mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

ReflectDrive-2: Reinforcement-Learning-Aligned Self-Editing for Discrete Diffusion Driving

arXiv 2605.04647 ↗First posted 6 May 2026cs.ROcited by 3

On the map: Diffusion models → Diffusion and flow policies for robotics

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Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce ReflectDrive-2, a masked discrete diffusion planner with separate action expert for autonomous driving that represents plans as discrete trajectory tokens and generates them through parallel masked decoding. This discrete token space enables in-place trajectory revision: AutoEdit rewrites selected tokens using the same model, without requiring an auxiliary refinement network. To train this capability, we use a two-stage procedure. First, we construct structure-aware perturbations of expert trajectories along longitudinal progress and lateral heading directions and supervise the model to recover the original expert trajectory. We then fine-tune the full decision--draft--reflect rollout with reinforcement learning (RL), assigning terminal driving reward to the final post-edit trajectory and propagating policy-gradient credit through full-rollout transitions. Full-rollout RL proves crucial for coupling drafting and editing: under supervised training alone, inference-time AutoEdit improves PDMS by at most 0.3, whereas RL increases its gain to 1.9. We also co-design an efficient reflective decoding stack for the decision--draft--reflect pipeline, combining shared-prefix KV reuse, Alternating Step Decode, and fused on-device unmasking. On NAVSIM, ReflectDrive-2 achieves 91.0 PDMS with camera-only input and 94.8 PDMS in a best-of-6 oracle setting, while running at 31.8 ms average latency on NVIDIA Thor.

Key facts. Cited by 3 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 41 of its 43 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 6 May 2026.

Builds on

41 of 43 references.

Closest ancestors · 8

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026Unleashing the Potential of Diffusion Models for End-to-End Autonomous Driving26 Feb
  2. 2026DriveFine: Refining-Augmented Masked Diffusion VLA for Precise and Robust Driving16 Feb
  3. 2025GoalFlow: Goal-Driven Flow Matching for Multimodal Trajectories Generation in End-to-End Autonomous Driving7 Mar
  4. 2024DiffusionDrive: Truncated Diffusion Model for End-to-End Autonomous Driving22 Nov
  5. 2024Diffusion Policy Policy Optimization1 Sep
  6. 2023Language-Guided Traffic Simulation via Scene-Level Diffusion10 Jun
  7. 2023Training Diffusion Models with Reinforcement Learning22 May
  8. 2023Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion7 Mar

Other references · 33

  1. 2024OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 2,887
  2. 2021Structured Denoising Diffusion Models in Discrete State-Spacescited by 1,719
  3. 2022MaskGIT: Masked Generative Image Transformercited by 1,099
  4. 2022Planning-oriented Autonomous Drivingcited by 1,087
  5. 2022Planning with Diffusion for Flexible Behavior Synthesiscited by 1,061
  6. 2016End to End Learning for Self-Driving Carscited by 1,009
  7. 2025Large Language Diffusion Modelscited by 912
  8. 2023Discrete Diffusion Modeling by Estimating the Ratios of the Data Distributioncited by 745
  9. 2023VAD: Vectorized Scene Representation for Efficient Autonomous Drivingcited by 622
  10. 2023DriveLM: Driving with Graph Visual Question Answeringcited by 536
  11. 2021NuPlan: A closed-loop ML-based planning benchmark for autonomous vehiclescited by 493
  12. 2024DriveVLM: The Convergence of Autonomous Driving and Large Vision-Language Modelscited by 490
21 more
  1. 2017End-to-end Driving via Conditional Imitation Learningcited by 485
  2. 2022TransFuser: Imitation with Transformer-Based Sensor Fusion for Autonomous Drivingcited by 485
  3. 2025Fast-dLLM: Training-free Acceleration of Diffusion LLM by Enabling KV Cache and Parallel Decodingcited by 420
  4. 2025Block Diffusion: Interpolating Between Autoregressive and Diffusion Language Modelscited by 409
  5. 2018ChauffeurNet: Learning to Drive by Imitating the Best and Synthesizing the Worstcited by 397
  6. 2022ST-P3: End-to-end Vision-based Autonomous Driving via Spatial-Temporal Feature Learningcited by 368
  7. 2024NAVSIM: Data-Driven Non-Reactive Autonomous Vehicle Simulation and Benchmarkingcited by 354
  8. 2025AutoVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model for End-to-End Autonomous Driving with Adaptive Reasoning and Reinforcement Fine-Tuningcited by 260
  9. 2024Hydra-MDP: End-to-end Multimodal Planning with Multi-target Hydra-Distillationcited by 249
  10. 2023MotionDiffuser: Controllable Multi-Agent Motion Prediction using Diffusioncited by 213
  11. 2025ReCogDrive: A Reinforced Cognitive Framework for End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 198
  12. 2025d1: Scaling Reasoning in Diffusion Large Language Models via Reinforcement Learningcited by 186
  13. 2025Seed Diffusion: A Large-Scale Diffusion Language Model with High-Speed Inferencecited by 178
  14. 2025LLaDA2.0: Scaling Up Diffusion Language Models to 100Bcited by 166
  15. 2025DriveVLA-W0: World Models Amplify Data Scaling Law in Autonomous Drivingcited by 134
  16. 2018Baidu Apollo EM Motion Plannercited by 100
  17. 2026LLaDA2.1: Speeding Up Text Diffusion via Token Editingcited by 54
  18. 2025SPG: Sandwiched Policy Gradient for Masked Diffusion Language Modelscited by 41
  19. 2025LLaDA-VLA: Vision Language Diffusion Action Modelscited by 30
  20. 2025d2: Improving Reasoning in Diffusion Language Models via Trajectory Likelihood Estimationcited by 27
  21. 2025From Denoising to Refining: A Corrective Framework for Vision-Language Diffusion Modelcited by 9

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 3.

3 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025Discrete Diffusion for Reflective Vision-Language-Action Models in Autonomous Driving
  2. 2026CorrectionPlanner: Self-Correction Planner with Reinforcement Learning in Autonomous Driving
  3. 2026Reflect-VLA: Internalizing Reflective Guidance via Dual-Path On-Policy Self-Distillation for Autonomous Driving
  4. 2026RAPiD: Reward-Guided Consistency Distillation of Diffusion Planners for Real-Time Autonomous Driving
  5. 2026Learning to Explain While Planning: Rule-Aligned Diffusion Planning for Autonomous Driving
  6. 2025DAP: A Discrete-token Autoregressive Planner for Autonomous Driving
  7. 2024Diffusion-ES: Gradient-free Planning with Diffusion for Autonomous Driving and Zero-Shot Instruction Following
  8. 2025DIVER: Reinforced Diffusion Breaks Imitation Bottlenecks in End-to-End Autonomous Driving