cs.CVApr 30, 2026

Understanding Adversarial Transferability in Vision-Language Models for Autonomous Driving: A Cross-Architecture Analysis

Authors: David FernandezPedram MohajerAnsariAmir SalarpourMert D. Pese

Organizations: School of Computing, Clemson University, USA

Abstract

Vision-language models (VLMs) are increasingly used in autonomous driving because they combine visual perception with language-based reasoning, supporting more interpretable decision-making, yet their robustness to physical adversarial attacks, especially whether such attacks transfer across different VLM architectures, is not well understood and poses a practical risk when attackers do not know which model a vehicle uses. We address this gap with a systematic cross-architecture study of adversarial transferability in VLM-based driving, evaluating three representative architectures (Dolphins, OmniDrive, and LeapVAD) using physically realizable patches placed on roadside infrastructure in both crosswalk and highway scenarios. Our transfer-matrix evaluation shows high cross-architecture effectiveness, with transfer rates of 73-91% (mean TR = 0.815 for crosswalk and 0.833 for highway) and sustained frame-level manipulation over 64.7-79.4% of the critical decision window even when patches are not optimized for the target model.

Explore similar work

CardsList
  1. Technical Report on the CVPR 2026@AdvML Workshop Challenge

    Jul 13, 2026Tianyuan Zhang, Zonglei Jing, Jiangfan Liu +47CvprAutonomous Driving