FlowAD: Ego-Scene Interactive Modeling for Autonomous Driving
Organizations: AutoLab, School of Artificial Intelligence, Shanghai Jiao Tong University · Baidu Inc.
Abstract
Effective environment modeling is the foundation for autonomous driving, underpinning tasks from perception to planning. However, current paradigms often inadequately consider the feedback of ego motion to the observation, which leads to an incomplete understanding of the driving process and consequently limits the planning capability. To address this issue, we introduce a novel ego-scene interactive modeling paradigm. Inspired by human recognition, the paradigm represents ego-scene interaction as the scene flow relative to the ego-vehicle. This conceptualization allows for modeling ego-motion feedback within a feature learning pattern, advantageously utilizing existing log-replay datasets rather than relying on scenario simulations. We specifically propose FlowAD, a general flow-based framework for autonomous driving. Within it, an ego-guided scene partition first constructs basic flow units to quantify scene flow. The ego-vehicle's forward direction and steering velocity directly shape the partition, which reflects ego motion. Then, based on flow units, spatial and temporal flow predictions are performed to model dynamics of scene flow, encompassing both spatial displacement and temporal variation. The final task-aware enhancement exploits learned spatio-temporal flow dynamics to benefit diverse tasks through object and region-level strategies. We also propose a novel Frames before Correct Planning (FCP) metric to assess the scene understanding capability. Experiments in both open and closed-loop evaluations demonstrate FlowAD's generality and effectiveness across perception, end-to-end planning, and VLM analysis. Notably, FlowAD reduces 19% collision rate over SparseDrive with FCP improvements of 1.39 frames (60%) on nuScenes, and achieves an impressive driving score of 51.77 on Bench2Drive, proving the superiority. Code, model, and configurations will be released here.
Figures & tables
| Method | Backbone | Detection | Tracking | Online Map | Motion Prediction | Planning | |||||
| mAP | NDS | AMOTA | AMOTP | loU-Lane | loU-Road | minADE | minFDE | Avg.L2 | Avg.Col | ||
| UniAD Hu et al. (2023) | ResNet101 | 0.380 | 0.498 | 0.359 | 1.320 | 0.302 | 0.672 | 0.71 | 1.02 | 1.03 | 0.31 |
| UniAD w/o.Tem Hu et al. (2023) | ResNet101 | 0.356 -6% | 0.473 -5% | 0.303 -16% | 1.549 -17% | 0.288 -5% | 0.648 -4% | 0.86 -21% | 1.22 -20% | 1.08 -5% | 0.33 -6% |
| Method | Backbone | Input Size | Dataset | mAP | NDS | mATE | mASE | mAOE | mAVE | mAAE |
| StreamPETR Wang et al. (2023) | ResNet50 | nuScenes | 0.432 | 0.540 | 0.581 | 0.272 | 0.413 | 0.295 | 0.195 | |
