An Intention-driven Lane Change Framework Considering Heterogeneous Dynamic Cooperation in Mixed-traffic Environment

In mixed-traffic environments, where autonomous vehicles (AVs) interact with diverse human-driven vehicles (HVs), unpredictable intentions and heterogeneous behaviors make safe and efficient lane change maneuvers highly challenging. Existing methods often oversimplify these interactions by assuming uniform patterns. We propose an intention-driven lane change framework that integrates driving-style recognition, cooperation-aware decision-making, and coordinated motion planning. A deep learning classifier trained on the NGSIM dataset identifies human driving styles in real time. A cooperation score with intrinsic and interactive components estimates surrounding drivers' intentions and quantifies their willingness to cooperate with the ego vehicle. Decision-making combines behavior cloning with inverse reinforcement learning to determine whether a lane change should be initiated. For trajectory generation, model predictive control is integrated with IRL-based intention inference to produce collision-free and socially compliant maneuvers. Experiments show that the proposed model achieves 94.2\% accuracy and 94.3\% F1-score, outperforming rule-based and learning-based baselines by 4-15\% in lane change recognition. These results highlight the benefit of modeling inter-driver heterogeneity and demonstrate the potential of the framework to advance context-aware and human-like autonomous driving in complex traffic environments.

Semantic-LiDAR-Inertial-Wheel Odometry Fusion for Robust Localization in Large-Scale Dynamic Environments

Reliable, drift-free global localization presents significant challenges yet remains crucial for autonomous navigation in large-scale dynamic environments. In this paper, we introduce a tightly-coupled Semantic-LiDAR-Inertial-Wheel Odometry fusion framework, which is specifically designed to provide high-precision state estimation and robust localization in large-scale dynamic environments. Our framework leverages an efficient semantic-voxel map representation and employs an improved scan matching algorithm, which utilizes global semantic information to significantly reduce long-term trajectory drift. Furthermore, it seamlessly fuses data from LiDAR, IMU, and wheel odometry using a tightly-coupled multi-sensor fusion Iterative Error-State Kalman Filter (iESKF). This ensures reliable localization without experiencing abnormal drift. Moreover, to tackle the challenges posed by terrain variations and dynamic movements, we introduce a 3D adaptive scaling strategy that allows for flexible adjustments to wheel odometry measurement weights, thereby enhancing localization precision. This study presents extensive real-world experiments conducted in a one-million-square-meter automated port, encompassing 3,575 hours of operational data from 35 Intelligent Guided Vehicles (IGVs). The results consistently demonstrate that our system outperforms state-of-the-art LiDAR-based localization methods in large-scale dynamic environments, highlighting the framework's reliability and practical value.

SEG-Parking: Towards Safe, Efficient, and Generalizable Autonomous Parking via End-to-End Offline Reinforcement Learning

Autonomous parking is a critical component for achieving safe and efficient urban autonomous driving. However, unstructured environments and dynamic interactions pose significant challenges to autonomous parking tasks. To address this problem, we propose SEG-Parking, a novel end-to-end offline reinforcement learning (RL) framework to achieve interaction-aware autonomous parking. Notably, a specialized parking dataset is constructed for parking scenarios, which include those without interference from the opposite vehicle (OV) and complex ones involving interactions with the OV. Based on this dataset, a goal-conditioned state encoder is pretrained to map the fused perception information into the latent space. Then, an offline RL policy is optimized with a conservative regularizer that penalizes out-of-distribution actions. Extensive closed-loop experiments are conducted in the high-fidelity CARLA simulator. Comparative results demonstrate the superior performance of our framework with the highest success rate and robust generalization to out-of-distribution parking scenarios. The related dataset and source code will be made publicly available after the paper is accepted.

MGTraj: Multi-Granularity Goal-Guided Human Trajectory Prediction with Recursive Refinement Network

