mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Hydra-MDP++: Advancing End-to-End Driving via Expert-Guided Hydra-Distillation

arXiv 2503.12820 ↗First posted 17 Mar 2025cs.CVcited by 93

On the map: End-to-end autonomous driving → End-to-end system architecture

Abstract (arXiv)

Hydra-MDP++ introduces a novel teacher-student knowledge distillation framework with a multi-head decoder that learns from human demonstrations and rule-based experts. Using a lightweight ResNet-34 network without complex components, the framework incorporates expanded evaluation metrics, including traffic light compliance (TL), lane-keeping ability (LK), and extended comfort (EC) to address unsafe behaviors not captured by traditional NAVSIM-derived teachers. Like other end-to-end autonomous driving approaches, hydra processes raw images directly without relying on privileged perception signals. Hydra-MDP++ achieves state-of-the-art performance by integrating these components with a 91.0% drive score on NAVSIM through scaling to a V2-99 image encoder, demonstrating its effectiveness in handling diverse driving scenarios while maintaining computational efficiency.

Key facts. Cited by 93 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in End-to-end system architecture, one of 9 directions in End-to-end autonomous driving. Builds on 39 of its 52 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 17 Mar 2025.

Builds on

39 of 52 references.

Closest ancestors · 9

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2024Towards learning-based planning:The nuPlan benchmark for real-world autonomous driving7 Mar
  2. 2023Is Ego Status All You Need for Open-Loop End-to-End Autonomous Driving?5 Dec
  3. 2023NeuRAD: Neural Rendering for Autonomous Driving26 Nov
  4. 2022ST-P3: End-to-end Vision-based Autonomous Driving via Spatial-Temporal Feature Learning15 Jul
  5. 2022Trajectory-guided Control Prediction for End-to-end Autonomous Driving: A Simple yet Strong Baseline16 Jun
  6. 2022TransFuser: Imitation with Transformer-Based Sensor Fusion for Autonomous Driving31 May
  7. 2021NuPlan: A closed-loop ML-based planning benchmark for autonomous vehicles22 Jun
  8. 2021Multi-Modal Fusion Transformer for End-to-End Autonomous Driving19 Apr
  9. 2021End-to-end Interpretable Neural Motion Planner17 Jan

Other references · 30

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
  2. 2015Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognitioncited by 51,809
  3. 2017Squeeze-and-Excitation Networkscited by 4,763
  4. 2017CARLA: An Open Urban Driving Simulatorcited by 2,431
  5. 2022Planning-oriented Autonomous Drivingcited by 1,068
  6. 2020Lift, Splat, Shoot: Encoding Images From Arbitrary Camera Rigs by Implicitly Unprojecting to 3Dcited by 1,040
  7. 2016End to End Learning for Self-Driving Carscited by 1,000
  8. 2023VAD: Vectorized Scene Representation for Efficient Autonomous Drivingcited by 613
  9. 2017End-to-end Driving via Conditional Imitation Learningcited by 479
  10. 2018ChauffeurNet: Learning to Drive by Imitating the Best and Synthesizing the Worstcited by 391
  11. 2024Vista: A Generalizable Driving World Model with High Fidelity and Versatile Controllabilitycited by 337
  12. 2023Exploring Object-Centric Temporal Modeling for Efficient Multi-View 3D Object Detectioncited by 313
18 more
  1. 2024VADv2: End-to-End Vectorized Autonomous Driving via Probabilistic Planningcited by 287
  2. 2021MetaDrive: Composing Diverse Driving Scenarios for Generalizable Reinforcement Learningcited by 281
  3. 2018Learning to Drive in a Daycited by 266
  4. 2019CoverNet: Multimodal Behavior Prediction using Trajectory Setscited by 259
  5. 2024Hydra-MDP: End-to-end Multimodal Planning with Multi-target Hydra-Distillationcited by 244
  6. 2023Parting with Misconceptions about Learning-based Vehicle Motion Planningcited by 238
  7. 2023DriveMLM: Aligning Multi-Modal Large Language Models with Behavioral Planning States for Autonomous Drivingcited by 233
  8. 2019CenterMask : Real-Time Anchor-Free Instance Segmentationcited by 200
  9. 2019An Energy and GPU-Computation Efficient Backbone Network for Real-Time Object Detectioncited by 163
  10. 2023Waymax: An Accelerated, Data-Driven Simulator for Large-Scale Autonomous Driving Researchcited by 158
  11. 2023StreamMapNet: Streaming Mapping Network for Vectorized Online HD Map Constructioncited by 143
  12. 2022Learning from All Vehiclescited by 135
  13. 2021Urban Driver: Learning to Drive from Real-world Demonstrations Using Policy Gradientscited by 122
  14. 2024textitS3Gaussian: Self-Supervised Street Gaussians for Autonomous Drivingcited by 105
  15. 2018Baidu Apollo EM Motion Plannercited by 99
  16. 2024PLUTO: Pushing the Limit of Imitation Learning-based Planning for Autonomous Drivingcited by 84
  17. 2018Motion Planning Networkscited by 78
  18. 2023From Prediction to Planning With Goal Conditioned Lane Graph Traversalscited by 45

