CoPlanner: An Interactive Motion Planner with Contingency-Aware Diffusion for Autonomous Driving

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhong, Ruiguo, Yao, Ruoyu, Liu, Pei, Chen, Xiaolong, Yang, Rui, Ma, Jun
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Zhong, Ruiguo
Yao, Ruoyu
Liu, Pei
Chen, Xiaolong
Yang, Rui
Ma, Jun
author_facet Zhong, Ruiguo
Yao, Ruoyu
Liu, Pei
Chen, Xiaolong
Yang, Rui
Ma, Jun
contents Accurate trajectory prediction and motion planning are crucial for autonomous driving systems to navigate safely in complex, interactive environments characterized by multimodal uncertainties. However, current generation-then-evaluation frameworks typically construct multiple plausible trajectory hypotheses but ultimately adopt a single most likely outcome, leading to overconfident decisions and a lack of fallback strategies that are vital for safety in rare but critical scenarios. Moreover, the usual decoupling of prediction and planning modules could result in socially inconsistent or unrealistic joint trajectories, especially in highly interactive traffic. To address these challenges, we propose a contingency-aware diffusion planner (CoPlanner), a unified framework that jointly models multi-agent interactive trajectory generation and contingency-aware motion planning. Specifically, the pivot-conditioned diffusion mechanism anchors trajectory sampling on a validated, shared short-term segment to preserve temporal consistency, while stochastically generating diverse long-horizon branches that capture multimodal motion evolutions. In parallel, we design a contingency-aware multi-scenario scoring strategy that evaluates candidate ego trajectories across multiple plausible long-horizon evolution scenarios, balancing safety, progress, and comfort. This integrated design preserves feasible fallback options and enhances robustness under uncertainty, leading to more realistic interaction-aware planning. Extensive closed-loop experiments on the nuPlan benchmark demonstrate that CoPlanner consistently surpasses state-of-the-art methods on both Val14 and Test14 datasets, achieving significant improvements in safety and comfort under both reactive and non-reactive settings. Code and model will be made publicly available upon acceptance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_17080
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle CoPlanner: An Interactive Motion Planner with Contingency-Aware Diffusion for Autonomous Driving
Zhong, Ruiguo
Yao, Ruoyu
Liu, Pei
Chen, Xiaolong
Yang, Rui
Ma, Jun
Robotics
Accurate trajectory prediction and motion planning are crucial for autonomous driving systems to navigate safely in complex, interactive environments characterized by multimodal uncertainties. However, current generation-then-evaluation frameworks typically construct multiple plausible trajectory hypotheses but ultimately adopt a single most likely outcome, leading to overconfident decisions and a lack of fallback strategies that are vital for safety in rare but critical scenarios. Moreover, the usual decoupling of prediction and planning modules could result in socially inconsistent or unrealistic joint trajectories, especially in highly interactive traffic. To address these challenges, we propose a contingency-aware diffusion planner (CoPlanner), a unified framework that jointly models multi-agent interactive trajectory generation and contingency-aware motion planning. Specifically, the pivot-conditioned diffusion mechanism anchors trajectory sampling on a validated, shared short-term segment to preserve temporal consistency, while stochastically generating diverse long-horizon branches that capture multimodal motion evolutions. In parallel, we design a contingency-aware multi-scenario scoring strategy that evaluates candidate ego trajectories across multiple plausible long-horizon evolution scenarios, balancing safety, progress, and comfort. This integrated design preserves feasible fallback options and enhances robustness under uncertainty, leading to more realistic interaction-aware planning. Extensive closed-loop experiments on the nuPlan benchmark demonstrate that CoPlanner consistently surpasses state-of-the-art methods on both Val14 and Test14 datasets, achieving significant improvements in safety and comfort under both reactive and non-reactive settings. Code and model will be made publicly available upon acceptance.
title CoPlanner: An Interactive Motion Planner with Contingency-Aware Diffusion for Autonomous Driving
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17080