# IDM-Follower: A Model-Informed Deep Learning Method for Long-Sequence Car-Following Trajectory Prediction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.10965 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.10965/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 7 of its 30 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Oct 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Learning Phrase Representations using RNN Encoder-Decoder for Statistical Machine Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.1078/) (2014)
- [Google's Neural Machine Translation System: Bridging the Gap between Human and Machine Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.08144/) (2016)
- [Long Short-Term Memory-Networks for Machine Reading](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1601.06733/) (2016)
- [A Physics-Informed Deep Learning Paradigm for Car-Following Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.13376/) (2020)
- [A Physics-Informed Deep Learning Paradigm for Traffic State and Fundamental Diagram Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.03142/) (2021)
- [Macroscopic Traffic Flow Modeling with Physics Regularized Gaussian Process: A New Insight into Machine Learning Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.02374/) (2020)
- [TransFollower: Long-Sequence Car-Following Trajectory Prediction through Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.03183/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [A Physics Enhanced Residual Learning (PERL) Framework for Vehicle Trajectory Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15284/) (2023)
- [When Context Is Not Enough: Modeling Unexplained Variability in Car-Following Behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.07012/) (2025)
- [NOVA: Symbolic Regression Discovery of Interpretable Car-Following and Lane-Change Models with Driver Heterogeneity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.10583/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Model-based and learning-based methods are two major types of methodologies to model car following behaviors. Model-based methods describe the car-following behaviors with explicit mathematical equations, while learning-based methods focus on getting a mapping between inputs and outputs. Both types of methods have advantages and weaknesses. Meanwhile, most car-following models are generative and only consider the inputs of the speed, position, and acceleration of the last time step. To address these issues, this study proposes a novel framework called IDM-Follower that can generate a sequence of following vehicle trajectory by a recurrent autoencoder informed by a physical car-following model, the Intelligent Driving Model (IDM).We implement a novel structure with two independent encoders and a self-attention decoder that could sequentially predict the following trajectories. A loss function considering the discrepancies between predictions and labeled data integrated with discrepancies from model-based predictions is implemented to update the neural network parameters. Numerical experiments with multiple settings on simulation and NGSIM datasets show that the IDM-Follower can improve the prediction performance compared to the model-based or learning-based methods alone. Analysis on different noise levels also shows good robustness of the model.