mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

PLUTO: Pushing the Limit of Imitation Learning-based Planning for Autonomous Driving

arXiv 2404.14327 ↗First posted 22 Apr 2024cs.ROcited by 84

On the map: End-to-end autonomous driving → Imitation-learning end-to-end planners

also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)

We present PLUTO, a powerful framework that pushes the limit of imitation learning-based planning for autonomous driving. Our improvements stem from three pivotal aspects: a longitudinal-lateral aware model architecture that enables flexible and diverse driving behaviors; An innovative auxiliary loss computation method that is broadly applicable and efficient for batch-wise calculation; A novel training framework that leverages contrastive learning, augmented by a suite of new data augmentations to regulate driving behaviors and facilitate the understanding of underlying interactions. We assessed our framework using the large-scale real-world nuPlan dataset and its associated standardized planning benchmark. Impressively, PLUTO achieves state-of-the-art closed-loop performance, beating other competing learning-based methods and surpassing the current top-performed rule-based planner for the first time. Results and code are available at https://jchengai.github.io/pluto.

Key facts. Cited by 84 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Imitation-learning end-to-end planners, one of 9 directions in End-to-end autonomous driving. Builds on 44 of its 64 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 22 Apr 2024.

Builds on

44 of 64 references.

Closest ancestors · 8

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023Addressing Limitations of State-Aware Imitation Learning for Autonomous Driving31 Oct
  2. 2023Rethinking Imitation-based Planner for Autonomous Driving19 Sep
  3. 2023GameFormer: Game-theoretic Modeling and Learning of Transformer-based Interactive Prediction and Planning for Autonomous Driving10 Mar
  4. 2022Imitation Is Not Enough: Robustifying Imitation with Reinforcement Learning for Challenging Driving Scenarios21 Dec
  5. 2022Differentiable Integrated Motion Prediction and Planning with Learnable Cost Function for Autonomous Driving21 Jul
  6. 2022Learning from All Vehicles22 Mar
  7. 2021Urban Driver: Learning to Drive from Real-world Demonstrations Using Policy Gradients27 Sep
  8. 2021Exploring Imitation Learning for Autonomous Driving with Feedback Synthesizer and Differentiable Rasterization2 Mar

Other references · 36

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 60,361
  2. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,744
  3. 2020A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representationscited by 12,049
  4. 2019Momentum Contrast for Unsupervised Visual Representation Learningcited by 7,513
  5. 2020End-to-End Object Detection with Transformerscited by 7,414
  6. 2016PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentationcited by 5,248
  7. 2015Fast R-CNNcited by 2,933
  8. 2017CARLA: An Open Urban Driving Simulatorcited by 2,449
  9. 2022Planning-oriented Autonomous Drivingcited by 1,087
  10. 2023VAD: Vectorized Scene Representation for Efficient Autonomous Drivingcited by 622
  11. 2021NuPlan: A closed-loop ML-based planning benchmark for autonomous vehiclescited by 493
  12. 2023End-to-end Autonomous Driving: Challenges and Frontierscited by 490
24 more
  1. 2022TransFuser: Imitation with Transformer-Based Sensor Fusion for Autonomous Drivingcited by 485
  2. 2018ChauffeurNet: Learning to Drive by Imitating the Best and Synthesizing the Worstcited by 397
  3. 2019Learning by Cheatingcited by 383
  4. 2022ST-P3: End-to-end Vision-based Autonomous Driving via Spatial-Temporal Feature Learningcited by 368
  5. 2019Exploring the Limitations of Behavior Cloning for Autonomous Drivingcited by 346
  6. 2019Causal Confusion in Imitation Learningcited by 288
  7. 2022Motion Transformer with Global Intention Localization and Local Movement Refinementcited by 270
  8. 2023Parting with Misconceptions about Learning-based Vehicle Motion Planningcited by 242
  9. 2022Safety-Enhanced Autonomous Driving Using Interpretable Sensor Fusion Transformercited by 212
  10. 2021Multimodal Motion Prediction with Stacked Transformerscited by 208
  11. 2021NEAT: Neural Attention Fields for End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 174
  12. 2023Think Twice before Driving: Towards Scalable Decoders for End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 169
  13. 2021Scene Transformer: A unified architecture for predicting multiple agent trajectoriescited by 165
  14. 2023Motion Planning for Autonomous Driving: The State of the Art and Future Perspectivescited by 114
  15. 2023Forecast-MAE: Self-supervised Pre-training for Motion Forecasting with Masked Autoencoderscited by 73
  16. 2020Fighting Copycat Agents in Behavioral Cloning from Observation Historiescited by 71
  17. 2021SafetyNet: Safe planning for real-world self-driving vehicles using machine-learned policiescited by 69
  18. 2020Social NCE: Contrastive Learning of Socially-aware Motion Representationscited by 58
  19. 2023From Prediction to Planning With Goal Conditioned Lane Graph Traversalscited by 45
  20. 2019Monocular Plan View Networks for Autonomous Drivingcited by 37
  21. 2023FEND: A Future Enhanced Distribution-Aware Contrastive Learning Framework for Long-tail Trajectory Predictioncited by 31
  22. 2022Safe Real-World Autonomous Driving by Learning to Predict and Plan with a Mixture of Expertscited by 29
  23. 2022Action-based Contrastive Learning for Trajectory Predictioncited by 15
  24. 2019On Policy Gradientscited by 6

