mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Large language models for driving

147 papers0 this weekHigh confidence in this grouping: the papers form one clear topicHigh confidence in this grouping: the papers form one clear topic · About

Keywords: llms, driving, language, autonomous, large language

Key facts. Large language models for driving: 147 papers on arXiv since 2022 (data through 7 Oct 2026). 61 of its 147 mapped papers (41%) cite “DriveGPT4: Interpretable End-to-end Autonomous Driving via Large Language Model” (2023, arXiv 2310.01412). 58 of its 147 mapped papers (39%) cite “DiLu: A Knowledge-Driven Approach to Autonomous Driving with Large Language Models” (2023, arXiv 2309.16292). 3 new papers 17 Sep–7 Oct.

What’s new

17 Sep – 7 Oct 2026

3 new since 17 Sep

  1. Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Model Decision-Making for Autonomous Driving Guided by Chinese Philosophical Wisdom
  2. Comparative study of adapting pre-trained models for driving behavior video captioning also fits: VLMs for autonomous driving
  3. REARL: A Closed-loop Autonomous Driving Simulation Enhancement Framework with Real Traffic Data and Large Language Models also fits: End-to-end system architecture

Foundations

Most cited by papers here

  1. DriveGPT4: Interpretable End-to-end Autonomous Driving via Large Language Model2023cited by 61 here
  2. DiLu: A Knowledge-Driven Approach to Autonomous Driving with Large Language Models2023cited by 58 here
  3. Driving with LLMs: Fusing Object-Level Vector Modality for Explainable Autonomous Driving2023cited by 46 here
  4. Drive Like a Human: Rethinking Autonomous Driving with Large Language Models2023cited by 43 here
  5. LanguageMPC: Large Language Models as Decision Makers for Autonomous Driving2023cited by 42 here

Lineage

The papers this direction builds on, oldest first.

Each paper on the line cites the one before.

  1. 2023ADAPT: Action-aware Driving Caption Transformercited by 16 here
  2. 2023End-to-end Autonomous Driving: Challenges and Frontierscited by 22 here
  3. 2023Language Prompt for Autonomous Drivingcited by 15 here
  4. 2023DriveGPT4: Interpretable End-to-end Autonomous Driving via Large Language Modelcited by 61 here
  5. 2023LanguageMPC: Large Language Models as Decision Makers for Autonomous Drivingcited by 42 here
  6. 2023LMDrive: Closed-Loop End-to-End Driving with Large Language Modelscited by 42 here
  7. 2023DriveMLM: Aligning Multi-Modal Large Language Models with Behavioral Planning States for Autonomous Drivingcited by 29 here
  8. 2023DriveLM: Driving with Graph Visual Question Answeringcited by 37 here
  9. 2024DriveVLM: The Convergence of Autonomous Driving and Large Vision-Language Modelscited by 23 here
15 more it builds on, not in this chain
  1. 2021NuPlan: A closed-loop ML-based planning benchmark for autonomous vehiclescited by 13 here
  2. 2022TransFuser: Imitation with Transformer-Based Sensor Fusion for Autonomous Drivingcited by 11 here
  3. 2023VAD: Vectorized Scene Representation for Efficient Autonomous Drivingcited by 14 here
  4. 2023Drive Like a Human: Rethinking Autonomous Driving with Large Language Modelscited by 43 here
  5. 2023MTD-GPT: A Multi-Task Decision-Making GPT Model for Autonomous Driving at Unsignalized Intersectionscited by 12 here
  6. 2023Drive as You Speak: Enabling Human-Like Interaction with Large Language Models in Autonomous Vehiclescited by 33 here
  7. 2023DiLu: A Knowledge-Driven Approach to Autonomous Driving with Large Language Modelscited by 58 here
  8. 2023Driving with LLMs: Fusing Object-Level Vector Modality for Explainable Autonomous Drivingcited by 46 here
  9. 2023Talk2BEV: Language-enhanced Bird's-eye View Maps for Autonomous Drivingcited by 15 here
  10. 2023Receive, Reason, and React: Drive as You Say with Large Language Models in Autonomous Vehiclescited by 16 here
  11. 2023LLM4Drive: A Survey of Large Language Models for Autonomous Drivingcited by 28 here
  12. 2023A Language Agent for Autonomous Drivingcited by 24 here
  13. 2023A Survey on Multimodal Large Language Models for Autonomous Drivingcited by 26 here
  14. 2023LaMPilot: An Open Benchmark Dataset for Autonomous Driving with Language Model Programscited by 12 here
  15. 2024RAG-Driver: Generalisable Driving Explanations with Retrieval-Augmented In-Context Learning in Multi-Modal Large Language Modelcited by 12 here

The 24 most cited of 361.

Browse

30 of 147, ranked 6–35

  1. 6LMDrive: Closed-Loop End-to-End Driving with Large Language Models202342
  2. 7Drive as You Speak: Enabling Human-Like Interaction with Large Language Models in Autonomous Vehicles202333
  3. 8DriveMLM: Aligning Multi-Modal Large Language Models with Behavioral Planning States for Autonomous Driving202329
  4. 9LLM4Drive: A Survey of Large Language Models for Autonomous Driving202328
  5. 10A Survey on Multimodal Large Language Models for Autonomous Driving202326
  6. 11A Language Agent for Autonomous Driving202324
  7. 12Receive, Reason, and React: Drive as You Say with Large Language Models in Autonomous Vehicles202316
  8. 13RAG-Driver: Generalisable Driving Explanations with Retrieval-Augmented In-Context Learning in Multi-Modal Large Language Model202412
  9. 14LaMPilot: An Open Benchmark Dataset for Autonomous Driving with Language Model Programs202312
  10. 15ChatScene: Knowledge-Enabled Safety-Critical Scenario Generation for Autonomous Vehicles202410
All 30
  1. 16Personalized Autonomous Driving with Large Language Models: Field Experiments202310
  2. 17LimSim++: A Closed-Loop Platform for Deploying Multimodal LLMs in Autonomous Driving20249
  3. 18Driving Everywhere with Large Language Model Policy Adaptation20248
  4. 19Empowering Autonomous Driving with Large Language Models: A Safety Perspective20237
  5. 20Hybrid Reasoning Based on Large Language Models for Autonomous Car Driving20246
  6. 21Optimizing Autonomous Driving for Safety: A Human-Centric Approach with LLM-Enhanced RLHF20246
  7. 22TeLL-Drive: Enhancing Autonomous Driving with Teacher LLM-Guided Deep Reinforcement Learning20255
  8. 23LangProp: A code optimization framework using Large Language Models applied to driving20245
  9. 24Asynchronous Large Language Model Enhanced Planner for Autonomous Driving20245
  10. 25Text2Scenario: Text-Driven Scenario Generation for Autonomous Driving Test20254
  11. 26Engineering Safety Requirements for Autonomous Driving with Large Language Models20244
  12. 27Large Language Models for Human-like Autonomous Driving: A Survey20244
  13. 28Dialogue-based generation of self-driving simulation scenarios using Large Language Models20234
  14. 29Applications of Large Scale Foundation Models for Autonomous Driving20234
  15. 30A Survey for Foundation Models in Autonomous Driving20243
  16. 31Large Language Models Powered Context-aware Motion Prediction in Autonomous Driving20243
  17. 32Human-centric Reward Optimization for Reinforcement Learning-based Automated Driving using Large Language Models20243
  18. 33DriVLMe: Enhancing LLM-based Autonomous Driving Agents with Embodied and Social Experiences20243
  19. 34Multimodal Large Language Model Driven Scenario Testing for Autonomous Vehicles20243
  20. 35Generalizing End-To-End Autonomous Driving In Real-World Environments Using Zero-Shot LLMs20243