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 26; 2026: 67.

93 papers.

Sort:

By area:

  1. 2025Pseudo-Simulation for Autonomous Drivingcited by 141
  2. 2025ARTEMIS: Autoregressive End-to-End Trajectory Planning with Mixture of Experts for Autonomous Drivingcited by 66
  3. 2025Generalized Trajectory Scoring for End-to-end Multimodal Planningcited by 63
  4. 2025DiffusionDriveV2: Reinforcement Learning-Constrained Truncated Diffusion Modeling in End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 52
  5. 2025DriveDPO: Policy Learning via Safety DPO For End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 39
  6. 2026Driving on Registerscited by 38
  7. 2025SimScale: Learning to Drive via Real-World Simulation at Scalecited by 34
  8. 2026DriveWorld-VLA: Unified Latent-Space World Modeling with Vision-Language-Action for Autonomous Drivingcited by 31
  9. 2026Drive-JEPA: Video JEPA Meets Multimodal Trajectory Distillation for End-to-End Drivingcited by 26
  10. 2026SparseDriveV2: Scoring is All You Need for End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 21
  11. 2025DIVER: Reinforced Diffusion Breaks Imitation Bottlenecks in End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 17
  12. 2025GaussianFusion: Gaussian-Based Multi-Sensor Fusion for End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 16
38 more
  1. 2025Zero-Human Demonstration End-to-end Autonomous Driving with Trajectory Scorercited by 16
  2. 2025WAM-Flow: Parallel Coarse-to-Fine Motion Planning via Discrete Flow Matching for Autonomous Drivingcited by 15
  3. 2026DriveFuture: Future-Aware Latent World Models for Autonomous Drivingcited by 15
  4. 2025ResAD: Normalized Residual Trajectory Modeling for End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 12
  5. 2025MindDrive: An All-in-One Framework Bridging World Models and Vision-Language Model for End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 12
  6. 2026DVGT-2: Vision-Geometry-Action Model for Autonomous Driving at Scalecited by 12
  7. 2026MeanFuser: Fast One-Step Multi-Modal Trajectory Generation and Adaptive Reconstruction via MeanFlow for End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 11
  8. 2026ExploreVLA: Dense World Modeling and Exploration for End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 10
  9. 2026Metis: A Generalizable and Efficient World-Action Model for Autonomous Driving and Urban Navigationcited by 10
  10. 2026Qwen-RobotNav Technical Report: A Scalable Navigation Model Designed for an Agentic Navigation Systemcited by 10
  11. 2025DiffE2E: Rethinking End-to-End Driving with a Hybrid Action Diffusion and Supervised Policycited by 9
  12. 2025DiffRefiner: Coarse to Fine Trajectory Planning via Diffusion Refinement with Semantic Interaction for End to End Autonomous Drivingcited by 9
  13. 2026FLARE: Learning Future-Aware Latent Representations from Vision-Language Models for Autonomous Drivingcited by 9
  14. 2026BridgeSim: Unveiling the OL-CL Gap in End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 9
  15. 2026CLOVER: Closed-Loop Value Estimation and Ranking for End-to-End Autonomous Driving Planningcited by 9
  16. 2026SafeDrive: Fine-Grained Safety Reasoning for End-to-End Driving in a Sparse Worldcited by 7
