# Fuzzy Encoding-Decoding to Improve Spiking Q-Learning Performance in Autonomous Driving

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.16436 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.16436/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in End-to-end system architecture, one of 9 directions in End-to-end autonomous driving.
- Builds on 18 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Apr 2026.

## Placed in

- End-to-end autonomous driving / [End-to-end system architecture](https://mlsanity.com/driving/end-to-end-system-architecture/)
- Deep reinforcement learning methods / [Spiking and neuromorphic RL](https://mlsanity.com/deeprl/spiking-and-neuromorphic-rl/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.5602/) (2013)
- [Deep Reinforcement Learning with Double Q-learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1509.06461/) (2015)
- [PointPillars: Fast Encoders for Object Detection from Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05784/) (2018)
- [Lift, Splat, Shoot: Encoding Images From Arbitrary Camera Rigs by Implicitly Unprojecting to 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.05711/) (2020)
- [Dueling Network Architectures for Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06581/) (2015)
- [Target-driven Visual Navigation in Indoor Scenes using Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.05143/) (2016)
- [Spikformer: When Spiking Neural Network Meets Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.15425/) (2022)
- [Deep Reinforcement Learning with Population-Coded Spiking Neural Network for Continuous Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.09635/) (2020)
- [Look Closer: Bridging Egocentric and Third-Person Views with Transformers for Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.07779/) (2022)
- [Human-Level Control through Directly-Trained Deep Spiking Q-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.07211/) (2021)
- [Strategy and Benchmark for Converting Deep Q-Networks to Event-Driven Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.14456/) (2020)
- [High-Performance Temporal Reversible Spiking Neural Networks with O(L) Training Memory and O(1) Inference Cost](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.16466/) (2024)
- [Multi-Modal Mutual Information (MuMMI) Training for Robust Self-Supervised Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.02339/) (2021)
- [Solving the Spike Feature Information Vanishing Problem in Spiking Deep Q Network with Potential Based Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.03654/) (2022)
- [Combining Reconstruction and Contrastive Methods for Multimodal Representations in RL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05342/) (2023)
- [Improving Performance of Spike-based Deep Q-Learning using Ternary Neurons](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.03392/) (2025)
- [New Spiking Architecture for Multi-Modal Decision-Making in Autonomous Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.01882/) (2025)
- [Population-Coded Spiking Neural Networks for High-Dimensional Robotic Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.10516/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper develops an end-to-end fuzzy encoder-decoder architecture for enhancing vision-based multi-modal deep spiking Q-networks in autonomous driving. The method addresses two core limitations of spiking reinforcement learning: information loss stemming from the conversion of dense visual inputs into sparse spike trains, and the limited representational capacity of spike-based value functions, which often yields weakly discriminative Q-value estimates. The encoder introduces trainable fuzzy membership functions to generate expressive, population-based spike representations, and the decoder uses a lightweight neural decoder to reconstruct continuous Q-values from spiking outputs. Experiments on the HighwayEnv benchmark show that the proposed architecture substantially improves decision-making accuracy and closes the performance gap between spiking and non-spiking multi-modal Q-networks. The results highlight the potential of this framework for efficient and real-time autonomous driving with spiking neural networks.