Foundation Models for Autonomous Driving System: An Initial Roadmap

Recent advancements in Foundation Models (FMs), such as Large Language Models (LLMs), have significantly enhanced Autonomous Driving Systems (ADSs) by improving perception, reasoning, and decision-making in dynamic and uncertain environments. However, ADSs are highly complex cyber-physical systems that demand rigorous software engineering practices to ensure reliability and safety. Integrating FMs into ADSs introduces new challenges in system design and evaluation, requiring a systematic review to establish a clear research roadmap. To unlock these challenges, we present a structured roadmap for integrating FMs into autonomous driving, covering three key aspects: the infrastructure of FMs, their application in autonomous driving systems, and their current applications in practice. For each aspect, we review the current research progress, identify existing challenges, and highlight research gaps that need to be addressed by the community.