency, trajectory validity, and scalability, making it a reliable solution for swarm robotic trajectory planning.