# Investigating Behavior Cloning from Few Demonstrations for Autonomous Driving based on Bird's-Eye View in Simulated Cities

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.20203 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.20203/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 15 of its 20 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Oct 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [End to End Learning for Self-Driving Cars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.07316/) (2016)
- [End-to-end Driving via Conditional Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.02410/) (2017)
- [Implicit Behavioral Cloning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.00137/) (2021)
- [ChauffeurNet: Learning to Drive by Imitating the Best and Synthesizing the Worst](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03079/) (2018)
- [Learning by Cheating](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.12294/) (2019)
- [Exploring the Limitations of Behavior Cloning for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08980/) (2019)
- [A Survey of Motion Planning and Control Techniques for Self-driving Urban Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.07446/) (2016)
- [End-to-End Urban Driving by Imitating a Reinforcement Learning Coach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08265/) (2021)
- [End-to-end Learning of Driving Models from Large-scale Video Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01079/) (2016)
- [CIRL: Controllable Imitative Reinforcement Learning for Vision-based Self-driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.03776/) (2018)
- [Training Larger Networks for Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.07920/) (2021)
- [Probabilistic End-to-End Vehicle Navigation in Complex Dynamic Environments with Multimodal Sensor Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.01935/) (2020)
- [Hierarchical Generative Adversarial Imitation Learning with Mid-level Input Generation for Autonomous Driving on Urban Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04823/) (2023)
- [Proximal Policy Optimization with Continuous Bounded Action Space via the Beta Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.02202/) (2021)
- [Generative Adversarial Imitation Learning for End-to-End Autonomous Driving on Urban Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.08586/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper investigates the use of Behavior Cloning (BC) for autonomous driving from a bird's-eye view (BEV) perspective in simulated urban environments. BC uses supervised learning to mimic expert driving behaviors. Previous works have applied BC in the CARLA simulator but did not fully address the challenges of traffic light compliance. Our approach enhances BC by integrating a kernel density estimator to adjust training sample weights based on action density, thereby improving the learning of rare but critical actions such as stopping at red lights and accelerating at green lights, specially in scenarios of scarce number of expert demonstrations. Using BEV inputs, which provide an abstract top-down view of the driving environment, our method simplifies the policy learning process. The trained convolutional neural network (CNN) outputs steering and acceleration actions based on these BEV inputs and additional state variables. Experimental results in the CARLA simulator demonstrate that our weighted BC method significantly improves driving performance, achieving higher route completion compared to standard BC. This weighted approach proved to be crucial in learning correct driving behaviors, particularly in test environments not encountered during training, highlighting its potential for enhancing autonomous vehicle navigation.