# Differentiable Integrated Motion Prediction and Planning with Learnable Cost Function for Autonomous Driving

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.10422 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.10422/

## Key facts

- Cited by 73 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Imitation-learning end-to-end planners, one of 9 directions in End-to-end autonomous driving.
- Builds on 34 of its 61 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Jul 2022.

## Placed in

- End-to-end autonomous driving / [Imitation-learning end-to-end planners](https://mlsanity.com/driving/imitation-learning-end-to-end-planners/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 34)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Conservative Q-Learning for Offline Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.04779/) (2020)
- [Generative Adversarial Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.03476/) (2016)
- [Large Scale Interactive Motion Forecasting for Autonomous Driving : The Waymo Open Motion Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10133/) (2021)
- [VectorNet: Encoding HD Maps and Agent Dynamics from Vectorized Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.04259/) (2020)
- [DenseTNT: End-to-end Trajectory Prediction from Dense Goal Sets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.09640/) (2021)
- [Learning to Drive in a Day](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.00412/) (2018)
- [MultiPath++: Efficient Information Fusion and Trajectory Aggregation for Behavior Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14973/) (2021)
- [End-to-end Interpretable Neural Motion Planner](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06679/) (2021)
- [MP3: A Unified Model to Map, Perceive, Predict and Plan](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06806/) (2021)
- [Differentiable MPC for End-to-end Planning and Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.13400/) (2018)
- [Perceive, Predict, and Plan: Safe Motion Planning Through Interpretable Semantic Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.05930/) (2020)
- [A Survey of End-to-End Driving: Architectures and Training Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.06404/) (2020)
- [Survey of Deep Reinforcement Learning for Motion Planning of Autonomous Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.11231/) (2020)
- [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)
- [d3rlpy: An Offline Deep Reinforcement Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.03788/) (2021)
- [PiP: Planning-informed Trajectory Prediction for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.11476/) (2020)
- [Multi-modal Motion Prediction with Transformer-based Neural Network for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.06446/) (2021)
- [Theseus: A Library for Differentiable Nonlinear Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.09442/) (2022)
- [Jointly Learnable Behavior and Trajectory Planning for Self-Driving Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.04586/) (2019)
- [Efficient Deep Reinforcement Learning with Imitative Expert Priors for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10690/) (2021)
- [Driving Behavior Modeling using Naturalistic Human Driving Data with Inverse Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.03118/) (2020)
- [Multi-modal Sensor Fusion-Based Deep Neural Network for End-to-end Autonomous Driving with Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.09202/) (2020)
- [MATS: An Interpretable Trajectory Forecasting Representation for Planning and Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.07517/) (2020)
- [Differentiable Gaussian Process Motion Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.09591/) (2019)
- [Deep Interactive Motion Prediction and Planning: Playing Games with Motion Prediction Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02392/) (2022)
- [Deep Structured Reactive Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06832/) (2021)
- [An Integrated Framework of Decision Making and Motion Planning for Autonomous Vehicles Considering Social Behaviors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.11059/) (2020)
- [What data do we need for training an AV motion planner?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.12337/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 73)

- [Planning-oriented Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10156/) (2022)
- [AutoVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model for End-to-End Autonomous Driving with Adaptive Reasoning and Reinforcement Fine-Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.13757/) (2025)
- [Parting with Misconceptions about Learning-based Vehicle Motion Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.07962/) (2023)
- [OccWorld: Learning a 3D Occupancy World Model for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16038/) (2023)
- [GameFormer: Game-theoretic Modeling and Learning of Transformer-based Interactive Prediction and Planning for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05760/) (2023)
- [PLUTO: Pushing the Limit of Imitation Learning-based Planning for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14327/) (2024)
- [OccSora: 4D Occupancy Generation Models as World Simulators for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20337/) (2024)
- [DTPP: Differentiable Joint Conditional Prediction and Cost Evaluation for Tree Policy Planning in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05885/) (2023)
- [DME-Driver: Integrating Human Decision Logic and 3D Scene Perception in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.03641/) (2024)
- [Gen-Drive: Enhancing Diffusion Generative Driving Policies with Reward Modeling and Reinforcement Learning Fine-tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05582/) (2024)
- [PlanAgent: A Multi-modal Large Language Agent for Closed-loop Vehicle Motion Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.01587/) (2024)
- [CaRL: Learning Scalable Planning Policies with Simple Rewards](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.17838/) (2025)
- [Conditional Predictive Behavior Planning with Inverse Reinforcement Learning for Human-like Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08787/) (2022)
- [The Integration of Prediction and Planning in Deep Learning Automated Driving Systems: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.05731/) (2023)
- [Rethinking Imitation-based Planner for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.10443/) (2023)
- [Uni-RLHF: Universal Platform and Benchmark Suite for Reinforcement Learning with Diverse Human Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02423/) (2024)
- [Reinforced Refinement with Self-Aware Expansion for End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09800/) (2025)
- [Hybrid-Prediction Integrated Planning for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02426/) (2024)
- [Data-Centric Evolution in Autonomous Driving: A Comprehensive Survey of Big Data System, Data Mining, and Closed-Loop Technologies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.12888/) (2024)
- [Co-MTP: A Cooperative Trajectory Prediction Framework with Multi-Temporal Fusion for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.16589/) (2025)
- [CCIL: Context-conditioned imitation learning for urban driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.02649/) (2023)
- [Energy-based Potential Games for Joint Motion Forecasting and Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.01811/) (2023)
- [Research Challenges and Progress in the End-to-End V2X Cooperative Autonomous Driving Competition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.21610/) (2025)
- [OccTENS: 3D Occupancy World Model via Temporal Next-Scale Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.03887/) (2025)
- [STrajNet: Multi-modal Hierarchical Transformer for Occupancy Flow Field Prediction in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.00394/) (2022)
- [Occupancy Prediction-Guided Neural Planner for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.03303/) (2023)
- [Adaptive Prediction Ensemble: Improving Out-of-Distribution Generalization of Motion Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.09475/) (2024)
- [Test-Time Trajectory Optimization for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.07170/) (2026)
- [Learning Interaction-aware Motion Prediction Model for Decision-making in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03939/) (2023)
- [DiffTORI: Differentiable Trajectory Optimization for Deep Reinforcement and Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05421/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Predicting the future states of surrounding traffic participants and planning a safe, smooth, and socially compliant trajectory accordingly is crucial for autonomous vehicles. There are two major issues with the current autonomous driving system: the prediction module is often separated from the planning module and the cost function for planning is hard to specify and tune. To tackle these issues, we propose a differentiable integrated prediction-planning framework (DIPP) that can also learn the cost function from data. Specifically, our framework uses a differentiable nonlinear optimizer as the motion planner, which takes as input the predicted trajectories of surrounding agents given by the neural network and optimizes the trajectory for the autonomous vehicle, enabling all operations to be differentiable, including the cost function weights. The proposed framework is trained on a large-scale real-world driving dataset to imitate human driving trajectories in the entire driving scene and validated in both open-loop and closed-loop manners. The open-loop testing results reveal that the proposed method outperforms the baseline methods across a variety of metrics and delivers planning-centric prediction results, allowing the planning module to output trajectories close to those of human drivers. In closed-loop testing, the proposed method outperforms various baseline methods, showing the ability to handle complex urban driving scenarios and robustness against the distributional shift. Importantly, we find that joint training of planning and prediction modules achieves better performance than planning with a separate trained prediction module in both open-loop and closed-loop tests. Moreover, the ablation study indicates that the learnable components in the framework are essential to ensure planning stability and performance.
