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Main Authors: Liu, Yanjiao, Liu, Jiawei, Gong, Xun, Nie, Zifei
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.21479
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author Liu, Yanjiao
Liu, Jiawei
Gong, Xun
Nie, Zifei
author_facet Liu, Yanjiao
Liu, Jiawei
Gong, Xun
Nie, Zifei
contents Large language models (LLMs) have recently demonstrated strong reasoning capabilities and attracted increasing research attention in the field of autonomous driving (AD). However, safe application of LLMs on AD perception and prediction still requires a thorough understanding of both the dynamic traffic agents and the static road infrastructure. To this end, this study introduces a framework to evaluate the capability of LLMs in understanding the behaviors of dynamic traffic agents and the topology of road networks. The framework leverages frozen LLMs as the reasoning engine, employing a traffic encoder to extract spatial-level scene features from observed trajectories of agents, while a lightweight Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) encodes the local high-definition (HD) maps. To assess the intrinsic reasoning ability of LLMs, the extracted scene features are then transformed into LLM-compatible tokens via a reprogramming adapter. By residing the prediction burden with the LLMs, a simpler linear decoder is applied to output future trajectories. The framework enables a quantitative analysis of the influence of multi-modal information, especially the impact of map semantics on trajectory prediction accuracy, and allows seamless integration of frozen LLMs with minimal adaptation, thereby demonstrating strong generalizability across diverse LLM architectures and providing a unified platform for model evaluation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_21479
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Frozen LLMs as Map-Aware Spatio-Temporal Reasoners for Vehicle Trajectory Prediction
Liu, Yanjiao
Liu, Jiawei
Gong, Xun
Nie, Zifei
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Large language models (LLMs) have recently demonstrated strong reasoning capabilities and attracted increasing research attention in the field of autonomous driving (AD). However, safe application of LLMs on AD perception and prediction still requires a thorough understanding of both the dynamic traffic agents and the static road infrastructure. To this end, this study introduces a framework to evaluate the capability of LLMs in understanding the behaviors of dynamic traffic agents and the topology of road networks. The framework leverages frozen LLMs as the reasoning engine, employing a traffic encoder to extract spatial-level scene features from observed trajectories of agents, while a lightweight Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) encodes the local high-definition (HD) maps. To assess the intrinsic reasoning ability of LLMs, the extracted scene features are then transformed into LLM-compatible tokens via a reprogramming adapter. By residing the prediction burden with the LLMs, a simpler linear decoder is applied to output future trajectories. The framework enables a quantitative analysis of the influence of multi-modal information, especially the impact of map semantics on trajectory prediction accuracy, and allows seamless integration of frozen LLMs with minimal adaptation, thereby demonstrating strong generalizability across diverse LLM architectures and providing a unified platform for model evaluation.
title Frozen LLMs as Map-Aware Spatio-Temporal Reasoners for Vehicle Trajectory Prediction
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.21479