MMCD: Multi-Modal Collaborative Decision-Making for Connected Autonomy with Knowledge Distillation

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Liu, Rui, Wang, Zikang, Gao, Peng, Shen, Yu, Tokekar, Pratap, Lin, Ming
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866912600096243712
author Liu, Rui
Wang, Zikang
Gao, Peng
Shen, Yu
Tokekar, Pratap
Lin, Ming
author_facet Liu, Rui
Wang, Zikang
Gao, Peng
Shen, Yu
Tokekar, Pratap
Lin, Ming
contents Autonomous systems have advanced significantly, but challenges persist in accident-prone environments where robust decision-making is crucial. A single vehicle's limited sensor range and obstructed views increase the likelihood of accidents. Multi-vehicle connected systems and multi-modal approaches, leveraging RGB images and LiDAR point clouds, have emerged as promising solutions. However, existing methods often assume the availability of all data modalities and connected vehicles during both training and testing, which is impractical due to potential sensor failures or missing connected vehicles. To address these challenges, we introduce a novel framework MMCD (Multi-Modal Collaborative Decision-making) for connected autonomy. Our framework fuses multi-modal observations from ego and collaborative vehicles to enhance decision-making under challenging conditions. To ensure robust performance when certain data modalities are unavailable during testing, we propose an approach based on cross-modal knowledge distillation with a teacher-student model structure. The teacher model is trained with multiple data modalities, while the student model is designed to operate effectively with reduced modalities. In experiments on $\textit{connected autonomous driving with ground vehicles}$ and $\textit{aerial-ground vehicles collaboration}$, our method improves driving safety by up to ${\it 20.7}\%$, surpassing the best-existing baseline in detecting potential accidents and making safe driving decisions. More information can be found on our website https://ruiiu.github.io/mmcd.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_18198
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle MMCD: Multi-Modal Collaborative Decision-Making for Connected Autonomy with Knowledge Distillation
Liu, Rui
Wang, Zikang
Gao, Peng
Shen, Yu
Tokekar, Pratap
Lin, Ming
Artificial Intelligence
Multiagent Systems
Robotics
Autonomous systems have advanced significantly, but challenges persist in accident-prone environments where robust decision-making is crucial. A single vehicle's limited sensor range and obstructed views increase the likelihood of accidents. Multi-vehicle connected systems and multi-modal approaches, leveraging RGB images and LiDAR point clouds, have emerged as promising solutions. However, existing methods often assume the availability of all data modalities and connected vehicles during both training and testing, which is impractical due to potential sensor failures or missing connected vehicles. To address these challenges, we introduce a novel framework MMCD (Multi-Modal Collaborative Decision-making) for connected autonomy. Our framework fuses multi-modal observations from ego and collaborative vehicles to enhance decision-making under challenging conditions. To ensure robust performance when certain data modalities are unavailable during testing, we propose an approach based on cross-modal knowledge distillation with a teacher-student model structure. The teacher model is trained with multiple data modalities, while the student model is designed to operate effectively with reduced modalities. In experiments on $\textit{connected autonomous driving with ground vehicles}$ and $\textit{aerial-ground vehicles collaboration}$, our method improves driving safety by up to ${\it 20.7}\%$, surpassing the best-existing baseline in detecting potential accidents and making safe driving decisions. More information can be found on our website https://ruiiu.github.io/mmcd.
title MMCD: Multi-Modal Collaborative Decision-Making for Connected Autonomy with Knowledge Distillation
topic Artificial Intelligence
Multiagent Systems
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.18198