Relative Position Matters: Trajectory Prediction and Planning with Polar Representation

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Zhang, Bozhou, Song, Nan, Gao, Bingzhao, Zhang, Li
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Zhang, Bozhou
Song, Nan
Gao, Bingzhao
Zhang, Li
author_facet Zhang, Bozhou
Song, Nan
Gao, Bingzhao
Zhang, Li
contents Trajectory prediction and planning in autonomous driving are highly challenging due to the complexity of predicting surrounding agents' movements and planning the ego agent's actions in dynamic environments. Existing methods encode map and agent positions and decode future trajectories in Cartesian coordinates. However, modeling the relationships between the ego vehicle and surrounding traffic elements in Cartesian space can be suboptimal, as it does not naturally capture the varying influence of different elements based on their relative distances and directions. To address this limitation, we adopt the Polar coordinate system, where positions are represented by radius and angle. This representation provides a more intuitive and effective way to model spatial changes and relative relationships, especially in terms of distance and directional influence. Based on this insight, we propose Polaris, a novel method that operates entirely in Polar coordinates, distinguishing itself from conventional Cartesian-based approaches. By leveraging the Polar representation, this method explicitly models distance and direction variations and captures relative relationships through dedicated encoding and refinement modules, enabling more structured and spatially aware trajectory prediction and planning. Extensive experiments on the challenging prediction (Argoverse 2) and planning benchmarks (nuPlan) demonstrate that Polaris achieves state-of-the-art performance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_11492
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Relative Position Matters: Trajectory Prediction and Planning with Polar Representation
Zhang, Bozhou
Song, Nan
Gao, Bingzhao
Zhang, Li
Robotics
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Trajectory prediction and planning in autonomous driving are highly challenging due to the complexity of predicting surrounding agents' movements and planning the ego agent's actions in dynamic environments. Existing methods encode map and agent positions and decode future trajectories in Cartesian coordinates. However, modeling the relationships between the ego vehicle and surrounding traffic elements in Cartesian space can be suboptimal, as it does not naturally capture the varying influence of different elements based on their relative distances and directions. To address this limitation, we adopt the Polar coordinate system, where positions are represented by radius and angle. This representation provides a more intuitive and effective way to model spatial changes and relative relationships, especially in terms of distance and directional influence. Based on this insight, we propose Polaris, a novel method that operates entirely in Polar coordinates, distinguishing itself from conventional Cartesian-based approaches. By leveraging the Polar representation, this method explicitly models distance and direction variations and captures relative relationships through dedicated encoding and refinement modules, enabling more structured and spatially aware trajectory prediction and planning. Extensive experiments on the challenging prediction (Argoverse 2) and planning benchmarks (nuPlan) demonstrate that Polaris achieves state-of-the-art performance.
title Relative Position Matters: Trajectory Prediction and Planning with Polar Representation
topic Robotics
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.11492