| SparseBEV Liu et al. (2023) | ResNet50 | nuScenes | 0.445 | 0.553 | 0.605 | 0.278 | 0.389 | 0.253 | 0.189 | |
| FlowAD (Ours) | ResNet50 | nuScenes | 0.475 | 0.574 | 0.585 | 0.265 | 0.361 | 0.236 | 0.184 | |
| BEVDepth Li et al. (2023a) | ResNet101 | nuScenes | 0.412 | 0.535 | 0.565 | 0.266 | 0.358 | 0.331 | 0.190 | |
| SparseBEV Liu et al. (2023) | ResNet101 | nuScenes | 0.501 | 0.592 | 0.562 | 0.265 | 0.321 | 0.243 | 0.195 | |
| FlowAD (Ours) | ResNet101 | nuScenes | 0.528 | 0.607 | 0.552 | 0.253 | 0.311 | 0.230 | 0.192 |
| Method | Backbone | RayIoU | RayIoU 1m,2m,4m | FPS | ||
| SimpleOcc Gan et al. (2024) | ResNet101 | 22.5 | 17.0 | 22.7 | 27.9 | 9.7 |
| BEVFormer Li et al. (2022) | ResNet101 | 32.4 | 26.1 | 32.9 | 38.0 | 3.0 |
| BEVDet-Occ Huang and Huang (2022) | ResNet50 | 32.6 | 26.6 | 33.1 | 38.2 | 0.8 |
| FB-Occ Li et al. (2023b) | ResNet50 | 33.5 | 26.7 | 34.1 | 39.7 | 10.3 |
| SparseOcc Liu et al. (2024) | ResNet50 | 35.7 | 29.3 | 36.5 | 41.4 | 17.3 |
| FlowAD (Ours) | ResNet50 | 38.4 | 32.2 | 39.3 | 43.8 | 14.6 |
| Method | Backbone | Detection | Tracking | Online Map | Motion Prediction | Planning | FPS | |||||
| mAP | NDS | AMOTA | AMOTP | mAP | minADE | minFDE | Avg.L2 | Avg.Col | FCP | |||
| VAD Jiang et al. (2023) | ResNet50 | - | - | - | - | 0.476 | - | - | 0.72 | 0.21 | 3.07 | 5.2 |
| MomAD Song et al. (2025) | ResNet50 | 0.423 | 0.531 | 0.391 | 1.243 | 0.559 | 0.61 | 0.98 | 0.60 | 0.09 | - | 7.8 |
| DriveWM Wang et al. (2024b) | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 0.80 | 0.26 | - | - |
| LAW Li et al. (2024) | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 0.61 | 0.30 | - | - |
| UncAD Yang et al. (2025) | ResNet50 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 0.60 | 0.07 | - | - |
| Method | Backbone | Open-loop | Closed-loop | Closed-loop Ability | ||||||||
| Avg. L2 | DS | SR | Effi | Smooth | Merging | Overtaking | Emergency Brake | Give Way | Traffic Sign | Mean | ||
| UniAD Hu et al. (2023) | ResNet101 | 0.73 | 45.81 | 16.36 | 129.21 | 43.58 | 14.10 | 17.78 | 21.67 | 10.00 | 14.21 | 15.55 |
| VAD Jiang et al. (2023) | ResNet50 | 0.91 | 42.35 | 15.00 | 157.94 | 46.01 | 8.11 | 24.44 | 18.64 | 20.00 | 19.15 | 18.07 |
| SparseDrive Sun et al. (2024) | ResNet50 | 0.83 | 44.54 | 16.71 | 170.21 | 48.63 | 12.50 | 17.50 | 20.00 | 20.00 | 23.03 | 18.60 |
| MomAD Song et al. (2025) | ResNet50 | 0.82 | 47.91 | 18.11 | 174.91 | 51.20 | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| FlowAD (Ours) | ResNet50 | 0.73 | 51.77 | 22.02 | 178.42 | 53.89 | 20.00 | 28.67 | 25.00 | 25.00 | 28.42 | 25.42 |
| Method | Planning Accuracy | Path (F1 Score) | Speed (F1 Score) | FPS | |||||
| Go Straight | Turn Left | Turn Right | Keep | Accelerate | Decelerate | Stop | |||
| Senna Jiang et al. (2024) | 18.67 | 67.81 | 6.99 | 0.00 | 78.11 | 0.00 | 2.12 | 31.71 | 0.43 |
