Call for Papers: Special Issue on Foundation Models for Intelligent Control in Autonomous Driving Traffic Systems

Submission Deadline: 1 June 2026

Theme: "Foundation Models for Intelligent Control in Autonomous Driving Traffic Systems"

We are excited to announce a special call for papers for an upcoming issue of Communications in Transportation Research (COMMTR) that is dedicated to the emerging intersection of generative models and intelligent control in autonomous driving traffic systems. This issue aims to explore how Large Language Models (LLMs), Visual Language Models (VLMs), and other generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) paradigms are reshaping the landscape of intelligent transportation. The special issue will serve as a high-impact forum for presenting theoretical advancements, algorithmic innovations, and real-world applications that integrate AI-based decision intelligence with traffic control, vehicle coordination, and system optimization.

Objective:

The objective of this special issue is to advance the frontier of intelligent autonomous driving and transportation systems through the integration and innovation of foundation models. By bridging control theory, machine learning, and transportation engineering, we aim to foster an inclusive and forward-looking research environment that encourages interdisciplinary breakthroughs. This includes research spanning knowledge–data-driven modeling, heterogeneous traffic coordination, digital-twin-enabled causal inference, and iterative self-learning frameworks—all contributing to the development of next-generation traffic intelligence powered by foundation models.

We envision this special issue as a cornerstone for building an international research community focused on foundation-model-driven autonomy in traffic systems. It will seek to promote sustained collaboration, open discourse, and continued innovation in this dynamically evolving field.

Scope:

We welcome submissions that address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

● Foundation model-based control and decision-making in autonomous driving

● LLMs and multimodal foundation models for traffic perception, prediction, and planning

● Physics-aware and safety-constrained foundation models for vehicle autonomy

● Cooperative vehicle–infrastructure–cloud intelligence frameworks enabled by foundation models

● Transformer, diffusion, and graph-based models for trajectory generation and policy optimization

● Multi-agent foundation models for emergent traffic flow regulation and coordination

● Digital twin-driven simulation, adaptation, and evaluation using foundation models

● Safety, robustness, interpretability, and verification of foundation-model-based autonomous systems

● Benchmarking, dataset creation, and evaluation protocols for foundation models in driving and traffic systems

Submission Guidelines:

● Manuscripts should be original and not published elsewhere.

● All submissions will undergo a rigorous peer-review process based on merit and quality of research.

● Papers should be submitted through the journal's online submission system, clearly indicating that they are intended for the "Foundation Models for Intelligent Control in Autonomous Driving Traffic Systems" special issue. This is to ensure that your submission will be considered for this special issue instead of being handled as a regular paper.

● Your paper can be submitted via https://mc03.manuscriptcentral.com/commtr.

● Author Guidelines and Manuscript Template: Submission Guidelines - SciOpen

Special Submission Requirements:

● For Research Articles, Replication and data sharing are mandatory, with data serving as strong evidence and adhering to the "Data and Code Policy" of COMMTR. Please submit your replication package and explanatory file to ETS-Data (https://ets-data.sciopen.com), our designated repository indexed in the Data Citation Index.

● Submissions must explicitly be relevant to the integration of generative modeling techniques with autonomous driving traffic systems.

Submission Deadline: 1 June 2026

Expected Publication Date: 28 August 2026

Guest Editors:

● Prof. Zhiyong Cui, Professor, Beihang University, China, E-mail: zhiyongc@buaa.edu.cn

● Dr. Qixiu Cheng, Senior Lecturer, University of Bristol, UK, E-mail: qixiu.cheng@bristol.ac.uk

● Dr. Zhenning Li, Assistant Professor, University of Macau, China, E-mail: zhenningli@um.edu.mo

● Prof. Daxin Tian, Professor, Beihang University, China, E-mail: dtian@buaa.edu.cn

● Prof. Haiyang Yu, Professor, State Key Lab of ITS, Beihang University, China, E-mail: hyyu@buaa.edu.cn

● Prof. Hwasoo Yeo, Professor, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Republic  of Korea, E-mail: hwasoo@kaist.ac.kr

● Prof. Mohammed Quddus, Professor, Imperial College London, UK, E-mail: m.quddus@imperial.ac.uk