Anthony Peng

UNDREAM: Bridging Differentiable Rendering and Photorealistic Simulation for End-to-end Adversarial Attacks

PAKDD, 2026
Oral

Haoran Wang
Willian Lunardi
Martin Andreoni

Abstract

Deep learning models deployed in safety critical applications like autonomous driving use simulations to test their robustness against adversarial attacks in realistic conditions. However, these simulations are non-differentiable, forcing researchers to create attacks that do not integrate simulation environmental factors, reducing attack success. To address this limitation, we introduce UNDREAM, the first software framework that bridges the gap between photorealistic simulators and differentiable renderers to enable end-to-end optimization of adversarial perturbations on any 3D objects.UNDREAM enables manipulation of the environment by offering complete control over weather, lighting, backgrounds, camera angles, trajectories, and realistic human and object movements, thereby allowing the creation of diverse scenes. We showcase a wide array of distinct physically plausible adversarial objects that UNDREAM enables researchers to swiftly explore in different configurable environments. This combination of photorealistic simulation and differentiable optimization opens new avenues for advancing research of physical adversarial attacks.

UNDREAM is the first software framework bridging differentiable rendering and photorealistic simulation to enable end-to-end adversarial attacks. Users can create diverse environments by controlling environmental conditions, add and configure custom 3D objects and execute adversarial attacks that faithfully follow threat model.

BibTeX

			
@article{phute2025undream,
  title={UNDREAM: Bridging Differentiable Rendering and Photorealistic Simulation for End-to-end Adversarial Attacks},
  author={Phute, Mansi and Hull, Matthew and Wang, Haoran and Helbling, Alec and Peng, ShengYun and Lunardi, Willian and Andreoni, Martin and Lee, Wenke and Chau, Duen Horng},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.16923},
  year={2025}
}