Scenario Orchestration for Closed-loop Policy Evaluation of Autonomous Driving

Engineering notes

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Chinese explanation / 中文解读

中文解读待补充：本站会优先为 VLA、具身智能、人形机器人控制、机器人操作等高价值论文补充中文说明。

Original abstract

Scenario-based simulation is central to evaluating autonomous-driving policies, but a scenario scripted before execution (i.e., with predetermined, fixed actor routes and speeds) may not preserve its intended interaction once the tested ego policy responds in closed loop. Scripted scenarios cannot adapt to unanticipated ego behavior, while learned traffic actors may remain reactive without reliably realizing a particular scenario intent. We introduce a scenario orchestrator that continuously monitors the joint traffic state and adapts non-ego actors through re-timing, re-routing, and role reassignment for creating a specific scenario intent. At each step, the orchestrator solves a constrained optimization problem that preserves the intended interaction while limiting interventions and maintaining traffic feasibility. We further distinguish scenario realization from policy failure, allowing a test to first be judged based on whether the intended interaction occurred and then by how the ego policy responded. Experiments in the CARLA simulator across multiple scenario families and driving policies show that orchestration realizes targeted interactions more reliably than scripted and learned actor-level baselines, particularly under variations in initial conditions and ego behavior. These results support closed-loop scenario orchestration as a tool for controlled and reproducible policy evaluation.

Links and sources

• Official / arXiv page
• PDF from original source

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