Accurate human trajectory prediction is crucial for robotics navigation and autonomous driving. Recent research has demonstrated that incorporating goal guidance significantly enhances prediction accuracy by reducing uncertainty and leveraging prior knowledge. Most goal-guided approaches decouple the prediction task into two stages: goal prediction and subsequent trajectory completion based on the predicted goal, which operate at extreme granularities: coarse-grained goal prediction forecasts the overall intention, while fine-grained trajectory completion needs to generate the positions for all future timesteps. The potential utility of intermediate temporal granularity remains largely unexplored, which motivates multi-granularity trajectory modeling. While prior work has shown that multi-granularity representations capture diverse scales of human dynamics and motion patterns, effectively integrating this concept into goal-guided frameworks remains challenging. In this paper, we propose MGTraj, a novel Multi-Granularity goal-guided model for human Trajectory prediction. MGTraj recursively encodes trajectory proposals from coarse to fine granularity levels. At each level, a transformer-based recursive refinement network (RRN) captures features and predicts progressive refinements. Features across different granularities are integrated using a weight-sharing strategy, and velocity prediction is employed as an auxiliary task to further enhance performance. Comprehensive experimental results in EHT/UCY and Stanford Drone Dataset indicate that MGTraj outperforms baseline methods and achieves state-of-the-art performance among goal-guided methods.

Safe and Non-Conservative Contingency Planning for Autonomous Vehicles via Online Learning-Based Reachable Set Barriers

Autonomous vehicles must navigate dynamically uncertain environments while balancing the safety and driving efficiency. This challenge is exacerbated by the unpredictable nature of surrounding human-driven vehicles (HVs) and perception inaccuracies, which require planners to adapt to evolving uncertainties while maintaining safe trajectories. Overly conservative planners degrade driving efficiency, while deterministic approaches may encounter serious issues and risks of failure when faced with sudden and unexpected maneuvers. To address these issues, we propose a real-time contingency trajectory optimization framework in this paper. By employing event-triggered online learning of HV control-intent sets, our method dynamically quantifies multi-modal HV uncertainties and refines the forward reachable set (FRS) incrementally. Crucially, we enforce invariant safety through FRS-based barrier constraints that ensure safety without reliance on accurate trajectory prediction of HVs. These constraints are embedded in contingency trajectory optimization and solved efficiently through consensus alternative direction method of multipliers (ADMM). The system continuously adapts to the uncertainties in HV behaviors, preserving feasibility and safety without resorting to excessive conservatism. High-fidelity simulations on highway and urban scenarios, as well as a series of real-world experiments demonstrate significant improvements in driving efficiency and passenger comfort while maintaining safety under uncertainty. The project page is available at https://pathetiue.github.io/frscp.github.io/.

Step More: Going Beyond Single Backpropagation in Meta Learning Based Model Editing

Large Language Models (LLMs) underpin many AI applications, but their static nature makes updating knowledge costly. Model editing offers an efficient alternative by injecting new information through targeted parameter modifications. In particular, meta-learning-based model editing (MLBME) methods have demonstrated notable advantages in both editing effectiveness and efficiency. Despite this, we find that MLBME exhibits suboptimal performance in low-data scenarios, and its training efficiency is bottlenecked by the computation of KL divergence. To address these, we propose $\textbf{S}$tep $\textbf{M}$ore $\textbf{Edit}$ ($\textbf{SMEdit}$), a novel MLBME method that adopts $\textbf{M}$ultiple $\textbf{B}$ackpro$\textbf{P}$agation $\textbf{S}$teps ($\textbf{MBPS}$) to improve editing performance under limited supervision and a norm regularization on weight updates to improve training efficiency. Experimental results on two datasets and two LLMs demonstrate that SMEdit outperforms prior MLBME baselines and the MBPS strategy can be seamlessly integrated into existing methods to further boost their performance. Our code will be released soon.

DuLoc: Life-Long Dual-Layer Localization in Changing and Dynamic Expansive Scenarios

LiDAR-based localization serves as a critical component in autonomous systems, yet existing approaches face persistent challenges in balancing repeatability, accuracy, and environmental adaptability. Traditional point cloud registration methods relying solely on offline maps often exhibit limited robustness against long-term environmental changes, leading to localization drift and reliability degradation in dynamic real-world scenarios. To address these challenges, this paper proposes DuLoc, a robust and accurate localization method that tightly couples LiDAR-inertial odometry with offline map-based localization, incorporating a constant-velocity motion model to mitigate outlier noise in real-world scenarios. Specifically, we develop a LiDAR-based localization framework that seamlessly integrates a prior global map with dynamic real-time local maps, enabling robust localization in unbounded and changing environments. Extensive real-world experiments in ultra unbounded port that involve 2,856 hours of operational data across 32 Intelligent Guided Vehicles (IGVs) are conducted and reported in this study. The results attained demonstrate that our system outperforms other state-of-the-art LiDAR localization systems in large-scale changing outdoor environments.

