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The paper introduces Endpoint-Constrained Optimization (ECO), a lightweight postprocessing layer that corrects intermediate waypoints of end-to-end driving policies while preserving the predicted endpoint. ECO does not require maps, privileged simulator state, or additional training, and can be applied to a wide range of waypoint-emitting policies. Experiments on two closed-loop simulators show that ECO significantly improves closed-loop performance, achieving top results in the HUGSIM Closed-Loop Driving Challenge and boosting scene scores on AlpaSim.
arXiv:2604. 03497v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Vision-language-model (VLM)-guided reinforcement learning (RL) has recently attracted significant attention for it, replacing brittle hand-crafted rewards with semantically grounded signals; however, deploying such simulation-trained policies on real vehicles remains a fundamental challenge, because they rely on simulator-native observations and simulator-coupled action semantics with no counterpart on physical hardware.
The paper introduces Solver-Gradient Guided Reinforcement Learning (SG‑RL), a method that augments standard RL with bounded gradients from a differentiable MPC solver to adapt cost‑function weights online. SG‑RL integrates solver‑gradient guidance into PPO through actor‑update scaling, policy loss, advantage estimation, and value‑function learning, achieving comparable or superior closed‑loop performance while requiring up to 70.6% fewer samples. Experiments on two autonomous racing platforms with intentional model mismatch demonstrate that SG‑RL outperforms both RL and gradient‑based policy learning baselines and generalizes zero‑shot to unseen environments.
arXiv:2606. 24039v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Robotics increasingly relies on GPUs for parallel simulation, large-scale learning, and neural-network inference.
arXiv:2609.39888v2 Announce Type: new Abstract: Neural trajectory predictors can reach low prediction error while violating dynamics, actuator limits, or state constraints, especially when controls a...
arXiv:2607. 13319v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: High-speed off-road autonomy requires precise closed-loop control for a target vehicle while remaining robust across changing terrains.