| Senna ∗ Jiang et al. (2024) | 88.54 | 96.85 | 30.53 | 46.94 | 96.50 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 90.82 | 0.43 |
| FlowAD (Ours) | 90.99 | 97.76 | 60.71 | 68.17 | 96.97 | 51.53 | 40.38 | 93.55 | 0.38 |
| # | Ego-guided Scene Partition | Flow Prediction | Detection | Planning | VLM Analysis | FPS | |||||
| Start | Multi | Aggre. | Adjust | Spatial | Temporal | mAP | L2@3s | FCP | Planning Acc | ||
| ① | 0.445 | 0.96 | 2.55 | 88.54 | 21.7 | ||||||
| ② | ✓ | 0.454 | 0.93 | 2.23 | 89.13 | 20.9 | |||||
| ③ | ✓ | ✓ | 0.459 | 0.91 | 1.87 | 89.66 | 20.3 | ||||
| ④ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 0.463 | 0.88 | 1.31 | 90.22 | 20.2 | |||
| ⑤ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 0.466 | 0.87 | 1.16 | 90.30 | 19.4 | ||
Appendix figures & tables21 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
| # | Multi-level Partition Sizes | mAP | NDS | mATE | mASE | mAOE | mAVE | mAAE | FPS | |||
| Stage1 | Stage2 | Stage3 | Stage4 | |||||||||
| ① | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.462 | 0.562 | 0.600 | 0.272 | 0.382 | 0.240 | 0.198 | 21.1 |
| ② | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 0.475 | 0.574 | 0.585 | 0.265 | 0.361 | 0.236 | 0.184 | 18.9 |
| ③ | 16 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 0.470 | 0.570 | 0.594 | 0.268 | 0.363 | 0.244 | 0.197 | 19.3 |
| ④ | 24 | 12 | 6 | 3 | 0.459 | 0.562 | 0.601 | 0.271 | 0.380 | 0.243 | 0.199 | 19.8 |
| Method | Backbone | Detection | Tracking | Online Map | Motion Prediction | Planning | FPS | |||||
| mAP | NDS | AMOTA | AMOTP | mAP | minADE | minFDE | Avg.L2 | Avg.Col | FCP | |||
| SparseDrive Sun et al. (2024) | ResNet50 | 0.418 | 0.525 | 0.386 | 1.254 | 0.551 | 0.62 | 0.99 | 0.61 | 0.08 | 2.55 | 9.0 |
| FlowAD (Ours) | ResNet50 | 0.448 | 0.555 | 0.427 | 1.181 | 0.582 | 0.58 | 0.95 | 0.56 | 0.06 | 1.03 | 7.6 |
| FlowAD ∗ (Ours) | ResNet50 | 0.434 | 0.544 | 0.416 | 1.198 | 0.567 | 0.59 | 0.96 | 0.57 | 0.06 | 1.45 | 8.5 |
| FlowAD △ (Ours) | ResNet50 | 0.429 | 0.533 | 0.401 | 1.207 | 0.559 | 0.60 | 1.01 | 0.59 | 0.07 | 2.03 | 8.5 |
| # | Power Coefficient | mAP | NDS | mATE | mASE | mAOE | mAVE | mAAE |
| ① | Linear | 0.469 | 0.569 | 0.595 | 0.271 | 0.363 | 0.240 | 0.190 |
| ② | Quadratic | 0.475 | 0.574 | 0.585 | 0.265 | 0.361 | 0.236 | 0.184 |
| ③ | Cubic | 0.474 | 0.572 | 0.589 | 0.256 | 0.354 | 0.237 | 0.187 |
| # | Range of Local Aggregation | mAP | NDS | mATE | mASE | mAOE | mAVE | mAAE | FPS |
| ① | 1 | 0.460 | 0.563 | 0.605 | 0.270 | 0.365 | 0.239 | 0.200 | 19.2 |
| ② | 3 | 0.475 | 0.574 | 0.585 | 0.265 | 0.361 | 0.236 | 0.184 | 18.9 |
| ③ | 5 | 0.471 | 0.575 | 0.574 | 0.269 | 0.350 | 0.238 | 0.196 | 18.8 |
| ④ | 7 | 0.464 | 0.567 | 0.588 | 0.271 | 0.366 | 0.242 | 0.194 | 18.6 |
| Method | Aggregation | mAP | NDS | mATE | mASE | mAOE | mAVE | mAAE | FPS |
