VLM-MPC: Vision Language Foundation Model (VLM)-Guided Model Predictive Controller (MPC) for Autonomous Driving

Motivated by the emergent reasoning capabilities of Vision Language Models (VLMs) and their potential to improve the comprehensibility of autonomous driving systems, this paper introduces a closed-loop autonomous driving controller called VLM-MPC, which combines the Model Predictive Controller (MPC) with VLM to evaluate how model-based control could enhance VLM decision-making. The proposed VLM-MPC is structured into two asynchronous components: The upper layer VLM generates driving parameters (e.g., desired speed, desired headway) for lower-level control based on front camera images, ego vehicle state, traffic environment conditions, and reference memory; The lower-level MPC controls the vehicle in real-time using these parameters, considering engine lag and providing state feedback to the entire system. Experiments based on the nuScenes dataset validated the effectiveness of the proposed VLM-MPC across various environments (e.g., night, rain, and intersections). The results demonstrate that the VLM-MPC consistently maintains Post Encroachment Time (PET) above safe thresholds, in contrast to some scenarios where the VLM-based control posed collision risks. Additionally, the VLM-MPC enhances smoothness compared to the real-world trajectories and VLM-based control. By comparing behaviors under different environmental settings, we highlight the VLM-MPC's capability to understand the environment and make reasoned inferences. Moreover, we validate the contributions of two key components, the reference memory and the environment encoder, to the stability of responses through ablation tests.