Temporal Sampling Frequency Matters: A Capacity-Aware Study of End-to-End Driving Trajectory Prediction

TL;DR

This study investigates how the frequency of camera frame sampling affects autonomous driving trajectory prediction, revealing that optimal sampling varies with model capacity and dataset.

Contribution

It introduces a capacity-aware analysis of sampling frequency, challenging the assumption that higher frequency always improves performance in end-to-end driving models.

Findings

Smaller models perform best at lower or intermediate sampling frequencies.

AutoVLA model achieves optimal performance at the highest sampling frequency.

Optimal sampling frequency depends on model size and dataset, not just data density.

Abstract

End to end (E2E) autonomous driving trajectory prediction is often trained with camera frames sampled at the highest available temporal frequency, assuming that denser sampling improves performance. We question this assumption by treating temporal sampling frequency as an explicit training set design variable. Starting from high frequency E2E driving datasets, we construct frequency sweep training sets by temporally subsampling camera frames along each trajectory. For each model dataset pair, we train and evaluate the same model under a fixed protocol, so the frequency response reflects how prediction performance changes with sampling frequency. We analyze this response from a capacity aware perspective. Sparse sampling may miss driving relevant cues, while dense sampling may add redundant visual content and off manifold noise. For finite capacity models, this can create a driving irrelevant capacity burden. We evaluate three smaller E2E models and a larger VLA style AutoVLA model on Waymo, nuScenes, and PAVE. Results show model and dataset dependent frequency responses. Smaller E2E models often show non monotonic or near plateau trends and achieve their best 3 second ADE at lower or intermediate frequencies. In contrast, AutoVLA achieves its best 3 second ADE and FDE at the highest evaluated frequency on all three datasets. Iteration matched controls suggest that the advantage of lower or intermediate frequencies for smaller models is not explained only by unequal training update counts. These findings show that temporal sampling frequency should be reported and tuned, rather than fixed to the highest available value.