UNCAP: Uncertainty-Guided Neurosymbolic Planning Using Natural Language Communication for Cooperative Autonomous Vehicles

Neel P. Bhatt* · Po-han Li* · Kushagra Gupta* · Rohan Siva
Daniel Milan · Alexander T. Hogue · Sandeep P. Chinchali · David Fridovich-Keil
Zhangyang Wang · Ufuk Topcu
The University of Texas at Austin
*Equal contribution
AAMAS 2026 (Oral)

Project Page | arXiv | OpenReview

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TL;DR

UNCAP is a neurosymbolic planning framework for cooperative autonomous vehicles that uses natural language communication + uncertainty reasoning to improve multi-agent coordination under partial observability.

It enables vehicles to:

• Communicate what they know (and don’t know) in natural language
• Perform uncertainty-aware planning
• Achieve more robust and safer cooperation in complex driving scenarios

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Framework Overview

Autonomous vehicles operating in multi-agent environments face two key challenges:

1. Partial observability (each agent has limited perception)
2. Uncertainty in other agents’ intentions and environment state

Key Idea

UNCAP introduces a neurosymbolic pipeline that combines:

• Perception (deep models)
• Symbolic reasoning (planning under uncertainty)
• Natural language communication (LLMs)

Core Components

• Uncertainty Estimation
  Quantifies confidence in perception and predictions.

• Language-Based Communication
  Agents exchange structured natural language messages describing:

  • Observations
  • Uncertainty
  • Intentions

• Neurosymbolic Planner
  Integrates communicated information into a joint planning process.

• Cooperative Decision-Making
  Produces safer and more efficient multi-agent trajectories.

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Setup

1. Install Dependencies

Follow installation for:

• OpenCOOD
• CARLA 0.9.13

2. Environment Setup

conda activate opencood

pip install ultralytics
pip install openai
pip install python-dotenv

Demo Notebook in: OPV2V/run.ipynb

Citation

If you find this work interesting and use it in your research, please consider citing our paper.

@inproceedings{bhatt2025uncap,
            title={{UNCAP}: Uncertainty-Guided Planning Using Natural Language Communication for Cooperative Autonomous Vehicles},
            author={Neel P. Bhatt and Po-han Li and Kushagra Gupta and Rohan Siva and Daniel Milan and Alexander Todd Hogue and Sandeep P. Chinchali and David Fridovich-Keil and Zhangyang Wang and ufuk topcu},
            booktitle={The 25th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems},
            year={2025},
            url={https://openreview.net/forum?id=aYlKa5ppLh}
}