  17. 2026RAD-2: Scaling Reinforcement Learning in a Generator-Discriminator Frameworkcited by 7
  18. 2026The DAWN of World-Action Interactive Modelscited by 7
  19. 2026Test-Time Trajectory Optimization for Autonomous Drivingcited by 7
  20. 2026GraphWorld: Long-Horizon Planning with World Models for End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 6
  21. 2025TransDiffuser: Diverse Trajectory Generation with Decorrelated Multi-modal Representation for End-to-end Autonomous Drivingcited by 4
  22. 2025FlowDrive: Energy Flow Field for End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 4
  23. 2025WPT: World-to-Policy Transfer via Online World Model Distillationcited by 4
  24. 2026Senna-2: Aligning VLM and End-to-End Driving Policy for Consistent Decision Making and Planningcited by 4
  25. 2026Auto-JEPA: A Latent World Model of Continuous Intent for End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 4
  26. 2025DiffVLA++: Bridging Cognitive Reasoning and End-to-End Driving through Metric-Guided Alignmentcited by 3
  27. 2026EvoDriveVLA: Evolving Driving VLA Models via Collaborative Perception-Planning Distillationcited by 3
  28. 2026Distill to Think, Foresee to Act: Cognitive-Physical Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Drivingcited by 3
  29. 2026ChainFlow-VLA: Causal Flow Planning with Vision-Language Modelscited by 3
  30. 2026DA-WAM: Decision-Aligned Future Latents for Driving World Modelscited by 3
  31. 2026RISE: Adaptive Imagination for World Action Modelscited by 3
  32. 2025DiffSemanticFusion: Semantic Raster BEV Fusion for Autonomous Driving via Online HD Map Diffusioncited by 2
  33. 2025SimpleVSF: VLM-Scoring Fusion for Trajectory Prediction of End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 2
  34. 2025Map-World: Masked Action planning and Path-Integral World Model for Autonomous Drivingcited by 2
  35. 2026UniUncer: Unified Dynamic Static Uncertainty for End to End Drivingcited by 2
  36. 2026IDOL: Inverse-Dynamics-Guided Future Prediction for End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 2
  37. 2026CLEAR: Cognition and Latent Evaluation for Adaptive Routing in End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 2
  38. 2026Intend, Reflect, Refine: An Adaptive Multimodal Reflection Framework for Autonomous Drivingcited by 2

50 most cited of 93 All 93 (JSON)

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025Hydra-NeXt: Robust Closed-Loop Driving with Open-Loop Training
  2. 2026Drive-KD: Multi-Teacher Distillation for VLMs in Autonomous Driving
  3. 2026Outcome-Guided Distillation: A Teacher-Student Framework to Advance VLM Reasoning in Autonomous Driving
  4. 2026What Matters for Scalable and Robust Learning in End-to-End Driving Planners?
  5. 2025DistillDrive: End-to-End Multi-Mode Autonomous Driving Distillation by Isomorphic Hetero-Source Planning Model
  6. 2026A Survey on End-to-End Autonomous Driving Training from the Perspectives of Data, Strategy, and Platform
  7. 2021End-to-End Interactive Prediction and Planning with Optical Flow Distillation for Autonomous Driving
  8. 2024Doe-1: Closed-Loop Autonomous Driving with Large World Model