Beyond Waypoint Regression: Query-Based Cost Learning over Reachable Ego Futures for End-to-End Driving
Ahmed AbouelazmRupert PolleyQingyuan ZhangYin WuPhilip Sch\"ornerCarl EsselbornJ. Marius Z\"ollner
Oct 2026
Artificial IntelligenceMachine LearningRobotics
Abstract
End-to-end planners based on waypoint regression achieve strong open-loop accuracy, but they primarily learn to mimic expert geometry and remain difficult to adapt to deployment-time safety constraints. We propose a query-based cost-learning framework that estimates bounded costs for dynamically reachable ego trajectory queries, rather than dense BEV cells or a small regressed trajectory set. Compact joint scene tokens capture coherent multimodal agent futures, while contingency-aware cost aggregation and cost-guided intra-cluster MPPI mixing convert the learned cost topology into feasible ego plans. On nuScenes, our method improves over prior cost-estimation planners such as ST-P3 and NMP, outperforms most regression baselines in collision rate, while remaining competitive in L2, and retaining an interpretable cost interface. On real-world driving logs, the proposed planner reduces collision rates compared with SparseDrive and Alpamayo without fine-tuning, while maintaining a diverse set of candidate trajectories.
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