# Towards Knowledge-driven Autonomous Driving

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.04316 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04316/

## Key facts

- Cited by 29 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Reasoning VLA and VLM driving policies, one of 9 directions in End-to-end autonomous driving.
- Builds on 182 of its 276 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Dec 2023.

## Placed in

- End-to-end autonomous driving / [Reasoning VLA and VLM driving policies](https://mlsanity.com/driving/reasoning-vla-and-vlm-driving-policies/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 182)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13971/) (2023)
- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Visual Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08485/) (2023)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [BLIP-2: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training with Frozen Image Encoders and Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12597/) (2023)
- [PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathways](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02311/) (2022)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [Overcoming catastrophic forgetting in neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00796/) (2016)
- [Neural Discrete Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00937/) (2017)
- [nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11027/) (2019)
- [The Cityscapes Dataset for Semantic Urban Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.01685/) (2016)
- [DistilBERT, a distilled version of BERT: smaller, faster, cheaper and lighter](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.01108/) (2019)
- [Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11366/) (2023)
- [Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04761/) (2023)
- [Finetuned Language Models Are Zero-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01652/) (2021)
- [Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03442/) (2023)
- [MiniGPT-4: Enhancing Vision-Language Understanding with Advanced Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.10592/) (2023)
- [Visual Genome: Connecting Language and Vision Using Crowdsourced Dense Image Annotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.07332/) (2016)
- [Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12712/) (2023)
- [A Survey of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.18223/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [DriveArena: A Closed-loop Generative Simulation Platform for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00415/) (2024)
- [Continuously Learning, Adapting, and Improving: A Dual-Process Approach to Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.15324/) (2024)
- [LimSim++: A Closed-Loop Platform for Deploying Multimodal LLMs in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01246/) (2024)
- [Vision-Language-Action Models for Autonomous Driving: Past, Present, and Future](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.16760/) (2025)
- [WiseAD: Knowledge Augmented End-to-End Autonomous Driving with Vision-Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.09951/) (2024)
- [DriVLMe: Enhancing LLM-based Autonomous Driving Agents with Embodied and Social Experiences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.03008/) (2024)
- [Delving into Multi-modal Multi-task Foundation Models for Road Scene Understanding: From Learning Paradigm Perspectives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02968/) (2024)
- [Multi-Agent Autonomous Driving Systems with Large Language Models: A Survey of Recent Advances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.16804/) (2025)
- [Learn To be Efficient: Build Structured Sparsity in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.06126/) (2024)
- [KoMA: Knowledge-driven Multi-agent Framework for Autonomous Driving with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.14239/) (2024)
- [PKRD-CoT: A Unified Chain-of-thought Prompting for Multi-Modal Large Language Models in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.02025/) (2024)
- [V2X-UniPool: Unifying Multimodal Perception and Knowledge Reasoning for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.02580/) (2025)
- [Driving with Regulation: Trustworthy and Interpretable Decision-Making for Autonomous Driving with Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.04759/) (2024)
- [LeapVAD: A Leap in Autonomous Driving via Cognitive Perception and Dual-Process Thinking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.08168/) (2025)
- [Chain-of-Thought for Autonomous Driving: A Comprehensive Survey and Future Prospects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20223/) (2025)
- [OpenREAD: Reinforced Open-Ended Reasoning for End-to-End Autonomous Driving with LLM-as-Critic](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.01830/) (2025)
- [SafeDrive: Knowledge- and Data-Driven Risk-Sensitive Decision-Making for Autonomous Vehicles with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.13238/) (2024)
- [SenseRAG: Constructing Environmental Knowledge Bases with Proactive Querying for LLM-Based Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.03535/) (2025)
- [DriveGen: Towards Infinite Diverse Traffic Scenarios with Large Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.05808/) (2025)
- [Enhancing Human-Centered Dynamic Scene Understanding via Multiple LLMs Collaborated Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.10107/) (2024)
- [Integration of Mixture of Experts and Multimodal Generative AI in Internet of Vehicles: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16356/) (2024)
- [Levels of AI Agents: from Rules to Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.06643/) (2024)
- [CLIP-RLDrive: Human-Aligned Autonomous Driving via CLIP-Based Reward Shaping in Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.16201/) (2024)
- [Foundation Models for Trajectory Planning in Autonomous Driving: A Review of Progress and Open Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.00021/) (2025)
- [Physics Enhanced Residual Policy Learning (PERPL) for safety cruising in mixed traffic platooning under actuator and communication delay](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.15595/) (2024)
- [Knowledge Integration Strategies in Autonomous Vehicle Prediction and Planning: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.10477/) (2025)
- [A Knowledge-Informed Deep Learning Paradigm for Generalizable and Stability-Optimized Car-Following Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14241/) (2025)
- [LimSim Series: An Autonomous Driving Simulation Platform for Validation and Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.09170/) (2025)
- [Agent-driven Long-tail Simulation for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.04331/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper explores the emerging knowledge-driven autonomous driving technologies. Our investigation highlights the limitations of current autonomous driving systems, in particular their sensitivity to data bias, difficulty in handling long-tail scenarios, and lack of interpretability. Conversely, knowledge-driven methods with the abilities of cognition, generalization and life-long learning emerge as a promising way to overcome these challenges. This paper delves into the essence of knowledge-driven autonomous driving and examines its core components: dataset & benchmark, environment, and driver agent. By leveraging large language models, world models, neural rendering, and other advanced artificial intelligence techniques, these components collectively contribute to a more holistic, adaptive, and intelligent autonomous driving system. The paper systematically organizes and reviews previous research efforts in this area, and provides insights and guidance for future research and practical applications of autonomous driving. We will continually share the latest updates on cutting-edge developments in knowledge-driven autonomous driving along with the relevant valuable open-source resources at: urlhttps://github.com/PJLab-ADG/awesome-knowledge-driven-AD.