# VT-Former: An Exploratory Study on Vehicle Trajectory Prediction for Highway Surveillance through Graph Isomorphism and Transformer

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.06623 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.06623/

## Key facts

- Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 44 of its 95 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Nov 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 44)

- [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)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11027/) (2019)
- [How Powerful are Graph Neural Networks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.00826/) (2018)
- [Sequence to Sequence Learning with Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.3215/) (2014)
- [CBAM: Convolutional Block Attention Module](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.06521/) (2018)
- [Scalability in Perception for Autonomous Driving: Waymo Open Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04838/) (2019)
- [Transformers in Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.01169/) (2021)
- [Argoverse: 3D Tracking and Forecasting with Rich Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.02620/) (2019)
- [Argoverse 2: Next Generation Datasets for Self-Driving Perception and Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.00493/) (2023)
- [Large Scale Interactive Motion Forecasting for Autonomous Driving : The Waymo Open Motion Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10133/) (2021)
- [Social-STGCNN: A Social Spatio-Temporal Graph Convolutional Neural Network for Human Trajectory Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.11927/) (2020)
- [Multimodal Trajectory Predictions for Autonomous Driving using Deep Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.10732/) (2018)
- [Convolutional Social Pooling for Vehicle Trajectory Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.06771/) (2018)
- [Multimodal Trajectory Prediction Conditioned on Lane-Graph Traversals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.15004/) (2021)
- [HDGT: Heterogeneous Driving Graph Transformer for Multi-Agent Trajectory Prediction via Scene Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.09753/) (2022)
- [Graph Embedded Pose Clustering for Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.11850/) (2019)
- [An LSTM Network for Highway Trajectory Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07962/) (2018)
- [GRIP++: Enhanced Graph-based Interaction-aware Trajectory Prediction for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.07792/) (2019)
- [Multi-View Fusion of Sensor Data for Improved Perception and Prediction in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.11901/) (2020)
- [MultiXNet: Multiclass Multistage Multimodal Motion Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.02000/) (2020)
- [On the Real-World Adversarial Robustness of Real-Time Semantic Segmentation Models for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.01850/) (2022)
- [GATraj: A Graph- and Attention-based Multi-Agent Trajectory Prediction Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.07857/) (2022)
- [Multi-Camera Multiple 3D Object Tracking on the Move for Autonomous Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.09151/) (2022)
- [Heterogeneous-Agent Trajectory Forecasting Incorporating Class Uncertainty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.12446/) (2021)
- [SSAGCN: Social Soft Attention Graph Convolution Network for Pedestrian Trajectory Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.02459/) (2021)
- [MVFuseNet: Improving End-to-End Object Detection and Motion Forecasting through Multi-View Fusion of LiDAR Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10772/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [Multi-modal Knowledge Distillation-based Human Trajectory Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.22201/) (2025)
- [Human-Centric Video Anomaly Detection Through Spatio-Temporal Pose Tokenization and Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.15185/) (2024)
- [Shopformer: Transformer-Based Framework for Detecting Shoplifting via Human Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.19970/) (2025)
- [From Lab to Field: Real-World Evaluation of an AI-Driven Smart Video Solution to Enhance Community Safety](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02078/) (2023)
- [Vision Technologies with Applications in Traffic Surveillance Systems: A Holistic Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00348/) (2024)
- [A Survey on Video Anomaly Detection via Deep Learning: Human, Vehicle, and Environment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.14203/) (2025)
- [MoCLIP: Motion-Aware Fine-Tuning and Distillation of CLIP for Human Motion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.10810/) (2025)
- [Forecasting the Past: Gradient-Based Distribution Shift Detection in Trajectory Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.12425/) (2026)
- [EdgeVTP: Exploration of Latency-efficient Trajectory Prediction for Edge-based Embedded Vision Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.16783/) (2026)
- [Sparse Compositional Flow Matching by geometric assembly from motion primitives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.23341/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Enhancing roadway safety has become an essential computer vision focus area for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). As a part of ITS, Vehicle Trajectory Prediction (VTP) aims to forecast a vehicle's future positions based on its past and current movements. VTP is a pivotal element for road safety, aiding in applications such as traffic management, accident prevention, work-zone safety, and energy optimization. While most works in this field focus on autonomous driving, with the growing number of surveillance cameras, another sub-field emerges for surveillance VTP with its own set of challenges. In this paper, we introduce VT-Former, a novel transformer-based VTP approach for highway safety and surveillance. In addition to utilizing transformers to capture long-range temporal patterns, a new Graph Attentive Tokenization (GAT) module has been proposed to capture intricate social interactions among vehicles. This study seeks to explore both the advantages and the limitations inherent in combining transformer architecture with graphs for VTP. Our investigation, conducted across three benchmark datasets from diverse surveillance viewpoints, showcases the State-of-the-Art (SotA) or comparable performance of VT-Former in predicting vehicle trajectories. This study underscores the potential of VT-Former and its architecture, opening new avenues for future research and exploration.