# Model-Based Imitation Learning for Urban Driving

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.07729 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.07729/

## Key facts

- Cited by 150 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 37 of its 59 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Oct 2022.

## Placed in

- End-to-end autonomous driving / [Imitation-learning end-to-end planners](https://mlsanity.com/driving/imitation-learning-end-to-end-planners/)
- Offline RL and imitation learning from data / [Imitation and offline RL for driving](https://mlsanity.com/offlinerl/imitation-and-offline-rl-for-driving/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 37)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [CARLA: An Open Urban Driving Simulator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.03938/) (2017)
- [Rethinking Atrous Convolution for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.05587/) (2017)
- [Mastering Atari, Go, Chess and Shogi by Planning with a Learned Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.08265/) (2019)
- [Learning Latent Dynamics for Planning from Pixels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.04551/) (2018)
- [BEVFormer: Learning Bird's-Eye-View Representation from Multi-Camera Images via Spatiotemporal Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.17270/) (2022)
- [Lift, Splat, Shoot: Encoding Images From Arbitrary Camera Rigs by Implicitly Unprojecting to 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.05711/) (2020)
- [Mastering Atari with Discrete World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02193/) (2020)
- [Recurrent World Models Facilitate Policy Evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.01999/) (2018)
- [MOPO: Model-based Offline Policy Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.13239/) (2020)
- [End-to-end Driving via Conditional Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.02410/) (2017)
- [ChauffeurNet: Learning to Drive by Imitating the Best and Synthesizing the Worst](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03079/) (2018)
- [Learning by Cheating](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.12294/) (2019)
- [Multi-Modal Fusion Transformer for End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.09224/) (2021)
- [Panoptic-DeepLab](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.04751/) (2019)
- [TNT: Target-driveN Trajectory Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.08294/) (2020)
- [Exploring the Limitations of Behavior Cloning for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08980/) (2019)
- [DESIRE: Distant Future Prediction in Dynamic Scenes with Interacting Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.04394/) (2017)
- [Stochastic Video Generation with a Learned Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.07687/) (2018)
- [FIERY: Future Instance Prediction in Bird's-Eye View from Surround Monocular Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10490/) (2021)
- [Stochastic Variational Video Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.11252/) (2017)
- [End-to-End Urban Driving by Imitating a Reinforcement Learning Coach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08265/) (2021)
- [PRECOG: PREdiction Conditioned On Goals in Visual Multi-Agent Settings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.01296/) (2019)
- [NEAT: Neural Attention Fields for End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.04456/) (2021)
- [End-to-End Model-Free Reinforcement Learning for Urban Driving using Implicit Affordances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.10868/) (2019)
- [Learning from All Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11934/) (2022)
- [PLAS: Latent Action Space for Offline Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.07213/) (2020)
- [BEVSegFormer: Bird's Eye View Semantic Segmentation From Arbitrary Camera Rigs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04050/) (2022)
- [Learning to drive from a world on rails](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.00636/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 150)

- [Planning-oriented Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10156/) (2022)
- [GAIA-1: A Generative World Model for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.17080/) (2023)
- [End-to-end Autonomous Driving: Challenges and Frontiers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.16927/) (2023)
- [Vista: A Generalizable Driving World Model with High Fidelity and Versatile Controllability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.17398/) (2024)
- [Driving into the Future: Multiview Visual Forecasting and Planning with World Model for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17918/) (2023)
- [VADv2: End-to-End Vectorized Autonomous Driving via Probabilistic Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13243/) (2024)
- [DriveDreamer: Towards Real-world-driven World Models for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.09777/) (2023)
- [Bench2Drive: Towards Multi-Ability Benchmarking of Closed-Loop End-To-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.03877/) (2024)
- [DriveMLM: Aligning Multi-Modal Large Language Models with Behavioral Planning States for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.09245/) (2023)
- [Driving with LLMs: Fusing Object-Level Vector Modality for Explainable Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01957/) (2023)
- [DriveDreamer-2: LLM-Enhanced World Models for Diverse Driving Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06845/) (2024)
- [Think Twice before Driving: Towards Scalable Decoders for End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.06242/) (2023)
- [Enhancing End-to-End Autonomous Driving with Latent World Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.08481/) (2024)
- [FutureSightDrive: Thinking Visually with Spatio-Temporal CoT for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.17685/) (2025)
- [GenAD: Generalized Predictive Model for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.09630/) (2024)
- [LingoQA: Visual Question Answering for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14115/) (2023)
- [DriveAdapter: Breaking the Coupling Barrier of Perception and Planning in End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.00398/) (2023)
- [OmniDrive: A Holistic Vision-Language Dataset for Autonomous Driving with Counterfactual Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.04348/) (2025)
- [DriveTransformer: Unified Transformer for Scalable End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07656/) (2025)
- [Is Sora a World Simulator? A Comprehensive Survey on General World Models and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.03520/) (2024)
- [ManiGaussian: Dynamic Gaussian Splatting for Multi-task Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.08321/) (2024)
- [Recent Advancements in End-to-End Autonomous Driving using Deep Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.04370/) (2023)
- [Hidden Biases of End-to-End Driving Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.07957/) (2023)
- [DrivingGPT: Unifying Driving World Modeling and Planning with Multi-modal Autoregressive Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.18607/) (2024)
- [World Models for Autonomous Driving: An Initial Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.02622/) (2024)
- [A Comprehensive Survey on World Models for Embodied AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.16732/) (2025)
- [GaussianWorld: Gaussian World Model for Streaming 3D Occupancy Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.10373/) (2024)
- [3D and 4D World Modeling: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.07996/) (2025)
- [A Survey of World Models for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.11260/) (2025)
- [RealGen: Retrieval Augmented Generation for Controllable Traffic Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.13303/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

An accurate model of the environment and the dynamic agents acting in it offers great potential for improving motion planning. We present MILE: a Model-based Imitation LEarning approach to jointly learn a model of the world and a policy for autonomous driving. Our method leverages 3D geometry as an inductive bias and learns a highly compact latent space directly from high-resolution videos of expert demonstrations. Our model is trained on an offline corpus of urban driving data, without any online interaction with the environment. MILE improves upon prior state-of-the-art by 31% in driving score on the CARLA simulator when deployed in a completely new town and new weather conditions. Our model can predict diverse and plausible states and actions, that can be interpretably decoded to bird's-eye view semantic segmentation. Further, we demonstrate that it can execute complex driving manoeuvres from plans entirely predicted in imagination. Our approach is the first camera-only method that models static scene, dynamic scene, and ego-behaviour in an urban driving environment. The code and model weights are available at https://github.com/wayveai/mile.