# World models for autonomous driving

Area: [World models](https://mlsanity.com/wm/index.md). HTML: https://mlsanity.com/wm/world-models-for-autonomous-driving/

## Key facts

- World models for autonomous driving: 320 papers on arXiv since 2013 (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- 139 of its 320 mapped papers (43%) cite “GAIA-1: A Generative World Model for Autonomous Driving” (2023, arXiv 2309.17080).
- 123 of its 320 mapped papers (38%) cite “Driving into the Future: Multiview Visual Forecasting and Planning with World Model for Autonomous Driving” (2023, arXiv 2311.17918).
- 29 new papers 17 Sep–14 Oct.

## Most cited here

- [GAIA-1: A Generative World Model for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.17080/) (2023), cited by 139 papers here
- [Driving into the Future: Multiview Visual Forecasting and Planning with World Model for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17918/) (2023), cited by 123 papers here
- [Vista: A Generalizable Driving World Model with High Fidelity and Versatile Controllability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.17398/) (2024), cited by 115 papers here
- [CARLA: An Open Urban Driving Simulator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.03938/) (2017), cited by 95 papers here
- [OccWorld: Learning a 3D Occupancy World Model for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16038/) (2023), cited by 94 papers here
- [DriveDreamer: Towards Real-world-driven World Models for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.09777/) (2023), cited by 84 papers here
- [NuPlan: A closed-loop ML-based planning benchmark for autonomous vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.11810/) (2021), cited by 72 papers here
- [Enhancing End-to-End Autonomous Driving with Latent World Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.08481/) (2024), cited by 72 papers here
- [DriveDreamer-2: LLM-Enhanced World Models for Diverse Driving Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06845/) (2024), cited by 65 papers here
- [Epona: Autoregressive Diffusion World Model for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.24113/) (2025), cited by 57 papers here

## New (17 Sep–14 Oct)

- [SafeDriveVLA: Navigation-Conditioned World Model Dreaming for Conflict-Aware End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.20609/) (2026-10-14)
- [DriveWLA: Unifying Future Dynamics and Scene Semantics through World-Language-Action Modeling for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.17903/) (2026-10-13)
- [OccWAM: Occupancy World-Action Models with Joint Scene-to-Ego Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.17688/) (2026-10-13)
- [Directional Pullback Regularization for Long-Horizon Rollout of Latent World Models in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.16139/) (2026-10-12)
- [MORE: Learning Motion-Oriented Registers for Driving World Models and Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.14871/) (2026-10-10)
- [InfraWorld: Motion-Aware World Modeling for Roadside 4D Occupancy Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.14544/) (2026-10-10)
- [SimVTA: Simulation-Grounded Video-Trajectory Alignment for Driving World Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.13781/) (2026-10-09)
- [PlanWAM: Planning-Shaped Future Representations for End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.11382/) (2026-10-08)
- [VGGTWorld-VLA: Intent-Conditioned 3D World Evolution for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.11161/) (2026-10-08)
- [AffordDrive3D: Affordance-Aware World-Action Modeling with Spatial Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.11060/) (2026-10-08)
- [GeoWM: Efficient Direct World Modeling in Explicit Geometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.07381/) (2026-10-05)
- [ReWAM: Reciprocal World Action Models for Interactive Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.39245/) (2026-09-30)
- [V2X-WAM: A Cooperative World Action Model for End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.37098/) (2026-09-30)
- [RoXDrive: Closed-Loop Reinforcement Learning for End-to-End Autonomous Driving via Action-Faithful Rollouts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.36851/) (2026-09-30)
- [MomWorld: Momentum-Aware Latent World Model for Long-Horizon Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.33737/) (2026-09-30)
- [PhysWAM: Physically Consistent World Action Model for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.37970/) (2026-09-29)
- [World4Scorer: Outcome-Grounded World Modeling for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.36438/) (2026-09-29)
- [CoDrive: Cross-Vehicle World-Consistent Video Generation with Precise Trajectory Control for Cooperative Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.34749/) (2026-09-28)
- [AD-E2E-JEPA: A Joint-Embedding Predictive Architecture For End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.34085/) (2026-09-28)
- [ReDrive: Shaping Representations with World Modeling for End-to-End Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.33854/) (2026-09-27)
- [VehDyn: A Driving World Model Benchmark for Vehicle Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.33264/) (2026-09-27)
- [WALT: Learning World-Model-Aligned Latent Trajectories for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.30436/) (2026-09-24)
- [HelloWorld: Towards Practical Applications of Generative Driving World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.28931/) (2026-09-24)
- [SlackDrive: Reclaiming Runtime Slack for Adaptive Driving Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.28064/) (2026-09-23)
- [ForeDrive: Foresight-Guided End-to-End Autonomous Driving with a Planning-Relevant Latent World Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.26299/) (2026-09-22)
- [Relationally Grounded Latent World Models for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.24626/) (2026-09-21)
- [DriveReferee: Geometric Safety Verdicts Need Not Be Learned for Driving World-Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.22762/) (2026-09-19)
- [ZYT-World: A Real-Time Controllable World Model for Closed-Loop Autonomous-Driving Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.21712/) (2026-09-18)
- [MM-Future: Multi-Mode Joint World-Action Modeling for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.20377/) (2026-09-17)