Beyond Patterns: Harnessing Causal Logic for Autonomous Driving Trajectory Prediction

Wang, Bonan; Liao, Haicheng; Wang, Chengyue; Rao, Bin; Guan, Yanchen; Yu, Guyang; Zhang, Jiaxun; Lai, Songning; Xu, Chengzhong; Li, Zhenning

doi:10.24963/ijcai.2025/1102

Beyond Patterns: Harnessing Causal Logic for Autonomous Driving Trajectory Prediction

Bonan Wang, Haicheng Liao, Chengyue Wang, Bin Rao, Yanchen Guan, Guyang Yu, Jiaxun Zhang, Songning Lai, Chengzhong Xu, Zhenning Li

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Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. AI and Social Good. Pages 9918-9926.

https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2025/1102

Keywords

Robotics: General
Agent-based and Multi-agent Systems: General

Abstract

Accurate trajectory prediction has long been a major challenge for autonomous driving (AD). Traditional data-driven models predominantly rely on statistical correlations, often overlooking the causal relationships that govern traffic behavior. In this paper, we introduce a novel trajectory prediction framework that leverages causal inference to enhance predictive robustness, generalization, and accuracy. By decomposing the environment into spatial and temporal components, our approach identifies and mitigates spurious correlations, uncovering genuine causal relationships. We also employ a progressive fusion strategy to integrate multimodal information, simulating human-like reasoning processes and enabling real-time inference. Evaluations on five real-world datasets—ApolloScape, nuScenes, NGSIM, HighD, and MoCAD—demonstrate our model's superiority over existing state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods, with improvements in key metrics such as RMSE and FDE. Our findings highlight the potential of causal reasoning to transform trajectory prediction, paving the way for robust AD systems.

Bonan Wang, Haicheng Liao, Chengyue Wang, Bin Rao, Yanchen Guan, Guyang Yu, Jiaxun Zhang, Songning Lai, Chengzhong Xu, and Zhenning Li. 2025. Beyond Patterns: Harnessing Causal Logic for Autonomous Driving Trajectory Prediction. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI-25. IJCAI, 9918–9926. https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2025/1102

@inproceedings{ijcai2025p1102,
  title     = {Beyond Patterns: Harnessing Causal Logic for Autonomous Driving Trajectory Prediction},
  author    = {Wang, Bonan and Liao, Haicheng and Wang, Chengyue and Rao, Bin and Guan, Yanchen and Yu, Guyang and Zhang, Jiaxun and Lai, Songning and Xu, Chengzhong and Li, Zhenning},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth International Joint Conference on
               Artificial Intelligence, {IJCAI-25}},
  publisher = {International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization},
  editor    = {James Kwok},
  pages     = {9918--9926},
  year      = {2025},
  month     = {8},
  note      = {AI and Social Good},
  doi       = {10.24963/ijcai.2025/1102},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2025/1102},
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - Beyond Patterns: Harnessing Causal Logic for Autonomous Driving Trajectory Prediction
AU  - Wang, Bonan
AU  - Liao, Haicheng
AU  - Wang, Chengyue
AU  - Rao, Bin
AU  - Guan, Yanchen
AU  - Yu, Guyang
AU  - Zhang, Jiaxun
AU  - Lai, Songning
AU  - Xu, Chengzhong
AU  - Li, Zhenning
T2  - Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI-25
PB  - International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization
PY  - 2025
SP  - 9918
EP  - 9926
DO  - 10.24963/ijcai.2025/1102
UR  - https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2025/1102
ER  -