# FlowMap: Path Generation for Automated Vehicles in Open Space Using Traffic Flow

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.01622 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.01622/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 19 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 May 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12872/) (2020)
- [BEVFormer: Learning Bird's-Eye-View Representation from Multi-Camera Images via Spatiotemporal Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.17270/) (2022)
- [BEVFusion: Multi-Task Multi-Sensor Fusion with Unified Bird's-Eye View Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13542/) (2022)
- [HDMapNet: An Online HD Map Construction and Evaluation Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.06307/) (2021)
- [VectorMapNet: End-to-end Vectorized HD Map Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.08920/) (2022)
- [MP3: A Unified Model to Map, Perceive, Predict and Plan](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06806/) (2021)
- [Spatial As Deep: Spatial CNN for Traffic Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.06080/) (2017)
- [Towards End-to-End Lane Detection: an Instance Segmentation Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.05591/) (2018)
- [Rules of the Road: Predicting Driving Behavior with a Convolutional Model of Semantic Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.08945/) (2019)
- [Occupancy Flow Fields for Motion Forecasting in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.03875/) (2022)
- [EL-GAN: Embedding Loss Driven Generative Adversarial Networks for Lane Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.05525/) (2018)
- [FastDraw: Addressing the Long Tail of Lane Detection by Adapting a Sequential Prediction Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.04354/) (2019)
- [Discrete Residual Flow for Probabilistic Pedestrian Behavior Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.08041/) (2019)
- [RoadMap: A Light-Weight Semantic Map for Visual Localization towards Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.02527/) (2021)
- [AVP-SLAM: Semantic Visual Mapping and Localization for Autonomous Vehicles in the Parking Lot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.01813/) (2020)
- [Safe Trajectory Generation for Complex Urban Environments Using Spatio-temporal Semantic Corridor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.09788/) (2019)
- [Trajectory Replanning for Quadrotors Using Kinodynamic Search and Elastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.01139/) (2019)

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

- [Enhancing Mapless Trajectory Prediction through Knowledge Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.14177/) (2023)
- [Inferring Driving Maps by Deep Learning-based Trail Map Extraction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.10258/) (2025)
- [CSMapping: Scalable Crowdsourced Semantic Mapping and Topology Inference for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.03510/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

There is extensive literature on perceiving road structures by fusing various sensor inputs such as lidar point clouds and camera images using deep neural nets. Leveraging the latest advance of neural architects (such as transformers) and bird-eye-view (BEV) representation, the road cognition accuracy keeps improving. However, how to cognize the ``road'' for automated vehicles where there is no well-defined ``roads'' remains an open problem. For example, how to find paths inside intersections without HD maps is hard since there is neither an explicit definition for ``roads'' nor explicit features such as lane markings. The idea of this paper comes from a proverb: it becomes a way when people walk on it. Although there are no ``roads'' from sensor readings, there are ``roads'' from tracks of other vehicles. In this paper, we propose FlowMap, a path generation framework for automated vehicles based on traffic flows. FlowMap is built by extending our previous work RoadMap, a light-weight semantic map, with an additional traffic flow layer. A path generation algorithm on traffic flow fields (TFFs) is proposed to generate human-like paths. The proposed framework is validated using real-world driving data and is amenable to generating paths for super complicated intersections without using HD maps.