Long Horizon Risk-Averse Motion Planning: A Model-Predictive Approach

Developing safe automated vehicles that can be proactive, safe, and comfortable in mixed traffic requires improved planning methods that are risk-averse and that account for predictions of the motion of other road users. To consider these criteria, in this article, we propose a non-linear model-predictive trajectory generator scheme, which couples the longitudinal and lateral motion of the vehicle to steer the vehicle with minimal risk, while progressing towards the goal state. The proposed method takes into account the infrastructure, surrounding objects, and predictions of the objects' state through artificial potential-based risk fields included in the cost function of the model-predictive control (MPC) problem. This trajectory generator enables anticipatory maneuvers, i.e., mitigating risk far before any safety-critical intervention would be necessary. The method is proven in several case studies representing both highways- and urban situations. The results show the safe and efficient implementation of the MPC trajectory generator while proving its real-time applicability

Informed Sampling-Based Trajectory Planner for Automated Driving in Dynamic Urban Environments

The urban environment is amongst the most difficult domains for autonomous vehicles. The vehicle must be able to plan a safe route on challenging road layouts, in the presence of various dynamic traffic participants such as vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians and in various environmental conditions. The challenge remains to have motion planners that are computationally fast and that account for future movements of other road users proactively. This paper describes an computationally efficient sampling-based trajectory planner for safe and comfortable driving in urban environments. The planner improves the Stable-Sparse-RRT algorithm by adding initial exploration branches to the search tree based on road layout information and reiterating the previous solution. Furthermore, the trajectory planner accounts for the predicted motion of other traffic participants to allow for safe driving in urban traffic. Simulation studies show that the planner is capable of planning collision-free, comfortable trajectories in several urban traffic scenarios. Adding the domain-knowledge-based exploration branches increases the efficiency of exploration of highly interesting areas, thereby increasing the overall planning performance