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 12; 2025: 37; 2026: 35.

84 papers.

Sort:

By area:

  1. 2025Diffusion-Based Planning for Autonomous Driving with Flexible Guidancecited by 141
  2. 2025Hydra-MDP++: Advancing End-to-End Driving via Expert-Guided Hydra-Distillationcited by 96
  3. 2024DRAMA: An Efficient End-to-end Motion Planner for Autonomous Driving with Mambacited by 87
  4. 2025ARTEMIS: Autoregressive End-to-End Trajectory Planning with Mixture of Experts for Autonomous Drivingcited by 67
  5. 2025CaRL: Learning Scalable Planning Policies with Simple Rewardscited by 35
  6. 2025AgentThink: A Unified Framework for Tool-Augmented Chain-of-Thought Reasoning in Vision-Language Models for Autonomous Drivingcited by 35
  7. 2025CarPlanner: Consistent Auto-regressive Trajectory Planning for Large-scale Reinforcement Learning in Autonomous Drivingcited by 34
  8. 2025ReconDreamer-RL: Enhancing Reinforcement Learning via Diffusion-based Scene Reconstructioncited by 27
  9. 2024Generalizing Motion Planners with Mixture of Experts for Autonomous Drivingcited by 22
  10. 2025Flow Matching-Based Autonomous Driving Planning with Advanced Interactive Behavior Modelingcited by 22
  11. 2025Plan-R1: Safe and Feasible Trajectory Planning as Language Modelingcited by 20
  12. 2025DSDrive: Distilling Large Language Model for Lightweight End-to-End Autonomous Driving with Unified Reasoning and Planningcited by 17
38 more
  1. 2026ResWorld: Temporal Residual World Model for End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 15
  2. 2025DistillDrive: End-to-End Multi-Mode Autonomous Driving Distillation by Isomorphic Hetero-Source Planning Modelcited by 14
  3. 2024CALMM-Drive: Confidence-Aware Autonomous Driving with Large Multimodal Modelcited by 12
  4. 2024ComDrive: Comfort-Oriented End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 11
  5. 2024Learning Multiple Probabilistic Decisions from Latent World Model in Autonomous Drivingcited by 8
  6. 2025TrajDiff: End-to-end Autonomous Driving without Perception Annotationcited by 8
  7. 2025When Planners Meet Reality: How Learned, Reactive Traffic Agents Shift nuPlan Benchmarkscited by 7
  8. 2024DualAD: Dual-Layer Planning for Reasoning in Autonomous Drivingcited by 6
  9. 2025VLMPlanner: Integrating Visual Language Models with Motion Planningcited by 6
  10. 2025Spatial Retrieval Augmented Autonomous Drivingcited by 5
  11. 2024Efficient Camera Exposure Control for Visual Odometry via Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 4
  12. 2025RIFT: Group-Relative RL Fine-Tuning for Realistic and Controllable Traffic Simulationcited by 4
  13. 2025Do LLM Modules Generalize? A Study on Motion Generation for Autonomous Drivingcited by 4
  14. 2025CoPlanner: An Interactive Motion Planner with Contingency-Aware Diffusion for Autonomous Drivingcited by 4
  15. 2025FlowDrive: moderated flow matching with data balancing for trajectory planningcited by 4
  16. 2025Decoupling Scene Perception and Ego Status: A Multi-Context Fusion Approach for Enhanced Generalization in End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 4
