# How Does Traffic Environment Quantitatively Affect the Autonomous Driving Prediction?

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.04414 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.04414/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 42 of its 65 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Jan 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 42)

- [Dropout as a Bayesian Approximation: Representing Model Uncertainty in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02142/) (2015)
- [Simple and Scalable Predictive Uncertainty Estimation using Deep Ensembles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01474/) (2016)
- [What Uncertainties Do We Need in Bayesian Deep Learning for Computer Vision?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04977/) (2017)
- [Can You Trust Your Model's Uncertainty? Evaluating Predictive Uncertainty Under Dataset Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02530/) (2019)
- [Evidential Deep Learning to Quantify Classification Uncertainty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.01768/) (2018)
- [Argoverse 2: Next Generation Datasets for Self-Driving Perception and Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.00493/) (2023)
- [Social GAN: Socially Acceptable Trajectories with Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.10892/) (2018)
- [A Survey of Uncertainty in Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03342/) (2021)
- [Predictive Uncertainty Estimation via Prior Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.10501/) (2018)
- [Weight Uncertainty in Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.05424/) (2015)
- [BatchEnsemble: An Alternative Approach to Efficient Ensemble and Lifelong Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.06715/) (2020)
- [Deep Evidential Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.02600/) (2019)
- [DenseTNT: End-to-end Trajectory Prediction from Dense Goal Sets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.09640/) (2021)
- [CoverNet: Multimodal Behavior Prediction using Trajectory Sets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.10298/) (2019)
- [Human Motion Trajectory Prediction: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.06113/) (2019)
- [INTERACTION Dataset: An INTERnational, Adversarial and Cooperative moTION Dataset in Interactive Driving Scenarios with Semantic Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.03088/) (2019)
- [Concrete Dropout](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07832/) (2017)
- [Convolutional Social Pooling for Vehicle Trajectory Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.06771/) (2018)
- [Multiple Futures Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.00997/) (2019)
- [Hyperparameter Ensembles for Robustness and Uncertainty Quantification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.13570/) (2020)
- [Bayesian Compression for Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.08665/) (2017)
- [Multimodal Trajectory Prediction Conditioned on Lane-Graph Traversals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.15004/) (2021)
- [TrafficPredict: Trajectory Prediction for Heterogeneous Traffic-Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.02146/) (2018)
- [Shifts: A Dataset of Real Distributional Shift Across Multiple Large-Scale Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.07455/) (2021)
- [TraPHic: Trajectory Prediction in Dense and Heterogeneous Traffic Using Weighted Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04767/) (2018)
- [Uncertainty Baselines: Benchmarks for Uncertainty & Robustness in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.04015/) (2021)
- [GRIP++: Enhanced Graph-based Interaction-aware Trajectory Prediction for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.07792/) (2019)
- [Prior and Posterior Networks: A Survey on Evidential Deep Learning Methods For Uncertainty Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.03051/) (2021)
- [Graph Neural Networks for Modelling Traffic Participant Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.01254/) (2019)
- [Ontology based Scene Creation for the Development of Automated Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.01006/) (2017)

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

- [UniTraj: A Unified Framework for Scalable Vehicle Trajectory Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15098/) (2024)
- [Towards Safe and Reliable Autonomous Driving: Dynamic Occupancy Set Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.19385/) (2024)
- [LAVA: Language Driven Scalable and Versatile Traffic Video Analytics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.19821/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

An accurate trajectory prediction is crucial for safe and efficient autonomous driving in complex traffic environments. In recent years, artificial intelligence has shown strong capabilities in improving prediction accuracy. However, its characteristics of inexplicability and uncertainty make it challenging to determine the traffic environmental effect on prediction explicitly, posing significant challenges to safety-critical decision-making. To address these challenges, this study proposes a trajectory prediction framework with the epistemic uncertainty estimation ability that outputs high uncertainty when confronting unforeseeable or unknown scenarios. The proposed framework is used to analyze the environmental effect on the prediction algorithm performance. In the analysis, the traffic environment is considered in terms of scenario features and shifts, respectively, where features are divided into kinematic features of a target agent, features of its surrounding traffic participants, and other features. In addition, feature correlation and importance analyses are performed to study the above features' influence on the prediction error and epistemic uncertainty. Further, a cross-dataset case study is conducted using multiple intersection datasets to investigate the impact of unavoidable distributional shifts in the real world on trajectory prediction. The results indicate that the deep ensemble-based method has advantages in improving prediction robustness and estimating epistemic uncertainty. The consistent conclusions are obtained by the feature correlation and importance analyses, including the conclusion that kinematic features of the target agent have relatively strong effects on the prediction error and epistemic uncertainty. Furthermore, the prediction failure caused by distributional shifts and the potential of the deep ensemble-based method are analyzed.