| SparseBEV Liu et al. (2023) | 0.445 | 0.553 | 0.605 | 0.278 | 0.389 | 0.253 | 0.189 | 21.7 | |
| FlowAD (Ours) | Local | 0.475 | 0.574 | 0.585 | 0.265 | 0.361 | 0.236 | 0.184 | 18.9 |
| FlowAD (Ours) | Deformable | 0.480 | 0.580 | 0.582 | 0.273 | 0.367 | 0.241 | 0.185 | 16.7 |
| # | Levels for Flow Prediction | mAP | NDS | mATE | mASE | mAOE | mAVE | mAAE | FPS | |||
| Stage1 | Stage2 | Stage3 | Stage4 | |||||||||
| ① | 0.445 | 0.553 | 0.605 | 0.278 | 0.389 | 0.253 | 0.189 | 21.7 | ||||
| ② | ✓ | 0.460 | 0.560 | 0.599 | 0.272 | 0.381 | 0.247 | 0.190 | 19.8 | |||
| ③ | ✓ | 0.466 | 0.564 | 0.594 | 0.269 | 0.378 | 0.244 | 0.192 | 20.1 | |||
| ④ | ✓ | ✓ | 0.475 | 0.574 | 0.585 | 0.265 | 0.361 | 0.236 | 0.184 | 18.9 | ||
| ⑤ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 0.479 | 0.580 | 0.581 | 0.266 | 0.357 | 0.232 | 0.183 | 17.2 | |
| # | Flow Prediction Loss | mAP | NDS | mATE | mASE | mAOE | mAVE | mAAE | |
| Spatial | Temporal | ||||||||
| ① | 0.444 | 0.548 | 0.619 | 0.280 | 0.392 | 0.256 | 0.192 | ||
| ② | ✓ | 0.459 | 0.562 | 0.596 | 0.273 | 0.379 | 0.244 | 0.187 | |
| ③ | ✓ | 0.456 | 0.559 | 0.601 | 0.276 | 0.381 | 0.246 | 0.189 | |
| ④ | ✓ | ✓ | 0.475 | 0.574 | 0.585 | 0.265 | 0.361 | 0.236 | 0.184 |
| # | Method | Train Epoch | Flow Prediction Loss | mAP | NDS | mATE | mASE | mAOE | mAVE | mAAE | |
| Spatial | Temporal | ||||||||||
| ① | SparseBEV Liu et al. (2023) | 18 | 0.437 | 0.541 | 0.625 | 0.283 | 0.401 | 0.255 | 0.191 | ||
| ② | SparseBEV Liu et al. (2023) | 24 | 0.445 | 0.553 | 0.605 | 0.278 | 0.389 | 0.253 | 0.189 | ||
| ③ | SparseBEV Liu et al. (2023) | 30 | 0.448 | 0.554 | 0.599 | 0.273 | 0.389 | 0.256 | 0.193 | ||
| ④ | FlowAD (Ours) | 18 | 0.393 | 0.499 | 0.671 | 0.294 | 0.404 | 0.275 | 0.198 | ||
| ⑤ | FlowAD (Ours) | 24 | 0.444 | 0.548 | 0.619 | 0.280 | 0.392 | 0.256 | 0.192 | ||
| Method | Backbone | L2 Error (m) | Collision Rate (%) | FCP (frame) | FCP ♢ (frame) | FPS | ||||||||||||
| 1s | 2s | 3s | Avg. | 1s | 2s | 3s | Avg. | 0.25m | 0.50m | 0.75m | Avg. | 1 frame | 2 frame | 3 frame | Avg. | |||
| UniAD Hu et al. (2023) | ResNet101 | 0.44 | 0.67 | 0.96 | 0.69 | 0.04 | 0.08 | 0.23 | 0.12 | 5.41 | 2.69 | 0.93 | 3.01 | 0.73 | 2.02 | 3.43 | 2.06 | 1.8 |
| VAD Jiang et al. (2023) | ResNet50 | 0.41 | 0.70 | 1.05 | 0.72 | 0.07 | 0.17 | 0.41 | 0.22 | 6.44 | 3.07 | 1.42 | 3.64 | 0.87 | 2.39 | 4.12 | 2.46 | 5.2 |
| MomAD Song et al. (2025) | ResNet50 | 0.31 | 0.57 | 0.91 | 0.60 | 0.01 | 0.05 | 0.22 | 0.09 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 7.8 |
| SparseDrive Sun et al. (2024) | ResNet50 | 0.29 | 0.58 | 0.96 | 0.61 | 0.01 | 0.05 | 0.18 | 0.08 | 4.87 | 2.55 | 1.09 | 2.84 | 0.54 | 1.88 | 3.02 | 1.48 | 9.0 |
| FlowAD (Ours) | ResNet50 | 0.28 | 0.55 | 0.84 | 0.56 | 0.01 | 0.03 | 0.15 | 0.06 | 2.12 | 1.03 | 0.48 | 1.21 | 0.37 | 0.90 | 1.79 | 1.02 | 7.6 |