  17. 2024PLM-Net: Perception Latency Mitigation Network for Vision-Based Lateral Control of Autonomous Vehiclescited by 3
  18. 2025RealDrive: Retrieval-Augmented Driving with Diffusion Modelscited by 3
  19. 2025NetRoller: Interfacing General and Specialized Models for End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 3
  20. 2025HYPE: Hybrid Planning with Ego Proposal-Conditioned Predictionscited by 3
  21. 2026RAD-LAD: Rule and Language Grounded Autonomous Driving in Real-Timecited by 3
  22. 2026DriveZero: End-to-End Driving Beyond Human Demonstrationscited by 3
  23. 2024Hi-Drive: Hierarchical POMDP Planning for Safe Autonomous Driving in Diverse Urban Environmentscited by 2
  24. 2024DECODE: Domain-aware Continual Domain Expansion for Motion Predictioncited by 2
  25. 2025HAMF: A Hybrid Attention-Mamba Framework for Joint Scene Context Understanding and Future Motion Representation Learningcited by 2
  26. 2025DiffSemanticFusion: Semantic Raster BEV Fusion for Autonomous Driving via Online HD Map Diffusioncited by 2
  27. 2025Near-Optimal Second-Order Guarantees for Model-Based Adversarial Imitation Learningcited by 2
  28. 2025LAP: Fast LAtent Diffusion Planner for Autonomous Drivingcited by 2
  29. 2026Safe and Stylized Trajectory Planning for Autonomous Driving via Diffusion Modelcited by 2
  30. 2026CorrectionPlanner: Self-Correction Planner with Reinforcement Learning in Autonomous Drivingcited by 2
  31. 2026SafeAlign-VLA: A Negative-Enhanced Safe Alignment Framework for Risk-Aware Autonomous Drivingcited by 2
  32. 2026Diffusion Forcing Planner: History-Annealed Planning with Time-Dependent Guidance for Autonomous Drivingcited by 2
  33. 2024LHPF: Look back the History and Plan for the Future in Autonomous Drivingcited by 1
  34. 2025CAFE-AD: Cross-Scenario Adaptive Feature Enhancement for Trajectory Planning in Autonomous Drivingcited by 1
  35. 2025DeMo++: Motion Decoupling for Autonomous Drivingcited by 1
  36. 2026AlignDrive: Aligned Lateral-Longitudinal Planning for End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 1
  37. 2026Physics-informed Diffusion Mamba Transformer for Real-world Drivingcited by 1
  38. 2026RAPiD: Reward-Guided Consistency Distillation of Diffusion Planners for Real-Time Autonomous Drivingcited by 1

50 most cited of 84 All 84 (JSON)

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  1. 2025Exposing the Copycat Problem of Imitation-based Planner: A Novel Closed-Loop Simulator, Causal Benchmark and Joint IL-RL Baseline
  2. 2022Hierarchical Model-Based Imitation Learning for Planning in Autonomous Driving
  3. 2026Planning-Oriented End-to-End Autonomous Driving: Architectures, Evaluation, and Emerging Paradigms
  4. 2026Learning to Explain While Planning: Rule-Aligned Diffusion Planning for Autonomous Driving
  5. 2024Hybrid Imitation-Learning Motion Planner for Urban Driving
  6. 2024Towards learning-based planning:The nuPlan benchmark for real-world autonomous driving
  7. 2025nuPlan-R: A Closed-Loop Planning Benchmark for Autonomous Driving via Reactive Multi-Agent Simulation
  8. 2023Interpretable Motion Planner for Urban Driving via Hierarchical Imitation Learning