# HAIM-DRL: Enhanced Human-in-the-loop Reinforcement Learning for Safe and Efficient Autonomous Driving

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.03160 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.03160/

## Key facts

- Cited by 32 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Reinforcement learning for driving, one of 9 directions in End-to-end autonomous driving.
- Builds on 33 of its 84 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Jan 2024.

## Placed in

- End-to-end autonomous driving / [Reinforcement learning for driving](https://mlsanity.com/driving/reinforcement-learning-for-driving/)
- Deep reinforcement learning methods / [RL for autonomous driving and traffic](https://mlsanity.com/deeprl/rl-for-autonomous-driving-and-traffic/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 33)

- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [Soft Actor-Critic: Off-Policy Maximum Entropy Deep Reinforcement Learning with a Stochastic Actor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01290/) (2018)
- [Deep reinforcement learning from human preferences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03741/) (2017)
- [Continuous control with deep reinforcement learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1509.02971/) (2015)
- [CARLA: An Open Urban Driving Simulator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.03938/) (2017)
- [High-Dimensional Continuous Control Using Generalized Advantage Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02438/) (2015)
- [Conservative Q-Learning for Offline Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.04779/) (2020)
- [Generative Adversarial Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.03476/) (2016)
- [Constrained Policy Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.10528/) (2017)
- [Deep Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Driving: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.00444/) (2020)
- [Exploring the Limitations of Behavior Cloning for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08980/) (2019)
- [Overcoming Exploration in Reinforcement Learning with Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.10089/) (2017)
- [Reward learning from human preferences and demonstrations in Atari](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.06521/) (2018)
- [Responsive Safety in Reinforcement Learning by PID Lagrangian Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.03964/) (2020)
- [MetaDrive: Composing Diverse Driving Scenarios for Generalizable Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.12674/) (2021)
- [HG-DAgger: Interactive Imitation Learning with Human Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.02890/) (2018)
- [Human-in-the-Loop Imitation Learning using Remote Teleoperation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.06733/) (2020)
- [Learning to Walk in the Real World with Minimal Human Effort](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.08550/) (2020)
- [Survey of Deep Reinforcement Learning for Motion Planning of Autonomous Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.11231/) (2020)
- [Reward (Mis)design for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.13906/) (2021)
- [A Survey of Deep RL and IL for Autonomous Driving Policy Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.01993/) (2021)
- [Safe, Efficient, and Comfortable Velocity Control based on Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.00089/) (2019)
- [Efficient Learning of Safe Driving Policy via Human-AI Copilot Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.10341/) (2022)
- [Conditional Predictive Behavior Planning with Inverse Reinforcement Learning for Human-like Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08787/) (2022)
- [Safe Driving via Expert Guided Policy Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.06831/) (2021)
- [A Survey on Autonomous Vehicle Control in the Era of Mixed-Autonomy: From Physics-Based to AI-Guided Driving Policy Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.05156/) (2020)
- [EPG-MGCN: Ego-Planning Guided Multi-Graph Convolutional Network for Heterogeneous Agent Trajectory Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17027/) (2023)
- [Development and testing of an image transformer for explainable autonomous driving systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.05559/) (2021)
- [Mixed platoon control of automated and human-driven vehicles at a signalized intersection: dynamical analysis and optimal control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.16105/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 32)

