RL for Autonomous Driving

RL: Reinforcement Learning

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Overview

The field studies how vehicles can learn driving decisions and controls through rewards and interaction, including how to navigate traffic, avoid hazards, and coordinate with other road users. Methods range from PPO, SAC, and DQN to model-based and world-model learning, multi-agent reinforcement learning, and combinations of imitation learning with diffusion or vision-language-action planners. Safety is addressed through reward design, expert guidance, control barrier functions, and reachability constraints, with evaluation commonly using CARLA, nuPlan, NAVSIM, and Bench2Drive. A central challenge is achieving sample-efficient learning that remains safe and reliable in closed-loop, unfamiliar, and real-world conditions, where simulator fidelity and trade-offs among safety, progress, and comfort matter.

Latest papers

CardsList

120 papers21 papers in the last four weeks, up 200% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. ExploreVLA: Dense World Modeling and Exploration for End-to-End Autonomous Driving

    Apr 3, 2026Zihao Sheng, Xin Ye, Jingru Luo +2World Model LearningVLMs for Autonomous Driving

    Bosch Research North America & Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence (BCAI) · University of Wisconsin–Madison

  2. Robust Global-Local Behavior Arbitration via Continuous Command Fusion Under LiDAR Errors

    Mar 28, 2026Mohamed Elgouhary, Amr S. El-WakeelAutonomous DrivingAutonomous Driving Safety Evaluation

    The Authors are with the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA.

  3. Autonomous overtaking trajectory optimization using reinforcement learning and opponent pose estimation

    Mar 28, 2026Matej Rene Cihlar, Luka Šiktar, Branimir Ćaran +1Autonomous DrivingAutonomous Racing

    University of Zagreb, Zagreb 10000, Croatia, Faculty of mechanical engineering and naval architecture

  4. Neuro-Cognitive Reward Modeling for Human-Centered Autonomous Vehicle Control

    Mar 26, 2026Zhuoli Zhuang, Yu-Cheng Chang, Yu-Kai Wang +2RL for Autonomous DrivingReinforcement Learning

    University of Technology Sydney

  5. Macroscopic Characteristics of Mixed Traffic Flow with Deep Reinforcement Learning Based Automated and Human-Driven Vehicles

    Mar 26, 2026Pankaj Kumar, Pranamesh Chakraborty, Subrahmanya Swamy PeruruIntelligent Transportation SystemsRL for Autonomous Driving

    Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur-208016, U.P., India · Department of Electrical Engineering Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur-208016, U.P., India

  6. COIN: Collaborative Interaction-Aware Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Self-Driving Systems

    Mar 26, 2026Yifeng Zhang, Jieming Chen, Tingguang Zhou +4Centralized Training with Decentralized ExecutionMulti-Agent Coordination

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Design and Engineering, National University of Singapore, 21 Lower Kent Ridge Rd, 119077, Singapore · Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, 100872, China · School of Vehicle and Mobility, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

  7. DreamerAD: Efficient Reinforcement Learning via Latent World Model for Autonomous Driving

    Mar 25, 2026Pengxuan Yang, Yupeng Zheng, Deheng Qian +11RL for Autonomous DrivingLatent World Models

    Institute of Automation, CAS · Chongqing Chang’an Technology Co., Ltd · School of Advanced Interdisciplinary Sciences, UCAS +1

  8. Partial Attention in Deep Reinforcement Learning for Safe Multi-Agent Control

    Mar 23, 2026Turki Bin Mohaya, Peter SeilerRL for Autonomous DrivingMulti-Agent Reinforcement Learning

    Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.

