Proactive Emergency Collision Avoidance for Automated Driving in Highway Scenarios

Uncertainty in the behavior of other traffic participants is a crucial factor in collision avoidance for automated driving; here, stochastic metrics should often be considered to avoid overly conservative decisions. This paper introduces a Stochastic Model Predictive Control (SMPC) planner for emergency collision avoidance in highway scenarios to proactively minimize collision risk while ensuring safety through chance constraints. To address the challenge of guaranteeing the feasibility for the emergency trajectory, we incorporate nonlinear tire dynamics in the prediction model of the ego vehicle. Further, we exploit Max-Min-Plus-Scaling (MMPS) approximations of the nonlinearities to avoid conservatism, enforce proactive collision avoidance, and improve computational efficiency in terms of performance and speed. Consequently, our contributions include integrating a dynamic ego vehicle model into the SMPC planner, introducing the MMPS approximation for real-time implementation in emergency scenarios, and integrating SMPC with hybridized chance constraints and risk minimization. We evaluate our SMPC formulation in terms of proactivity and efficiency in various hazardous scenarios. Moreover, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed approach by comparing it with a state-of-the-art SMPC planner and validate the feasibility of generated trajectories using a high-fidelity vehicle model in IPG CarMaker.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technolog

Stochastic Model Predictive Control with a Safety Guarantee for Automated Driving

Automated vehicles require efficient and safe planning to maneuver in uncertain environments. Largely this uncertainty is caused by other traffic participants, e.g., surrounding vehicles. Future motion of surrounding vehicles is often difficult to predict. Whereas robust control approaches achieve safe, yet conservative motion planning for automated vehicles, Stochastic Model Predictive Control (SMPC) provides efficient planning in the presence of uncertainty. Probabilistic constraints are applied to ensure that the maximal risk remains below a predefined level. However, safety cannot be ensured as probabilistic constraints may be violated, which is not acceptable for automated vehicles. Here, we propose an efficient trajectory planning framework with safety guarantees for automated vehicles. SMPC is applied to obtain efficient vehicle trajectories for a finite horizon. Based on the first optimized SMPC input, a guaranteed safe backup trajectory is planned, using reachable sets. The SMPC input is only applied to the vehicle if a safe backup solution can be found. If no new safe backup solution can be found, the previously calculated, still valid safe backup solution is applied instead of the SMPC solution. Recursive feasibility of the safe SMPC algorithm is proved. Highway simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed method regarding performance and safety

Predictive Control for Autonomous Driving with Uncertain, Multi-modal Predictions

We propose a Stochastic MPC (SMPC) formulation for path planning with autonomous vehicles in scenarios involving multiple agents with multi-modal predictions. The multi-modal predictions capture the uncertainty of urban driving in distinct modes/maneuvers (e.g., yield, keep speed) and driving trajectories (e.g., speed, turning radius), which are incorporated for multi-modal collision avoidance chance constraints for path planning. In the presence of multi-modal uncertainties, it is challenging to reliably compute feasible path planning solutions at real-time frequencies ($\geq$ 10 Hz). Our main technological contribution is a convex SMPC formulation that simultaneously (1) optimizes over parameterized feedback policies and (2) allocates risk levels for each mode of the prediction. The use of feedback policies and risk allocation enhances the feasibility and performance of the SMPC formulation against multi-modal predictions with large uncertainty. We evaluate our approach via simulations and road experiments with a full-scale vehicle interacting in closed-loop with virtual vehicles. We consider distinct, multi-modal driving scenarios: 1) Negotiating a traffic light and a fast, tailgating agent, 2) Executing an unprotected left turn at a traffic intersection, and 3) Changing lanes in the presence of multiple agents. For all of these scenarios, our approach reliably computes multi-modal solutions to the path-planning problem at real-time frequencies.Comment: The first three authors contributed equall

Data-Driven Robust Optimization for Energy-Aware and Safe Navigation of Electric Vehicles

In this paper, we simultaneously tackle the problem of energy optimal and safe navigation of electric vehicles in a data-driven robust optimization framework. We consider a dynamic model of the electric vehicle which includes kinematic variables in both inertial and body coordinate systems in order to capture both longitudinal and lateral motion as well as state-of-energy of the battery. We leverage past data of obstacle motion to construct a future occupancy set with probabilistic guarantees, and formulate robust collision avoidance constraints with respect to such an occupancy set using convex programming duality. Consequently, we present the finite horizon optimal control problem subject to robust collision avoidance constraints while penalizing resulting energy consumption. Finally, we show the effectiveness of the proposed approach in reducing energy consumption and ensuring safe navigation via extensive simulations involving curved roads and multiple obstacles

A Human Driver Model for Autonomous Lane Changing in Highways: Predictive Fuzzy Markov Game Driving Strategy

This study presents an integrated hybrid solution to mandatory lane changing problem to deal with accident avoidance by choosing a safe gap in highway driving. To manage this, a comprehensive treatment to a lane change active safety design is proposed from dynamics, control, and decision making aspects. My effort first goes on driver behaviors and relating human reasoning of threat in driving for modeling a decision making strategy. It consists of two main parts; threat assessment in traffic participants, (TV s) states, and decision making. The first part utilizes an complementary threat assessment of TV s, relative to the subject vehicle, SV , by evaluating the traffic quantities. Then I propose a decision strategy, which is based on Markov decision processes (MDPs) that abstract the traffic environment with a set of actions, transition probabilities, and corresponding utility rewards. Further, the interactions of the TV s are employed to set up a real traffic condition by using game theoretic approach. The question to be addressed here is that how an autonomous vehicle optimally interacts with the surrounding vehicles for a gap selection so that more effective performance of the overall traffic flow can be captured. Finding a safe gap is performed via maximizing an objective function among several candidates. A future prediction engine thus is embedded in the design, which simulates and seeks for a solution such that the objective function is maximized at each time step over a horizon. The combined system therefore forms a predictive fuzzy Markov game (FMG) since it is to perform a predictive interactive driving strategy to avoid accidents for a given traffic environment. I show the effect of interactions in decision making process by proposing both cooperative and non-cooperative Markov game strategies for enhanced traffic safety and mobility. This level is called the higher level controller. I further focus on generating a driver controller to complement the automated car’s safe driving. To compute this, model predictive controller (MPC) is utilized. The success of the combined decision process and trajectory generation is evaluated with a set of different traffic scenarios in dSPACE virtual driving environment. Next, I consider designing an active front steering (AFS) and direct yaw moment control (DYC) as the lower level controller that performs a lane change task with enhanced handling performance in the presence of varying front and rear cornering stiffnesses. I propose a new control scheme that integrates active front steering and the direct yaw moment control to enhance the vehicle handling and stability. I obtain the nonlinear tire forces with Pacejka model, and convert the nonlinear tire stiffnesses to parameter space to design a linear parameter varying controller (LPV) for combined AFS and DYC to perform a commanded lane change task. Further, the nonlinear vehicle lateral dynamics is modeled with Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) framework. A state-feedback fuzzy H∞ controller is designed for both stability and tracking reference. Simulation study confirms that the performance of the proposed methods is quite satisfactory