End-to-End Autonomous Driving

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Overview

End-to-end autonomous driving studies systems that map camera, lidar, map, or vehicle-state inputs directly to planned trajectories or control, aiming to coordinate perception and action. Common approaches include imitation learning, bird’s-eye-view representations, vision-language-action models, diffusion planners, reinforcement learning, and world models that predict future scenes or agent interactions. Researchers evaluate both open-loop planning on datasets such as nuScenes and NAVSIM and closed-loop behavior in CARLA, Bench2Drive, and other simulators, with some work testing transfer to real vehicles. A central tension is that strong dataset scores may not translate to safe, recoverable behavior under long-tail events, domain shifts, sensor failures, or accumulated closed-loop errors.

Latest papers

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227 papers21 papers in the last four weeks, down 34% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. Structured Representation Probing for Risk Anticipation in End-to-End Autonomous Driving

    Oct 27, 2026Jiawei Liang, Tianrui Lou, Le Yang +3Autonomous DrivingAutonomous Driving Safety Evaluation

    School of Cyber Science and Technology, Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen 518107, China · School of Mathematics, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China

  2. Closed-Loop Aware Planning via Imitation-Free Speed Scoring for End-to-End Autonomous Driving

    Oct 26, 2026Emad Aghajanzadeh, Thomas Schwarzfischer, Marc Kaufeld +8Autonomous Driving PlanningEnd-to-End Autonomous Driving

    Technical University of Munich, Germany · BMW Group, Germany · TU Wien, Austria

  3. Model-Aware Generation of Safety-Critical Scenes for Robust End-to-End Driving via Distilled Planner Surrogates

    Oct 26, 2026Khaled M. Seyam, Julian Wiederer, Samar Fathalah +2End-to-End Autonomous DrivingAutonomous Driving Scenario Generation

    University of Stuttgart, Germany · Mercedes-Benz AG, Germany

  4. TerraTransfer++: Demonstration-Free End-to-End Planner

    Oct 21, 2026Zikang Xiong, Weixin Li, Zhouchonghao Wu +6End-to-End Autonomous DrivingAutonomous Driving Planning

    Applied Intuition · University of California, Los Angeles · University of California, Berkeley

  5. Expand-and-Prune: Test-Time Candidate-Space Adaptation for End-to-End Autonomous Driving

    Oct 16, 2026Fabian Schmidt, Karol Fedurko, Markus Enzweiler +1Autonomous Driving PlanningEnd-to-End Autonomous Driving

    Esslingen University of Applied Sciences · University of Freiburg

  6. SafeDriveVLA: Navigation-Conditioned World Model Dreaming for Conflict-Aware End-to-End Autonomous Driving

    Oct 14, 2026Shaoyuan Xie, Zihan Zhang, Jingxuan Wang +6Autonomous DrivingEnd-to-End Autonomous Driving

    UC Irvine · UC San Diego · University of Cincinnati +1

  7. Beyond Planning: Differentiable Control-in-the-loop End-to-End Autonomous Driving

    Oct 13, 2026Zhidong Wang, Zirui Li, Zitong Shan +6End-to-End Autonomous DrivingData-Driven Control

    School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore · Collaborative Initiative, Interdisciplinary Graduate Programme, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore · College of Computing and Data Science, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

  8. FlowSim: Rendering-Free Closed-Loop Simulation for Evaluating End-to-End Driving Systems

    Oct 13, 2026Hanfeng Wu, Alvaro Marcos-Ramiro, Michael Schmidt +1Autonomous Driving SimulationEnd-to-End Autonomous Driving

    Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Munich, Germany · BMW Group Munich, Germany · Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Karlsruhe, Germany

  9. AUGUstus: Autonomous Driving VLA Model with Unified Generation and Understanding

    Oct 12, 2026Yuqi Ye, Caigao Jiang, Zhuonan Wang +12NavSimVision-Language-Action Models

    Peking University · XPeng Motors · Fudan University

  10. ConDenseDrive: Knowledge-Dense, Token-Sparse Visual Encoder for End-to-End Autonomous Driving

    Oct 12, 2026Shengzhen Li, Yongkang Li, Hao Gao +5End-to-End Autonomous DrivingEfficient ViTs

    Huazhong University of Science and Technology · Yinwang Intelligent Technology Co. Ltd.

  11. YOUDrive: Driving Style as a Composable Direction for End-to-End Autonomous Driving

    Oct 10, 2026Guantian Zheng, Lidong Yu, Tianyu Gao +3Autonomous DrivingAutonomous Driving Planning

    AutoMan Lab, Nanyang Technological University · Neolix · City University of Hong Kong +1

  12. ManeuverFlow: Maneuver Hypothesis Generation with Future Evidence for Trajectory Evaluation and Refinement in End-to-End Autonomous Driving

    Oct 9, 2026Yuhao Wei, Yong Chen, Chen Yang +7Autonomous Driving PlanningTrajectory Generation

    Chongqing University · Artificial Intelligence Center, Geely Automotive Research Institute

  13. FPD-Drive: Future Policy Distillation for End-to-End Autonomous Driving

    Oct 9, 2026Li-Heng Chen, Qifeng Chen, Chengwei Wu +4End-to-End Autonomous DrivingAutonomous Driving Planning

    NIO · The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology · University of Science and Technology of China

  14. SDPAD: A Fully Spike-Driven Pipeline for End-to-End Autonomous Driving

    Oct 8, 2026Chengjun Zhang, Yuhao Zhang, Jie Yang +1Autonomous Driving PlanningEnd-to-End Autonomous Driving