  9. DriveVLM-RL: Neuroscience-Inspired Reinforcement Learning with Vision-Language Models for Safe and Deployable Autonomous Driving

    Mar 18, 2026Zilin Huang, Zihao Sheng, Zhengyang Wan +4VLMs for Autonomous DrivingLLM-Guided RL

    Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, 53706, USA · Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA · Department of Civil Engineering, McGill University, Montreal, QC, H3A 0C3, Canada

  10. CorrectionPlanner: Self-Correction Planner with Reinforcement Learning in Autonomous Driving

    Mar 16, 2026Yihong Guo, Dongqiangzi Ye, Sijia Chen +2Autonomous Driving PlanningSafe Motion Planning

    Department of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA. · XPENG Motors.

  11. PerlAD: Towards Enhanced Closed-loop End-to-end Autonomous Driving with Pseudo-simulation-based Reinforcement Learning

    Mar 16, 2026Yinfeng Gao, Qichao Zhang, Deqing Liu +8End-to-End Autonomous DrivingRL for Autonomous Driving

    School of Automation and Electrical Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China. · Xiaomi EV. · State Key Laboratory of Multimodal Artificial Intelligence Systems, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China, and also with the School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.

  12. Fine-tuning is Not Enough: A Parallel Framework for Collaborative Imitation and Reinforcement Learning in End-to-end Autonomous Driving

    Mar 14, 2026Zhexi Lian, Haoran Wang, Xuerun Yan +4End-to-End Autonomous DrivingRL for Autonomous Driving

    Tongji University · Nanyang Technological University · Chery Automobile

  13. Senna-2: Aligning VLM and End-to-End Driving Policy for Consistent Decision Making and Planning

    Mar 11, 2026Yuehao Song, Shaoyu Chen, Hao Gao +8End-to-End Autonomous DrivingAutonomous Driving Planning

    Huazhong University of Science & Technology · Horizon Robotics

  14. Emergency Lane-Change Simulation: A Behavioral Guidance Approach for Risky Scenario Generation

    Mar 8, 2026Chen Xiong, Cheng Wang, Yuhang Liu +2Autonomous Driving Scenario GenerationAutonomous Driving Simulation

    School of Intelligent Systems Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen 518107, China · Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Intelligent Transportation System, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China · Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA 16802, USA +1

  15. Devil is in Narrow Policy: Unleashing Exploration in Driving VLA Models

    Mar 6, 2026Canyu Chen, Yuguang Yang, Zhewen Tan +10Autonomous DrivingVLMs for Autonomous Driving

    National Superior College for Engineers, Beihang University · Institute for AI Industry Research, Tsinghua University · School of Electronic Information Engineering, Beihang University +5

  16. TADPO: Reinforcement Learning Goes Off-road

    Mar 6, 2026Zhouchonghao Wu, Raymond Song, Vedant Mundheda +3End-to-End Autonomous DrivingAutonomous Driving

    Robotics Institute, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 · National Robotics Engineering Center, Robotics Institute, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15201

  17. Beyond Scalar Rewards: Distributional Reinforcement Learning with Preordered Objectives for Safe and Reliable Autonomous Driving

    Mar 6, 2026Ahmed Abouelazm, Jonas Michel, Daniel Bogdoll +2Multi-Objective Reinforcement LearningRL for Autonomous Driving

    FZI Research Center for Information Technology, Germany · Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany

  18. Real-Time Generative Policy via Langevin-Guided Flow Matching for Autonomous Driving

    Mar 3, 2026Tianze Zhu, Yinuo Wang, Wenjun Zou +6Reinforcement LearningRL for Autonomous Driving

    School of Vehicle and Mobility, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China · College of Artificial Intelligence, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

  19. Unleashing VLA Potentials in Autonomous Driving via Explicit Learning from Failures

    Mar 1, 2026Yuechen Luo, Qimao Chen, Fang Li +5VLMs for Autonomous DrivingRL for Autonomous Driving

    Tsinghua University · University of Macau · Beijing Jiaotong University

  20. TSC: Topology-Conditioned Stackelberg Coordination for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning in Interactive Driving

    Feb 27, 2026Xiaotong Zhang, Gang Xiong, Yuanjing Wang +3Multi-Agent CoordinationDecentralized MARL

