Autonomous driving paper index

Towards Metric-Agnostic Trajectory Forecasting

2026-07-01 · arXiv (Cornell University)

autonomous drivingmotion predictiontrajectory forecastingwaymoprediction

One-line summary

Because these metrics encourage conflicting behavior, we propose a paradigm change for trajectory forecasting: training models with metric-agnostic probabilistic objectives and treating metric optimization as a downstream task applied to the predictive distribution.

Engineering notes

We observe that current state-of-the-art forecasting models on Argoverse 2 and the Waymo Open Motion Dataset tailor their training objectives to the different benchmark metrics. We evaluate this framework by introducing DONUT-NLL, which adapts the training objective of the state-of-the-art trajectory forecasting model DONUT to directly optimize the predictive distribution.

Chinese explanation / 中文解读

中文解读待补充:本站会优先为端到端自动驾驶、BEV感知、3D目标检测、轨迹预测、路径规划、LiDAR感知等高价值论文补充中文说明。

Original abstract

Accurate trajectory forecasting of surrounding traffic participants is a core capability for autonomous driving, enabling vehicles to anticipate behavior and plan safe maneuvers. We observe that current state-of-the-art forecasting models on Argoverse 2 and the Waymo Open Motion Dataset tailor their training objectives to the different benchmark metrics. Because these metrics encourage conflicting behavior, we propose a paradigm change for trajectory forecasting: training models with metric-agnostic probabilistic objectives and treating metric optimization as a downstream task applied to the predictive distribution. Concretely, we introduce Trajectory Distribution Evaluation (TraDiE) policies, metric-specific policies that map a predictive distribution to the set of $K$ trajectories and confidences required by trajectory forecasting metrics. We evaluate this framework by introducing DONUT-NLL, which adapts the training objective of the state-of-the-art trajectory forecasting model DONUT to directly optimize the predictive distribution. Using our policies, DONUT-NLL achieves state-of-the-art results on all metrics of the Waymo motion prediction benchmark.

5.5Engineering value
8.0Research novelty
6.0Business relevance

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