VISTA: Vision-Language Imitation of Situational Thinking and Attention for Human-Like Driver Focus in Dynamic Environments

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2508.05852v1
• Date: Thu, 07 Aug 2025 21:01:43 GMT
• Title: VISTA: Vision-Language Imitation of Situational Thinking and Attention for Human-Like Driver Focus in Dynamic Environments
• Authors: Kaiser Hamid, Khandakar Ashrafi Akbar, Nade Liang,
• Abstract summary: We propose a vision-language framework that models the changing landscape of drivers' gaze through natural language.<n>Our approach integrates both low-level cues and top-down context, enabling language-based descriptions of gaze behavior.<n>Results show that our fine-tuned model outperforms general-purpose VLMs in attention shift detection and interpretability.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Driver visual attention prediction is a critical task in autonomous driving and human-computer interaction (HCI) research. Most prior studies focus on estimating attention allocation at a single moment in time, typically using static RGB images such as driving scene pictures. In this work, we propose a vision-language framework that models the changing landscape of drivers' gaze through natural language, using few-shot and zero-shot learning on single RGB images. We curate and refine high-quality captions from the BDD-A dataset using human-in-the-loop feedback, then fine-tune LLaVA to align visual perception with attention-centric scene understanding. Our approach integrates both low-level cues and top-down context (e.g., route semantics, risk anticipation), enabling language-based descriptions of gaze behavior. We evaluate performance across training regimes (few shot, and one-shot) and introduce domain-specific metrics for semantic alignment and response diversity. Results show that our fine-tuned model outperforms general-purpose VLMs in attention shift detection and interpretability. To our knowledge, this is among the first attempts to generate driver visual attention allocation and shifting predictions in natural language, offering a new direction for explainable AI in autonomous driving. Our approach provides a foundation for downstream tasks such as behavior forecasting, human-AI teaming, and multi-agent coordination.

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