    State Key Laboratory of Multimodal Artificial Intelligence Systems, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China · School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China · Department of Natural Sciences, University of Durham, Durham DH1 3LE, United Kingdom +4

  21. Interacting safely with cyclists using Hamilton-Jacobi reachability and reinforcement learning

    Feb 20, 2026Aarati Andrea Noronha, Jean OhAutonomous Driving PlanningSafe RL

  22. DriveFine: Refining-Augmented Masked Diffusion VLA for Precise and Robust Driving

    Feb 16, 2026Chenxu Dang, Sining Ang, Yongkang Li +7VLMs for Autonomous DrivingDiffusion-Based Planning

    Huazhong University of Science and Technology · Xiaomi EV · Institute for AI Industry Research (AIR), Tsinghua University

  23. Preference-Conditioned Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning for Tactical Decision Making in Heavy-Duty Vehicles

    Jan 26, 2026Deepthi Pathare, Leo Laine, Morteza Haghir ChehreghaniMulti-Objective Reinforcement LearningRL for Autonomous Driving

    Department of Computer Science and Engineering Chalmers University of Technology and and University of Gothenburg · Department of Mechanics and Maritime Sciences Chalmers University of Technology

  24. Zero-Human Demonstration End-to-end Autonomous Driving with Trajectory Scorer

    Oct 28, 2025Zhenxin Li, Nadine Chang, Wenhao Yao +9Long-Tail Autonomous DrivingReinforcement Learning

    Institute of Trustworthy Embodied AI, Fudan University · *Work done during an internship at NVIDIA. · NVIDIA +3

  25. Drive As You Like: Multi-Head Diffusion with Reinforcement Learning for Personalized Driving

    Aug 23, 2025Ding Fan, Xuewen Luo, Hwa Hui Tew +3Autonomous Driving PlanningAutonomous Driving

    Monash University, Malaysia · University of Utah, USA · Monash University, Australia

  26. DIVER: Reinforced Diffusion Breaks Imitation Bottlenecks in End-to-End Autonomous Driving

    Jul 5, 2025Ziying Song, Lin Liu, Hongyu Pan +7End-to-End Autonomous DrivingDiffusion-Based Planning

    Beijing Key Laboratory of Traffic Data Mining and Embodied Intelligence, School of Computer Science and Technology, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China · School of Artificial Intelligence (School of Software), Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao, China · Horizon Robotics +3

  27. A Survey of Reinforcement Learning-Based Motion Planning for Autonomous Driving: Lessons Learned from a Driving Task Perspective

    Mar 31, 2025Zhuoren Li, Guizhe Jin, Ran Yu +8Autonomous Driving PlanningRL for Autonomous Driving

    College of Automotive and Energy Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 201804, China

  28. Does Knowledge About Perceptual Uncertainty Help an Agent in Automated Driving?

    Feb 17, 2025Natalie Grabowsky, Annika Mütze, Joshua Wendland +2Autonomous Driving PlanningRL for Autonomous Driving

    Institute of Mathematics Technical University of Berlin Berlin, Germany · Department of Mathematics University of Wuppertal Wuppertal, Germany · Faculty of Computer Science Ruhr University Bochum Bochum, Germany

  29. Fading Expert Guidance: Bridging Model-Based and Learning-Based Control for Abortable Autonomous Overtaking

    Aug 18, 2023Jinxiong Lu, Gokhan Alcan, Ville KyrkiAutonomous Driving PlanningRL for Autonomous Driving

    Intelligent Robotics Group, Department of Electrical Engineering and Automation, Aalto University, 02150 Espoo, Finland

  30. Security of Deep Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Driving: A Survey

    Dec 12, 2022Ambra Demontis, Srishti Gupta, Maura Pintor +6Robust RLRL for Autonomous Driving

    University of Cagliari · Sapienza, University of Rome · University of Genoa +3