mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Combining Planning and Deep Reinforcement Learning in Tactical Decision Making for Autonomous Driving

arXiv 1905.02680 ↗First posted 6 May 2019cs.RO cs.AI cs.LGcited by 52

Not on the map. Why?

Cited by 25 in End-to-end autonomous driving, but placed by its own abstract, which didn’t fit.

Abstract (arXiv)

Tactical decision making for autonomous driving is challenging due to the diversity of environments, the uncertainty in the sensor information, and the complex interaction with other road users. This paper introduces a general framework for tactical decision making, which combines the concepts of planning and learning, in the form of Monte Carlo tree search and deep reinforcement learning. The method is based on the AlphaGo Zero algorithm, which is extended to a domain with a continuous state space where self-play cannot be used. The framework is applied to two different highway driving cases in a simulated environment and it is shown to perform better than a commonly used baseline method. The strength of combining planning and learning is also illustrated by a comparison to using the Monte Carlo tree search or the neural network policy separately.

Key facts. Cited by 52 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 6 May 2019.

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2021: 9; 2022: 12; 2023: 11; 2024: 8; 2025: 7; 2026: 5.

52 papers.

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  1. 2022BEVerse: Unified Perception and Prediction in Birds-Eye-View for Vision-Centric Autonomous Drivingcited by 191
  2. 2021A Safe Hierarchical Planning Framework for Complex Driving Scenarios based on Reinforcement Learningcited by 18
  3. 2021Ensemble Quantile Networks: Uncertainty-Aware Reinforcement Learning with Applications in Autonomous Drivingcited by 17
  4. 2024A Review of Reward Functions for Reinforcement Learning in the context of Autonomous Drivingcited by 17
  5. 2023Beyond Games: A Systematic Review of Neural Monte Carlo Tree Search Applicationscited by 16
  6. 2022Robustness and Adaptability of Reinforcement Learning based Cooperative Autonomous Driving in Mixed-autonomy Trafficcited by 15
  7. 2023BetaZero: Belief-State Planning for Long-Horizon POMDPs using Learned Approximationscited by 13
  8. 2024HighwayLLM: Decision-Making and Navigation in Highway Driving with RL-Informed Language Modelcited by 9
  9. 2023Car-Following Models: A Multidisciplinary Reviewcited by 7
  10. 2023Action and Trajectory Planning for Urban Autonomous Driving with Hierarchical Reinforcement Learningcited by 7
  11. 2023C-MCTS: Safe Planning with Monte Carlo Tree Searchcited by 6
  12. 2021Reinforcement Learning Based Safe Decision Making for Highway Autonomous Drivingcited by 5
38 more
  1. 2023iPLAN: Intent-Aware Planning in Heterogeneous Traffic via Distributed Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 5
  2. 2024Hierarchical End-to-End Autonomous Driving: Integrating BEV Perception with Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 5
  3. 2022How to Learn from Risk: Explicit Risk-Utility Reinforcement Learning for Efficient and Safe Driving Strategiescited by 4
  4. 2022Prediction Based Decision Making for Autonomous Highway Drivingcited by 4
  5. 2021Reinforcement Learning for Industrial Control Network Cyber Security Orchestrationcited by 3
  6. 2021Reinforcement Learning based Negotiation-aware Motion Planning of Autonomous Vehiclescited by 3
  7. 2022Optimizing Trajectories for Highway Driving with Offline Reinforcement Learningcited by 3
  8. 2022GIN: Graph-based Interaction-aware Constraint Policy Optimization for Autonomous Drivingcited by 3
  9. 2022A Survey on Explainable Reinforcement Learning: Concepts, Algorithms, Challengescited by 3
  10. 2023Dynamic Simplex: Balancing Safety and Performance in Autonomous Cyber Physical Systemscited by 3
  11. 2021Decentralized Cooperative Lane Changing at Freeway Weaving Areas Using Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 2
  12. 2021Off Environment Evaluation Using Convex Risk Minimizationcited by 2
  13. 2022Bi-Level Optimization Augmented with Conditional Variational Autoencoder for Autonomous Driving in Dense Trafficcited by 2
  14. 2023n-Step Temporal Difference Learning with Optimal ncited by 2
  15. 2023End-to-End Learning of Behavioural Inputs for Autonomous Driving in Dense Trafficcited by 2
  16. 2025BIDA: A Bi-level Interaction Decision-making Algorithm for Autonomous Vehicles in Dynamic Traffic Scenarioscited by 2
  17. 2025MMCD: Multi-Modal Collaborative Decision-Making for Connected Autonomy with Knowledge Distillationcited by 2
  18. 2026Using Common Random Numbers for Simulation-based Planning with Rolloutscited by 2
  19. 2021Autonomous Attack Mitigation for Industrial Control Systemscited by 1
  20. 2022A Safety-Critical Decision Making and Control Framework Combining Machine Learning and Rule-based Algorithmscited by 1
  21. 2022Designing Decision Support Systems for Emergency Response: Challenges and Opportunitiescited by 1
  22. 2024Adaptive Decision-Making for Autonomous Vehicles: A Learning-Enhanced Game-Theoretic Approach in Interactive Environmentscited by 1
  23. 2024An Online Spatial-Temporal Graph Trajectory Planner for Autonomous Vehiclescited by 1
  24. 2024SECRM-2D: RL-Based Efficient and Comfortable Route-Following Autonomous Driving with Analytic Safety Guaranteescited by 1
  25. 2024Structure and Reduction of MCTS for Explainable-AIcited by 1
  26. 2024Hi-Drive: Hierarchical POMDP Planning for Safe Autonomous Driving in Diverse Urban Environmentscited by 1
  27. 2025ME3-BEV: Mamba-Enhanced Deep Reinforcement Learning for End-to-End Autonomous Driving with BEV-Perceptioncited by 1
  28. 2026Online Robust Reinforcement Learning Through Monte-Carlo Planningcited by 1
  29. 2021Decentralized Reinforcement Learning for Multi-Target Search and Detection by a Team of Dronescited by 0
  30. 2022Automatically Learning Fallback Strategies with Model-Free Reinforcement Learning in Safety-Critical Driving Scenarioscited by 0
  31. 2022Safer Autonomous Driving in a Stochastic, Partially-Observable Environment by Hierarchical Contingency Planningcited by 0
  32. 2023Decision Making for Autonomous Driving in Interactive Merge Scenarios via Learning-based Predictioncited by 0
  33. 2023Risk-Aware Distributed Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
  34. 2025Curriculum RL meets Monte Carlo Planning: Optimization of a Real World Container Management Problemcited by 0
  35. 2025TreeIRL: Safe Urban Driving with Tree Search and Inverse Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
  36. 2025GammaZero: Learning To Guide POMDP Belief Space Search With Graph Representationscited by 0
  37. 2025BLIP-FusePPO: A Vision-Language Deep Reinforcement Learning Framework for Lane Keeping in Autonomous Vehiclescited by 0
  38. 2026Sparse Threats, Focused Defense: Criticality-Aware Robust Reinforcement Learning for Safe Autonomous Drivingcited by 0

50 most cited of 52 All 52 (JSON)