- [V2X-VLM: End-to-End V2X Cooperative Autonomous Driving Through Large Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.09251/) (2024)
- [CurricuVLM: Towards Safe Autonomous Driving via Personalized Safety-Critical Curriculum Learning with Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.15119/) (2025)
- [A Survey On Enhancing Reinforcement Learning in Complex Environments: Insights from Human and LLM Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.13410/) (2024)
- [VLM-SAFE: Vision-Language Model-Guided Safety-Aware Reinforcement Learning with World Models for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.16377/) (2025)
- [Trustworthy Human-AI Collaboration: Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback and Physics Knowledge for Safe Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.00858/) (2024)
- [Formalising Human-in-the-Loop: Computational Reductions, Failure Modes, and Legal-Moral Responsibility](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.10426/) (2025)
- [Efficient and Generalized end-to-end Autonomous Driving System with Latent Deep Reinforcement Learning and Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.11792/) (2024)
- [Traffic expertise meets residual RL: Knowledge-informed model-based residual reinforcement learning for CAV trajectory control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.17380/) (2024)
- [Human-In-The-Loop Machine Learning for Safe and Ethical Autonomous Vehicles: Principles, Challenges, and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.12548/) (2024)
- [Knowledge Transfer from Simple to Complex: A Safe and Efficient Reinforcement Learning Framework for Autonomous Driving Decision-Making](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.14468/) (2024)
- [Knowledge Augmented Complex Problem Solving with Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.03418/) (2025)
- [SafePLUG: Empowering Multimodal LLMs with Pixel-Level Insight and Temporal Grounding for Traffic Accident Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.06763/) (2025)
- [Beyond conventional vision: RGB-event fusion for robust object detection in dynamic traffic scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10704/) (2025)
- [HERMES: A Holistic End-to-End Risk-Aware Multimodal Embodied System with Vision-Language Models for Long-Tail Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.00993/) (2026)
- [MetaSSC: Enhancing 3D Semantic Scene Completion for Autonomous Driving through Meta-Learning and Long-sequence Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.03672/) (2024)
- [Data-Efficient Learning from Human Interventions for Mobile Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.04969/) (2025)
- [FollowGen: A Scaled Noise Conditional Diffusion Model for Car-Following Trajectory Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.16747/) (2024)
- [Out-of-Distribution Detection for Safety Assurance of AI and Autonomous Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.21254/) (2025)
- [T2IBias: Uncovering Societal Bias Encoded in the Latent Space of Text-to-Image Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.10089/) (2025)
- [Adaptive Decision-Making for Autonomous Vehicles: A Learning-Enhanced Game-Theoretic Approach in Interactive Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.11467/) (2024)
- [LaViPlan : Language-Guided Visual Path Planning with RLVR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.12911/) (2025)
- [Robust Driving Control for Autonomous Vehicles: An Intelligent General-sum Constrained Adversarial Reinforcement Learning Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.09041/) (2025)
- [Sim2Real-AD: A Modular Sim-to-Real Framework for Deploying VLM-Guided Reinforcement Learning in Real-World Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.03497/) (2026)
- [GAINS: Leveraging Inconsistent Human Intervention Signals in Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.15707/) (2026)
- [Sky-Drive: A Distributed Multi-Agent Simulation Platform for Human-AI Collaborative and Socially-Aware Future Transportation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.18010/) (2025)
- [Confidence-Guided Human-AI Collaboration: Reinforcement Learning with Distributional Proxy Value Propagation for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.03568/) (2025)
- [Sparse Threats, Focused Defense: Criticality-Aware Robust Reinforcement Learning for Safe Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.01800/) (2026)
- [Software-Hardware Co-optimization for Modular E2E AV Paradigm: A Unified Framework of Optimization Approaches, Simulation Environment and Evaluation Metrics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.07393/) (2026)
- [Risk-Aware Human-in-the-Loop Framework with Adaptive Intrusion Response for Autonomous Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.11781/) (2026)
- [Bridging Policy and Real-World Dynamics: LLM-Augmented Rebalancing for Shared Micromobility Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.00176/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Despite significant progress in autonomous vehicles (AVs), the development of driving policies that ensure both the safety of AVs and traffic flow efficiency has not yet been fully explored. In this paper, we propose an enhanced human-in-the-loop reinforcement learning method, termed the Human as AI mentor-based deep reinforcement learning (HAIM-DRL) framework, which facilitates safe and efficient autonomous driving in mixed traffic platoon. Drawing inspiration from the human learning process, we first introduce an innovative learning paradigm that effectively injects human intelligence into AI, termed Human as AI mentor (HAIM). In this paradigm, the human expert serves as a mentor to the AI agent. While allowing the agent to sufficiently explore uncertain environments, the human expert can take control in dangerous situations and demonstrate correct actions to avoid potential accidents. On the other hand, the agent could be guided to minimize traffic flow disturbance, thereby optimizing traffic flow efficiency. In detail, HAIM-DRL leverages data collected from free exploration and partial human demonstrations as its two training sources. Remarkably, we circumvent the intricate process of manually designing reward functions; instead, we directly derive proxy state-action values from partial human demonstrations to guide the agents' policy learning. Additionally, we employ a minimal intervention technique to reduce the human mentor's cognitive load. Comparative results show that HAIM-DRL outperforms traditional methods in driving safety, sampling efficiency, mitigation of traffic flow disturbance, and generalizability to unseen traffic scenarios. The code and demo videos for this paper can be accessed at: https://zilin-huang.github.io/HAIM-DRL-website/