arXiv AI
Sep 4

LightEMMA: A Longitudinal Evaluation of Vision-Language Models for Autonomous Driving

LightEMMA is a longitudinal evaluation framework that tests the autonomous driving performance of vision‑language models (VLMs) without fine‑tuning or prompt engineering. Using this protocol, the authors evaluated 15 VLMs from five major families on the nuScenes prediction benchmark and found that larger, more capable models do not consistently outperform earlier generations. The study identifies common failure modes such as overreliance on historical actions and difficulty reconciling conflicting visual cues, underscoring the need for domain‑specific adaptation to enhance VLM safety in autonomous driving.

By Zhijie Qiao, Haowei Li, Zhong Cao, Henry X. Liu
arXiv AI
4d ago

Towards Reliable Vision-Language Models for Autonomous Driving

The paper evaluates five vision‑language models on autonomous driving tasks under various visual input conditions, finding that visual corruption affects accuracy and confidence differently across models and datasets. It then tests Visual Evidence Augmentation (VEA) as an inference‑time technique to enhance reliability, observing mixed improvements depending on the model and setting.

By Manasa Mariam Mammen, Priyanka Mary Mammen, Zafer Kayatas, Stefan Wagner