# Energy-Aware Imitation Learning for Steering Prediction Using Events and Frames

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.28008 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.28008/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Imitation and offline RL for driving, one of 13 directions in Offline RL and imitation learning from data.
- Builds on 23 of its 44 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 Mar 2026.

## Placed in

- Offline RL and imitation learning from data / [Imitation and offline RL for driving](https://mlsanity.com/offlinerl/imitation-and-offline-rl-for-driving/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 23 of 23)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Event-based Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08405/) (2019)
- [End to End Learning for Self-Driving Cars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.07316/) (2016)
- [End-to-end Autonomous Driving: Challenges and Frontiers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.16927/) (2023)
- [Generative Moment Matching Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.02761/) (2015)
- [MMD GAN: Towards Deeper Understanding of Moment Matching Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.08584/) (2017)
- [CMX: Cross-Modal Fusion for RGB-X Semantic Segmentation with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04838/) (2022)
- [Event-based Vision meets Deep Learning on Steering Prediction for Self-driving Cars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.01310/) (2018)
- [End-to-end Learning of Driving Models from Large-scale Video Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01079/) (2016)
- [Vision Language Models in Autonomous Driving: A Survey and Outlook](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.14414/) (2023)
- [Event-Based Fusion for Motion Deblurring with Cross-modal Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.00167/) (2021)
- [DDD17: End-To-End DAVIS Driving Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.01458/) (2017)
- [State Space Models for Event Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.15584/) (2024)
- [DDD20 End-to-End Event Camera Driving Dataset: Fusing Frames and Events with Deep Learning for Improved Steering Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.08605/) (2020)
- [Revisiting Token Pruning for Object Detection and Instance Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.07050/) (2023)
- [RGB-Event Fusion for Moving Object Detection in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.08323/) (2022)
- [Estimating and Evaluating Regression Predictive Uncertainty in Deep Object Detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.05036/) (2021)
- [Mitigating Motion Blur in Neural Radiance Fields with Events and Frames](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19780/) (2024)
- [Embracing Events and Frames with Hierarchical Feature Refinement Network for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12582/) (2024)
- [A Hybrid ANN-SNN Architecture for Low-Power and Low-Latency Visual Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14176/) (2023)
- [Steering Prediction via a Multi-Sensor System for Autonomous Racing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.19356/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In autonomous driving, relying solely on frame-based cameras can lead to inaccuracies caused by factors like long exposure times, high-speed motion, and challenging lighting conditions. To address these issues, we introduce a bio-inspired vision sensor known as the event camera. Unlike conventional cameras, event cameras capture sparse, asynchronous events that provide a complementary modality to mitigate these challenges. In this work, we propose an energy-aware imitation learning framework for steering prediction that leverages both events and frames. Specifically, we design an Energy-driven Cross-modality Fusion Module (ECFM) and an energy-aware decoder to produce reliable and safe predictions. Extensive experiments on two public real-world datasets, DDD20 and DRFuser, demonstrate that our method outperforms existing state-of-the-art (SOTA) approaches. The codes and trained models will be released upon acceptance.