    Zhejiang Key Laboratory of 3D Micro/Nano Fabrication and Characterization, Westlake Institute for Optoelectronics, Fuyang, Hangzhou, China · Integrated-On-Chips Brain-Computer Interfaces Zhejiang Engineering Research Center, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China · CenBRAIN Neurotech, School of Engineering, Westlake University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

  15. PlanWAM: Planning-Shaped Future Representations for End-to-End Autonomous Driving

    Oct 8, 2026Jinchang Xu, Hongda Yu, Fengwei Dong +9End-to-End Autonomous DrivingWorld Model-Based Planning

    Southeast University · NIO · Nanyang Technological University +1

  16. Do Better Visual Representations Always Lead to Better End-to-End Autonomous Driving?

    Oct 7, 2026Zihao Zhang, Haochen Tian, Tianyu Li +5End-to-End Autonomous DrivingRepresentation Alignment

    Southeast University · OpenDriveLab at The University of Hong Kong · Shenzhen Loop Area Institute

  17. Beyond Waypoint Regression: Query-Based Cost Learning over Reachable Ego Futures for End-to-End Driving

    Oct 6, 2026Ahmed Abouelazm, Rupert Polley, Qingyuan Zhang +4Trajectory GenerationEnd-to-End Autonomous Driving

    FZI Research Center for Information Technology · Karlsruhe Institute of Technology · CARIAD SE

  18. Odyssey: A Closed-Loop Benchmark for Long-Horizon Real-World Driving with Explicit Navigation Routes

    Oct 5, 2026Jungho Kim, Hongjae Shin, Seunghoon Yu +11Autonomous Driving DatasetsAutonomous Driving Benchmarks

    Seoul National University, Republic of Korea

  19. Controllable and Photorealistic Pedestrian Risky Motion Generation for End-to-End Driving Safety Evaluation

    Oct 5, 2026Siyuan Liu, Miao Li, Haibao Yu +4Pedestrian Behavior ModelingEnd-to-End Autonomous Driving

    School of Vehicle and Mobility, Tsinghua University · Carnegie Mellon University · State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Green Vehicle and Mobility, Tsinghua University

  20. End-to-End Learning vs. Modular Architectures: Comparative Insights into Autonomous Driving Systems

    Oct 1, 2026Kartik B. KapseEnd-to-End Autonomous DrivingAutonomous Driving

    AI Engineering of Autonomous Systems, Dept. Electrical Engineering and IT, Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt

  21. A Survey on End-to-End Autonomous Driving Training from the Perspectives of Data, Strategy, and Platform

    Oct 1, 2026Chengkai Xu, Yiming Cui, Jiaqi Liu +7End-to-End Autonomous Driving

    College of Transportation, Tongji University, Shanghai 201804, China

  22. Diffusion-2BC: Hybrid Diffusion and Regression Training for Offline Behavior Cloning in Autonomous Driving

    Sep 29, 2026Bruno Maciel Machado, Eric Aislan AntoneloEnd-to-End Autonomous DrivingDiffusion Policy

    Department of Automation and Systems Engineering, Graduate Program in Automation and Systems Engineering, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil

  23. V2X-WAM: A Cooperative World Action Model for End-to-End Autonomous Driving

    Sep 29, 2026Junwei You, Weizhe Tang, Can Wang +6End-to-End Autonomous DrivingAction-Conditioned World Models

    ITS Center, Research Institute of Highway Ministry of Transport, Beijing, 100088, China · State Key Lab of Intelligent Transportation System, Research Institute of Highway Ministry of Transport, Beijing, 100088, China · Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, 53706, USA +4

  24. RoXDrive: Closed-Loop Reinforcement Learning for End-to-End Autonomous Driving via Action-Faithful Rollouts

    Sep 29, 2026Hongbin Lin, Chaoda Zheng, Yiming Yang +11End-to-End Autonomous DrivingAction-Conditioned World Models

    The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen · XPeng Motors · Xidian University

  25. ReDrive: Shaping Representations with World Modeling for End-to-End Driving

    Sep 27, 2026Yueting Zhu, Shaoyu Chen, Yuehao Song +4World Model LearningEnd-to-End Autonomous Driving

    Huazhong University of Science & Technology · Horizon Robotics

  26. Guiding End-to-End Driving Models with Endpoint-Constrained Trajectory Optimization

    Sep 25, 2026Brayden Zhang, Mahsa Golchoubian, Igor Gilitschenski +2End-to-End Autonomous DrivingTrajectory Optimization

    University of Toronto · Vector Institute · NVIDIA Research +2

  27. Timed Rule-Based Supervision of an End-to-End Autonomous Parking Policy

    Sep 24, 2026Kejia Gao, Liguo Zhou, Lei Yu +1Autonomous ParkingRuntime Assurance

  28. S2Planner: Multi-Scale Semantic Planner for End-to-End Autonomous Driving

    Sep 24, 2026Zhaowei Lu, Liguo Zhou, Yujie Guo +2End-to-End Autonomous DrivingAutonomous Driving Planning

    Chair of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Real-time Systems, Technical University of Munich, Garching, Germany · Computer Science and Technology School, Huaibei Normal University, Huaibei, China

  29. Sim-to-Real Aware End-to-End Learning Environment for Micromobility

    Sep 24, 2026Shouma Amano, Takuya AzumiEnd-to-End Autonomous DrivingSim-to-Real Transfer

    Saitama University · Academic Association (Graduate School of Science and Engineering) Saitama University

  30. Taming an End-to-End Autonomous Driving Policy for Urban Navigation of Quadruped Robots

    Sep 23, 2026Joochan Kim, Chanuk Yang, Tackgeun You +2Robot NavigationQuadruped Robot Navigation

    Purdue University · Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST)