# Imitation and offline RL for driving

Area: [Offline RL and imitation learning from data](https://mlsanity.com/offlinerl/index.md). HTML: https://mlsanity.com/offlinerl/imitation-and-offline-rl-for-driving/

## Key facts

- Imitation and offline RL for driving: 226 papers on arXiv since 2018 (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- 33 of its 226 mapped papers (15%) cite “ChauffeurNet: Learning to Drive by Imitating the Best and Synthesizing the Worst” (2018, arXiv 1812.03079).
- 10 of its 226 mapped papers (4%) cite “Imitation Is Not Enough: Robustifying Imitation with Reinforcement Learning for Challenging Driving Scenarios” (2022, arXiv 2212.11419).
- 4 new papers 17 Sep–14 Oct.

## Most cited here

- [ChauffeurNet: Learning to Drive by Imitating the Best and Synthesizing the Worst](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03079/) (2018), cited by 33 papers here
- [Imitation Is Not Enough: Robustifying Imitation with Reinforcement Learning for Challenging Driving Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.11419/) (2022), cited by 10 papers here
- [Deep Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Driving: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.00444/) (2020), cited by 8 papers here
- [Conditional Affordance Learning for Driving in Urban Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.06498/) (2018), cited by 7 papers here
- [Deep Imitation Learning for Autonomous Driving in Generic Urban Scenarios with Enhanced Safety](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.00640/) (2019), cited by 7 papers here
- [Urban Driving with Conditional Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.00177/) (2019), cited by 7 papers here
- [Hierarchical Model-Based Imitation Learning for Planning in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09539/) (2022), cited by 7 papers here
- [Efficient Sampling-Based Maximum Entropy Inverse Reinforcement Learning with Application to Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.13704/) (2020), cited by 6 papers here
- [Driving Behavior Modeling using Naturalistic Human Driving Data with Inverse Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.03118/) (2020), cited by 6 papers here
- [Model-Based Imitation Learning for Urban Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.07729/) (2022), cited by 6 papers here

## New (17 Sep–14 Oct)

- [Imitation Learning of Avoidance Modes for Efficient Multimodal Model Predictive Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.16326/) (2026-10-12)
- [RoXDrive: Closed-Loop Reinforcement Learning for End-to-End Autonomous Driving via Action-Faithful Rollouts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.36851/) (2026-09-30)
- [Stability-Aware Imitation Learning from Model Predictive Control for Autonomous Vehicle Lateral Control: Exact Q-Loss and a Novel Training Procedure](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.23506/) (2026-09-20)
- [Learning Reliable Parking Policies via Offline Reinforcement Learning with Quantized Action Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.19894/) (2026-09-17)