# DiffAD: A Unified Diffusion Modeling Approach for Autonomous Driving

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.12170 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12170/

## Key facts

- Cited by 26 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Diffusion and flow policies for robotics, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 46 of its 55 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Mar 2025.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Diffusion and flow policies for robotics](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/diffusion-and-flow-policies-for-robotics/)
- End-to-end autonomous driving / [End-to-end system architecture](https://mlsanity.com/driving/end-to-end-system-architecture/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 46)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12872/) (2020)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05600/) (2019)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03003/) (2022)
- [CARLA: An Open Urban Driving Simulator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.03938/) (2017)
- [Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03458/) (2022)
- [Align your Latents: High-Resolution Video Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08818/) (2023)
- [BEVFormer: Learning Bird's-Eye-View Representation from Multi-Camera Images via Spatiotemporal Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.17270/) (2022)
- [Imagic: Text-Based Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09276/) (2022)
- [Planning-oriented Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10156/) (2022)
- [Lift, Splat, Shoot: Encoding Images From Arbitrary Camera Rigs by Implicitly Unprojecting to 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.05711/) (2020)
- [DETR3D: 3D Object Detection from Multi-view Images via 3D-to-2D Queries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.06922/) (2021)
- [VAD: Vectorized Scene Representation for Efficient Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12077/) (2023)
- [PETR: Position Embedding Transformation for Multi-View 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.05625/) (2022)
- [VectorNet: Encoding HD Maps and Agent Dynamics from Vectorized Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.04259/) (2020)
- [End-to-end Autonomous Driving: Challenges and Frontiers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.16927/) (2023)
- [DriveVLM: The Convergence of Autonomous Driving and Large Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.12289/) (2024)
- [DriveGPT4: Interpretable End-to-end Autonomous Driving via Large Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01412/) (2023)
- [DiffusionDrive: Truncated Diffusion Model for End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15139/) (2024)
- [MapTR: Structured Modeling and Learning for Online Vectorized HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.14437/) (2022)
- [DenseTNT: End-to-end Trajectory Prediction from Dense Goal Sets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.09640/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [DriveMoE: Mixture-of-Experts for Vision-Language-Action Model in End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.16278/) (2025)
- [Omni-Video: Democratizing Unified Video Understanding and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.06119/) (2025)
- [MindDrive: A Vision-Language-Action Model for Autonomous Driving via Online Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.13636/) (2025)
- [DIVER: Reinforced Diffusion Breaks Imitation Bottlenecks in End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.04049/) (2025)
- [Generative AI for Autonomous Driving: Frontiers and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.08854/) (2025)
- [Model-Based Policy Adaptation for Closed-Loop End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.21584/) (2025)
- [Fully Unified Motion Planning for End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12667/) (2025)
- [A Knowledge-Driven Diffusion Policy for End-to-End Autonomous Driving Based on Expert Routing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.04853/) (2025)
- [Prioritizing Perception-Guided Self-Supervision: A New Paradigm for Causal Modeling in End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.08214/) (2025)
- [AXIS: Explainable Time Series Anomaly Detection with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.24378/) (2025)
- [WPT: World-to-Policy Transfer via Online World Model Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.20095/) (2025)
- [ExpertAD: Enhancing Autonomous Driving Systems with Mixture of Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.11740/) (2025)
- [DiffVL: Diffusion-Based Visual Localization on 2D Maps via BEV-Conditioned GPS Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.14565/) (2025)
- [Diffusion Models for Reinforcement Learning: Foundations, Taxonomy, and Development](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.12253/) (2025)
- [Deconfounded Lifelong Learning for Autonomous Driving via Dynamic Knowledge Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.14354/) (2026)
- [LMGenDrive: Bridging Multimodal Understanding and Generative World Modeling for End-to-End Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08719/) (2026)
- [OWMDrive: Causality-Aware End-to-End Autonomous Driving via 4D Occupancy World Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.30421/) (2026)
- [AlignDrive: Aligned Lateral-Longitudinal Planning for End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.01762/) (2026)
- [Physics-informed Diffusion Mamba Transformer for Real-world Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.00808/) (2026)
- [PerlAD: Towards Enhanced Closed-loop End-to-end Autonomous Driving with Pseudo-simulation-based Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.14908/) (2026)
- [UniTeD: Unified Temporal Diffusion for Joint Perception and Planning in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.25736/) (2026)
- [ScenarioControl: Vision-Language Controllable Vectorized Latent Scenario Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.17147/) (2026)
- [LVDrive: Latent Visual Representation Enhanced Vision-Language-Action Autonomous Driving Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.22089/) (2026)
- [Off the Rails: Hijacking the Scoring Head in Generative End-to-End Driving Planners with Safety-Violating Adversarial Perturbations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.30807/) (2026)
- [MOJITO: Modal Joint Learning for Unified End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.23511/) (2026)
- [WAM-Diff2: Hierarchical AR-to-Diffusion Distillation for Highly Efficient Autonomous Driving VLA](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.01035/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

End-to-end autonomous driving (E2E-AD) has rapidly emerged as a promising approach toward achieving full autonomy. However, existing E2E-AD systems typically adopt a traditional multi-task framework, addressing perception, prediction, and planning tasks through separate task-specific heads. Despite being trained in a fully differentiable manner, they still encounter issues with task coordination, and the system complexity remains high. In this work, we introduce DiffAD, a novel diffusion probabilistic model that redefines autonomous driving as a conditional image generation task. By rasterizing heterogeneous targets onto a unified bird's-eye view (BEV) and modeling their latent distribution, DiffAD unifies various driving objectives and jointly optimizes all driving tasks in a single framework, significantly reducing system complexity and harmonizing task coordination. The reverse process iteratively refines the generated BEV image, resulting in more robust and realistic driving behaviors. Closed-loop evaluations in Carla demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method, achieving a new state-of-the-art Success Rate and Driving Score.