DA-WAM: Decision-Aligned Future Latents for Driving World Models

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2608.19085v2
• Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2026 06:46:02 GMT
• Title: DA-WAM: Decision-Aligned Future Latents for Driving World Models
• Abstract summary: DA-WAM is a framework that unifies predictive representation learning, action-conditioned future modeling, and trajectory scoring under a single decision-making objective.<n>An action-conditioned predictor generates a distinct future latent state per trajectory candidate, which is then evaluated by a future-latent-conditioned factorized scorer.<n>Experiments on NAVSIM-v1 and NAVSIM-v2 demonstrate state-of-the-art performance, while ablations and diagnostic analyses validate the key components.
• Score: 6.756366477497099
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Anticipating how scenes evolve under ego actions is fundamental to safe autonomous driving, yet the full potential of world models for decision-making remains unrealized. The critical challenge lies in ensuring that future modeling is not merely predictive, but decision-informative: the predicted future must directly shape which trajectory is selected. Existing approaches decouple future representation learning from planning optimization, or share predicted states across trajectory candidates, thereby diluting the action-specific consequences that ought to guide selection. To bridge this gap, we propose DA-WAM, a framework that unifies predictive representation learning, action-conditioned future modeling, and trajectory scoring under a single decision-making objective. DA-WAM maintains predictive supervision throughout planner optimization via an online encoder and a stable momentum target, allowing future representations to co-evolve with the driving task. An action-conditioned predictor generates a distinct future latent state per trajectory candidate, which is then evaluated by a future-latent-conditioned factorized scorer. For the expert-matched trajectory, the predicted future latent is supervised by the observed future representation, while safety-critical hard negatives provide additional supervision near planning boundaries. Extensive experiments on NAVSIM-v1 and NAVSIM-v2 demonstrate state-of-the-art performance, while ablations and diagnostic analyses validate the key components.

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