Comparative Analysis of Patch Attack on VLM-Based Autonomous Driving Architectures

Abstract

Vision-language models are emerging for autonomous driving, yet their robustness to physical adversarial attacks remains unexplored. This paper presents a systematic framework for comparative adversarial evaluation across three VLM architectures: Dolphins, OmniDrive (Omni-L), and LeapVAD. Using black-box optimization with semantic homogenization for fair comparison, we evaluate physically realizable patch attacks in CARLA simulation. Results reveal severe vulnerabilities across all architectures, sustained multi-frame failures, and critical object detection degradation. Our analysis exposes distinct architectural vulnerability patterns, demonstrating that current VLM designs inadequately address adversarial threats in safety-critical autonomous driving applications.