# CoverNet: Multimodal Behavior Prediction using Trajectory Sets

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.10298 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.10298/

## Key facts

- Cited by 259 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in World models for autonomous driving, one of 11 directions in World models.
- Builds on 1 of its 32 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Nov 2019.

## Placed in

- World models / [World models for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/wm/world-models-for-autonomous-driving/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Multimodal Trajectory Predictions for Autonomous Driving using Deep Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.10732/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 259)

- [VAD: Vectorized Scene Representation for Efficient Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12077/) (2023)
- [Large Scale Interactive Motion Forecasting for Autonomous Driving : The Waymo Open Motion Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10133/) (2021)
- [AgentFormer: Agent-Aware Transformers for Socio-Temporal Multi-Agent Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14023/) (2021)
- [DenseTNT: End-to-end Trajectory Prediction from Dense Goal Sets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.09640/) (2021)
- [VADv2: End-to-End Vectorized Autonomous Driving via Probabilistic Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13243/) (2024)
- [Motion Transformer with Global Intention Localization and Local Movement Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.13508/) (2022)
- [MultiPath++: Efficient Information Fusion and Trajectory Aggregation for Behavior Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14973/) (2021)
- [FIERY: Future Instance Prediction in Bird's-Eye View from Surround Monocular Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10490/) (2021)
- [GenAD: Generative End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.11502/) (2024)
- [MP3: A Unified Model to Map, Perceive, Predict and Plan](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06806/) (2021)
- [Multimodal Motion Prediction with Stacked Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.11624/) (2021)
- [Understanding World or Predicting Future? A Comprehensive Survey of World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.14499/) (2024)
- [GOHOME: Graph-Oriented Heatmap Output for future Motion Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01827/) (2021)
- [MTR++: Multi-Agent Motion Prediction with Symmetric Scene Modeling and Guided Intention Querying](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.17770/) (2023)
- [Latent Variable Sequential Set Transformers For Joint Multi-Agent Motion Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00563/) (2021)
- [HOME: Heatmap Output for future Motion Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.10968/) (2021)
- [ViP3D: End-to-end Visual Trajectory Prediction via 3D Agent Queries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01582/) (2022)
- [LaneRCNN: Distributed Representations for Graph-Centric Motion Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06653/) (2021)
- [Multimodal Trajectory Prediction Conditioned on Lane-Graph Traversals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.15004/) (2021)
- [PlanT: Explainable Planning Transformers via Object-Level Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.14222/) (2022)
- [Towards learning-based planning:The nuPlan benchmark for real-world autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.04133/) (2024)
- [Recent Advancements in End-to-End Autonomous Driving using Deep Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.04370/) (2023)
- [Shifts: A Dataset of Real Distributional Shift Across Multiple Large-Scale Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.07455/) (2021)
- [THOMAS: Trajectory Heatmap Output with learned Multi-Agent Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.06607/) (2021)
- [LookOut: Diverse Multi-Future Prediction and Planning for Self-Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06547/) (2021)
- [Hydra-MDP++: Advancing End-to-End Driving via Expert-Guided Hydra-Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12820/) (2025)
- [TPCN: Temporal Point Cloud Networks for Motion Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03067/) (2021)
- [On Adversarial Robustness of Trajectory Prediction for Autonomous Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05057/) (2022)
- [Explainability of deep vision-based autonomous driving systems: Review and challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.05307/) (2021)
- [Multi-modal Motion Prediction with Transformer-based Neural Network for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.06446/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present CoverNet, a new method for multimodal, probabilistic trajectory prediction for urban driving. Previous work has employed a variety of methods, including multimodal regression, occupancy maps, and 1-step stochastic policies. We instead frame the trajectory prediction problem as classification over a diverse set of trajectories. The size of this set remains manageable due to the limited number of distinct actions that can be taken over a reasonable prediction horizon. We structure the trajectory set to a) ensure a desired level of coverage of the state space, and b) eliminate physically impossible trajectories. By dynamically generating trajectory sets based on the agent's current state, we can further improve our method's efficiency. We demonstrate our approach on public, real-world self-driving datasets, and show that it outperforms state-of-the-art methods.