# Autonomous Driving With Perception Uncertainties: Deep-Ensemble Based Adaptive Cruise Control

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.15577 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15577/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 13 of its 22 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Mar 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11946/) (2019)
- [MobileNetV2: Inverted Residuals and Linear Bottlenecks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.04381/) (2018)
- [Dropout as a Bayesian Approximation: Representing Model Uncertainty in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02142/) (2015)
- [Going Deeper with Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.4842/) (2014)
- [Simple and Scalable Predictive Uncertainty Estimation using Deep Ensembles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01474/) (2016)
- [CARLA: An Open Urban Driving Simulator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.03938/) (2017)
- [The highD Dataset: A Drone Dataset of Naturalistic Vehicle Trajectories on German Highways for Validation of Highly Automated Driving Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.05642/) (2018)
- [Predicting Semantic Map Representations from Images using Pyramid Occupancy Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.13402/) (2020)
- [Robust Guarantees for Perception-Based Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.03680/) (2019)
- [System-level Safety Guard: Safe Tracking Control through Uncertain Neural Network Dynamics Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06810/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Centaur: Robust End-to-End Autonomous Driving with Test-Time Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11650/) (2025)
- [Generative AI for Autonomous Driving: Frontiers and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.08854/) (2025)
- [Asymmetric Duos: Sidekicks Improve Uncertainty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.18636/) (2025)
- [Learning Contextual Runtime Monitors for Safe AI-Based Autonomy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.20666/) (2026)
- [Safe Adaptive Cruise Control Under Perception Uncertainty: A Deep Ensemble and Conformal Tube Model Predictive Control Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03792/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Autonomous driving depends on perception systems to understand the environment and to inform downstream decision-making. While advanced perception systems utilizing black-box Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) demonstrate human-like comprehension, their unpredictable behavior and lack of interpretability may hinder their deployment in safety critical scenarios. In this paper, we develop an Ensemble of DNN regressors (Deep Ensemble) that generates predictions with quantification of prediction uncertainties. In the scenario of Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), we employ the Deep Ensemble to estimate distance headway to the lead vehicle from RGB images and enable the downstream controller to account for the estimation uncertainty. We develop an adaptive cruise controller that utilizes Stochastic Model Predictive Control (MPC) with chance constraints to provide a probabilistic safety guarantee. We evaluate our ACC algorithm using a high-fidelity traffic simulator and a real-world traffic dataset and demonstrate the ability of the proposed approach to effect speed tracking and car following while maintaining a safe distance headway. The out-of-distribution scenarios are also examined.