Abstract: A method for characterizing future trajectories of traffic participants includes obtaining trajectory histories of traffic participants and environment features in a current traffic scenario as input, determining an embedding of trajectories and/or environment features relating to a traffic participant in a first features space for each traffic participant, mapping the image section of the embedding onto a second features space comprising a first number of characteristics, which each characterize the future trajectories for these traffic participants; a list, the length of which is the same as the first number, and the entries of which each indicate probabilities for the occurrence of one of the future trajectories with the respective characteristics; predicting trajectories for these traffic participants, and determining whether the trajectory predictions are based on different characteristics or are instances of the same characteristics.