MapDiffusion: Generative Diffusion for Vectorized Online HD Map Construction and Uncertainty Estimation in Autonomous Driving

TL;DR

MapDiffusion introduces a generative diffusion model for vectorized HD map construction in autonomous driving, capturing uncertainty and improving robustness over deterministic methods.

Contribution

It presents a novel diffusion-based approach that models the full distribution of possible maps, enabling uncertainty estimation and improved accuracy in online map construction.

Findings

Achieves 5% better performance than baseline in single-sample tests.

Sample aggregation improves overall map prediction accuracy.

Uncertainty estimates are higher in occluded or ambiguous regions.

Abstract

Autonomous driving requires an understanding of the static environment from sensor data. Learned Bird's-Eye View (BEV) encoders are commonly used to fuse multiple inputs, and a vector decoder predicts a vectorized map representation from the latent BEV grid. However, traditional map construction models provide deterministic point estimates, failing to capture uncertainty and the inherent ambiguities of real-world environments, such as occlusions and missing lane markings. We propose MapDiffusion, a novel generative approach that leverages the diffusion paradigm to learn the full distribution of possible vectorized maps. Instead of predicting a single deterministic output from learned queries, MapDiffusion iteratively refines randomly initialized queries, conditioned on a BEV latent grid, to generate multiple plausible map samples. This allows aggregating samples to improve prediction accuracy and deriving uncertainty estimates that directly correlate with scene ambiguity. Extensive experiments on the nuScenes dataset demonstrate that MapDiffusion achieves state-of-the-art performance in online map construction, surpassing the baseline by 5% in single-sample performance. We further show that aggregating multiple samples consistently improves performance along the ROC curve, validating the benefit of distribution modeling. Additionally, our uncertainty estimates are significantly higher in occluded areas, reinforcing their value in identifying regions with ambiguous sensor input. By modeling the full map distribution, MapDiffusion enhances the robustness and reliability of online vectorized HD map construction, enabling uncertainty-aware decision-making for autonomous vehicles in complex environments.