FLORES: A Reconfigured Wheel-Legged Robot for Enhanced Steering and Adaptability

Wheel-legged robots integrate the agility of legs for navigating rough terrains while harnessing the efficiency of wheels for smooth surfaces. However, most existing designs do not fully capitalize on the benefits of both legged and wheeled structures, which limits overall system flexibility and efficiency. We present FLORES (reconfigured wheel-legged robot for enhanced steering and adaptability), a novel wheel-legged robot design featuring a distinctive front-leg configuration that sets it beyond standard design approaches. Specifically, FLORES replaces the conventional hip-roll degree of freedom (DoF) of the front leg with hip-yaw DoFs, and this allows for efficient movement on flat surfaces while ensuring adaptability when navigating complex terrains. This innovative design facilitates seamless transitions between different locomotion modes (i.e., legged locomotion and wheeled locomotion) and optimizes the performance across varied environments. To fully exploit FLORES's mechanical capabilities, we develop a tailored reinforcement learning (RL) controller that adapts the Hybrid Internal Model (HIM) with a customized reward structure optimized for our unique mechanical configuration. This framework enables the generation of adaptive, multi-modal locomotion strategies that facilitate smooth transitions between wheeled and legged movements. Furthermore, our distinctive joint design enables the robot to exhibit novel and highly efficient locomotion gaits that capitalize on the synergistic advantages of both locomotion modes. Through comprehensive experiments, we demonstrate FLORES's enhanced steering capabilities, improved navigation efficiency, and versatile locomotion across various terrains. The open-source project can be found at https://github.com/ZhichengSong6/FLORES-A-Reconfigured-Wheel-Legged-Robot-for-Enhanced-Steering-and-Adaptability.git.

DACA-Net: A Degradation-Aware Conditional Diffusion Network for Underwater Image Enhancement

Underwater images typically suffer from severe colour distortions, low visibility, and reduced structural clarity due to complex optical effects such as scattering and absorption, which greatly degrade their visual quality and limit the performance of downstream visual perception tasks. Existing enhancement methods often struggle to adaptively handle diverse degradation conditions and fail to leverage underwater-specific physical priors effectively. In this paper, we propose a degradation-aware conditional diffusion model to enhance underwater images adaptively and robustly. Given a degraded underwater image as input, we first predict its degradation level using a lightweight dual-stream convolutional network, generating a continuous degradation score as semantic guidance. Based on this score, we introduce a novel conditional diffusion-based restoration network with a Swin UNet backbone, enabling adaptive noise scheduling and hierarchical feature refinement. To incorporate underwater-specific physical priors, we further propose a degradation-guided adaptive feature fusion module and a hybrid loss function that combines perceptual consistency, histogram matching, and feature-level contrast. Comprehensive experiments on benchmark datasets demonstrate that our method effectively restores underwater images with superior colour fidelity, perceptual quality, and structural details. Compared with SOTA approaches, our framework achieves significant improvements in both quantitative metrics and qualitative visual assessments.

Fast and Scalable Game-Theoretic Trajectory Planning with Intentional Uncertainties

Trajectory planning involving multi-agent interactions has been a long-standing challenge in the field of robotics, primarily burdened by the inherent yet intricate interactions among agents. While game-theoretic methods are widely acknowledged for their effectiveness in managing multi-agent interactions, significant impediments persist when it comes to accommodating the intentional uncertainties of agents. In the context of intentional uncertainties, the heavy computational burdens associated with existing game-theoretic methods are induced, leading to inefficiencies and poor scalability. In this paper, we propose a novel game-theoretic interactive trajectory planning method to effectively address the intentional uncertainties of agents, and it demonstrates both high efficiency and enhanced scalability. As the underpinning basis, we model the interactions between agents under intentional uncertainties as a general Bayesian game, and we show that its agent-form equivalence can be represented as a potential game under certain minor assumptions. The existence and attainability of the optimal interactive trajectories are illustrated, as the corresponding Bayesian Nash equilibrium can be attained by optimizing a unified optimization problem. Additionally, we present a distributed algorithm based on the dual consensus alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) tailored to the parallel solving of the problem, thereby significantly improving the scalability. The attendant outcomes from simulations and experiments demonstrate that the proposed method is effective across a range of scenarios characterized by general forms of intentional uncertainties. Its scalability surpasses that of existing centralized and decentralized baselines, allowing for real-time interactive trajectory planning in uncertain game settings.