arXiv Machine Learning

An Empirical Markov Chain Car-Following (MC-CF) Model

The paper introduces the Markov Chain Car‑Following (MC‑CF) model, an empirical probabilistic approach that represents car‑following as a Markov process and samples accelerations from empirical distributions within discretized state bins. Evaluation on the Waymo Open Motion Dataset shows that MC‑CF variants outperform physics‑based baselines and compete with modern data‑driven methods in both one‑step and open‑loop trajectory prediction. Zero‑shot transfer to the Naturalistic Phoenix dataset and microscopic ring‑road simulations demonstrate cross‑domain generalization and scalability, with the model reducing collisions and reproducing naturalistic shockwave propagation.

arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 27

Quantum-Inspired Modeling of Driving Behavior

The paper introduces a quantum-inspired representation of driver behavior that models drivers as evolving density matrices, capturing continuous, probabilistic, context-dependent, and history-dependent interactions among behavioral variables. Trained unsupervised on the I‑24 MOTION dataset, the framework identifies three interpretable driving regimes—free flow, transition, and congestion—and reproduces macroscopic traffic phenomena such as the fundamental diagram and hysteresis loops. The representation also enhances practical applications by providing context-dependent parameters for classical car‑following models and enabling autonomous vehicles to forecast nearby drivers’ motion in real time.

By Mohammad Elayan, Omid Armantalab, Wissam Kontar
arXiv AI
Aug 24

RiskTraf: Risk-Extrapolated Residual Learning for Multi-Variate Traffic Flow Prediction

RiskTraf introduces a risk-extrapolated residual learning approach for multi-variate traffic flow prediction, leveraging raw flow, speed, and occupancy data from the new PEMSB-3V benchmark. The method freezes a trained spatio-temporal backbone and adds a lightweight residual head that learns from historical speed and occupancy to correct flow predictions across different traffic regimes. Experiments show consistent improvements over various backbones and outperform existing debiasing and distribution-shift adaptation techniques.

By Guangyu Wang, Zhidan Liu
arXiv AI
Sep 7

One Diffusion Model, Two Roles: Guided Trajectory Planning and Safety-Critical Scenario Generation in Closed-Loop Simulation

The paper presents a single pretrained diffusion traffic model that serves both as an ego motion planner and as a controllable generator of safety‑critical scenarios for autonomous driving. It introduces a Single‑Stream Dual‑Stream diffusion‑transformer decoder (SSDS) that fuses scene context via joint attention, improving closed‑loop performance on the nuPlan benchmark, and a training‑free guidance scheme called Decoupled Annealing Posterior Sampling with Energy (DAPSE) that injects arbitrary energy functions at inference time. Using the same model, the authors generate realistic long‑tail driving interactions—such as aggressive cut‑ins and lead‑vehicle braking—through inference‑time guidance, exposing failure modes in black‑box planners that standard benchmarks miss.

By Arka Pal, Rajesh Kumar, Hannes Eriksson, R\'emi Lacombe, Arvid Laveno Ling, Ankit Gupta, Maciej Wozniak
arXiv AI
Sep 2

Risk-Aware Decision-Making for Autonomous Overtaking: A World Model-Based Mixture-of-Experts Framework

The paper introduces WM‑RMoE, a World Model‑based Risk‑aware Mixture‑of‑Experts framework for autonomous overtaking. It uses a learned latent dynamics model to perform multi‑step rollouts, evaluating cumulative risk at the trajectory level, and employs a hierarchical gating mechanism to coordinate long‑, short‑horizon, and rule‑based safety experts. A Gaussian Mixture Model preserves multimodal maneuver branches, improving robustness and preventing behavioral averaging, leading to better safety compliance, decision stability, and generalization in experiments.

By Yongzhi Liu, Sunan Zhang, Jinchang Xu, Jiawei Wang, Yushu Qiu, Chen Lv, Weichao Zhuang