| # | Scale of Training Data | mAP | NDS | mATE | mASE | mAOE | mAVE | mAAE |
| ① | 25% | 0.391 | 0.497 | 0.691 | 0.275 | 0.519 | 0.297 | 0.200 |
| ② | 50% | 0.448 | 0.554 | 0.593 | 0.269 | 0.389 | 0.257 | 0.194 |
| ③ | 75% | 0.466 | 0.569 | 0.587 | 0.266 | 0.367 | 0.244 | 0.188 |
| ④ | 100% | 0.475 | 0.574 | 0.585 | 0.265 | 0.361 | 0.236 | 0.184 |
| Method | Backbone | Perf. go straight (5309 samples) | Perf. turn left (301 samples) | Perf. turn right (409 samples) | Perf. Overall (6019 samples) | ||||
| Avg. L2 (m) | Avg. Col. (%) | Avg. L2 (m) | Avg. Col. (%) | Avg. L2 (m) | Avg. Col. (%) | Avg. L2 (m) | Avg. Col. (%) | ||
| SparseDrive Sun et al. (2024) | ResNet50 | 0.58 | 0.08 | 0.83 | 0.29 | 0.86 | 0.08 | 0.61 | 0.09 |
| FlowAD SparseDrive | ResNet50 | 0.53 | 0.06 | 0.77 | 0.08 | 0.69 | 0.09 | 0.56 | 0.06 |
| SparseDrive Sun et al. (2024) | ResNet101 | 0.56 | 0.06 | 0.89 | 0.13 | 0.81 | 0.10 | 0.58 | 0.06 |
| FlowAD SparseDrive | ResNet101 | 0.50 | 0.05 | 0.74 | 0.08 | 0.65 | 0.08 | 0.52 | 0.05 |
| DiffusionDrive Liao et al. (2025) | ResNet50 | 0.55 | 0.07 | 0.64 | 0.12 | 0.59 | 0.10 | 0.57 | 0.08 |
| Method | Planning Accuracy (5119 samples) | Keep Right Turn (187 samples) | Keep Left Turn (139 samples) | Keep Straight (3704 samples) | Accelerate Right Turn (3 samples) | Accelerate Left Turn (4 samples) | Accelerate Straight (62 samples) | Decelerate Straight (45 samples) | Stop Straight (975 samples) | FPS |
| Senna Jiang et al. (2024) | 18.67 | 0.00 | 18.03 | 37.53 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 2.22 | 26.56 | 0.43 |
| Senna ∗ Jiang et al. (2024) | 88.54 | 35.98 | 28.78 | 92.28 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 6.67 | 88.13 | 0.43 |
| FlowAD (Ours) | 90.99 | 69.52 | 69.06 | 94.71 | 66.67 | 25.00 | 43.55 | 17.78 | 90.87 | 0.39 |
| Method | GaussianBlur Noise | Calibration Error | Timestamp Drift | Detection | Tracking | Online Map | Motion Prediction | Planning | |||||
| mAP | NDS | AMOTA | AMOTP | mAP | minADE | minFDE | Avg.L2 | Avg.Col | FCP | ||||
| SparseDrive Sun et al. (2024) | 0.496 | 0.588 | 0.501 | 1.085 | 0.562 | 0.60 | 0.96 | 0.58 | 0.06 | 2.30 | |||
| FlowAD (Ours) | 0.523 | 0.605 | 0.518 | 1.040 | 0.595 | 0.56 | 0.93 | 0.52 | 0.05 | 0.91 | |||
| SparseDrive Sun et al. (2024) | ✓ | 0.472 | 0.555 | 0.487 | 1.159 | 0.533 | 0.63 | 1.03 | 0.60 | 0.07 | 2.34 | ||
| FlowAD (Ours) | ✓ | 0.517 | 0.596 | 0.514 | 1.053 | 0.583 | 0.57 | 0.96 | 0.53 | 0.05 | 0.96 | ||
| SparseDrive Sun et al. (2024) | ✓ | 0.438 | 0.540 | 0.466 | 1.211 | 0.509 | 0.64 | 1.07 | 0.65 | 0.08 | 3.22 | ||
Autonomous Driving
Autonomous driving develops vehicles that perceive road scenes, predict interactions, and plan and control safe movement with limited or no human input.
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