mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

TADPO: Reinforcement Learning Goes Off-road

arXiv 2603.05995 ↗First posted 6 Mar 2026cs.RO cs.AI cs.LGcited by 3

On the map: Deep reinforcement learning methods → RL for autonomous driving and traffic

Abstract (arXiv)

Off-road autonomous driving poses significant challenges such as navigating unmapped, variable terrain with uncertain and diverse dynamics. Addressing these challenges requires effective long-horizon planning and adaptable control. Reinforcement Learning (RL) offers a promising solution by learning control policies directly from interaction. However, because off-road driving is a long-horizon task with low-signal rewards, standard RL methods are challenging to apply in this setting. We introduce TADPO, a novel policy gradient formulation that extends Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), leveraging off-policy trajectories for teacher guidance and on-policy trajectories for student exploration. Building on this, we develop a vision-based, end-to-end RL system for high-speed off-road driving, capable of navigating extreme slopes and obstacle-rich terrain. We demonstrate our performance in simulation and, importantly, zero-shot sim-to-real transfer on a full-scale off-road vehicle. To our knowledge, this work represents the first deployment of RL-based policies on a full-scale off-road platform.

Key facts. Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in RL for autonomous driving and traffic, one of 15 directions in Deep reinforcement learning methods. Builds on 31 of its 47 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 6 Mar 2026.

Builds on

31 of 47 references.

Closest ancestors · 1

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2024WROOM: An Autonomous Driving Approach for Off-Road Navigation12 Apr

Other references · 30

  1. 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 15,215
  2. 2023DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervisioncited by 7,974
  3. 2018Soft Actor-Critic: Off-Policy Maximum Entropy Deep Reinforcement Learning with a Stochastic Actorcited by 4,885
  4. 2013Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 3,274
  5. 2024SAM 2: Segment Anything in Images and Videoscited by 2,863
  6. 2021Offline Reinforcement Learning with Implicit Q-Learningcited by 1,293
  7. 2022Planning with Diffusion for Flexible Behavior Synthesiscited by 1,061
  8. 2018Learning Dexterous In-Hand Manipulationcited by 687
  9. 2022Temporal Difference Learning for Model Predictive Controlcited by 397
  10. 2018Learning to Drive in a Daycited by 273
  11. 2019Planning with Goal-Conditioned Policiescited by 149
  12. 2021Goal-Conditioned Reinforcement Learning with Imagined Subgoalscited by 134
18 more
  1. 2015Model Predictive Path Integral Control using Covariance Variable Importance Samplingcited by 124
  2. 2023V-STRONG: Visual Self-Supervised Traversability Learning for Off-road Navigationcited by 32
  3. 2021Safe Driving via Expert Guided Policy Optimizationcited by 31
  4. 2022How Does It Feel? Self-Supervised Costmap Learning for Off-Road Vehicle Traversabilitycited by 27
  5. 2024RoadRunner -- Learning Traversability Estimation for Autonomous Off-road Drivingcited by 26
  6. 2024CTS: Concurrent Teacher-Student Reinforcement Learning for Legged Locomotioncited by 25
  7. 2020Guided Exploration with Proximal Policy Optimization using a Single Demonstrationcited by 19
  8. 2023Learning Risk-Aware Costmaps via Inverse Reinforcement Learning for Off-Road Navigationcited by 15
  9. 2019Off-road Autonomous Vehicles Traversability Analysis and Trajectory Planning Based on Deep Inverse Reinforcement Learningcited by 13
  10. 2023Model Predictive Control for Aggressive Driving Over Uneven Terraincited by 9
  11. 2024Proximal Policy Distillationcited by 9
  12. 2023Learning Terrain-Aware Kinodynamic Model for Autonomous Off-Road Rally Driving With Model Predictive Path Integral Controlcited by 8
  13. 2024Deep Reinforcement Learning with Enhanced PPO for Safe Mobile Robot Navigationcited by 7
  14. 2024SALON: Self-supervised Adaptive Learning for Off-road Navigationcited by 6
  15. 2025Long Range Navigator (LRN): Extending robot planning horizons beyond metric mapscited by 6
  16. 2021Learning from demonstrations with SACR2: Soft Actor-Critic with Reward Relabelingcited by 4
  17. 2022Predictive Barrier Lyapunov Function Based Control for Safe Trajectory Tracking of an Aerial Manipulatorcited by 1
  18. 2023Control Barrier Function-based Predictive Control for Close Proximity operation of UAVs inside a Tunnelcited by 1

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 3.

3 papers.

  1. 2026TerraTransfer: Learning End-to-End Driving Policies Without Expert Demonstrationscited by 3
  2. 2026MILER: Semantic Mid-Level Representation for Sim-to-Real Reinforcement Learning in Unstructured Autonomous Drivingcited by 0
  3. 2026Verti-WM: A Physics-Aided Exteroceptive World Model for Off-Road Reinforcement Learningcited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2021Offline Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Driving with Safety and Exploration Enhancement
  2. 2022Optimizing Trajectories for Highway Driving with Offline Reinforcement Learning
  3. 2024Reinforcement Learning for Wheeled Mobility on Vertically Challenging Terrain
  4. 2024Optimizing Low-Speed Autonomous Driving: A Reinforcement Learning Approach to Route Stability and Maximum Speed
  5. 2025A Survey of Reinforcement Learning-Based Motion Planning for Autonomous Driving: Lessons Learned from a Driving Task Perspective
  6. 2025AD-R1: Closed-Loop Reinforcement Learning for End-to-End Autonomous Driving with Impartial World Models
  7. 2022Driver Dojo: A Benchmark for Generalizable Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Driving
  8. 2023Pay Attention to How You Drive: Safe and Adaptive Model-Based Reinforcement Learning for Off-Road Driving