No Arabic abstract
In this paper, we present an Efficient Planning System for automated vehicles In highLy interactive envirONments (EPSILON). EPSILON is an efficient interaction-aware planning system for automated driving, and is extensively validated in both simulation and real-world dense city traffic. It follows a hierarchical structure with an interactive behavior planning layer and an optimization-based motion planning layer. The behavior planning is formulated from a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP), but is much more efficient than naively applying a POMDP to the decision-making problem. The key to efficiency is guided branching in both the action space and observation space, which decomposes the original problem into a limited number of closed-loop policy evaluations. Moreover, we introduce a new driver model with a safety mechanism to overcome the risk induced by the potential imperfectness of prior knowledge. For motion planning, we employ a spatio-temporal semantic corridor (SSC) to model the constraints posed by complex driving environments in a unified way. Based on the SSC, a safe and smooth trajectory is optimized, complying with the decision provided by the behavior planner. We validate our planning system in both simulations and real-world dense traffic, and the experimental results show that our EPSILON achieves human-like driving behaviors in highly interactive traffic flow smoothly and safely without being over-conservative compared to the existing planning methods.
This paper presents a novel algorithm, called $epsilon^*$+, for online coverage path planning of unknown environments using energy-constrained autonomous vehicles. Due to limited battery size, the energy-constrained vehicles have limited duration of operation time. Therefore, while executing a coverage trajectory, the vehicle has to return to the charging station for a recharge before the battery runs out. In this regard, the $epsilon^*$+ algorithm enables the vehicle to retreat back to the charging station based on the remaining energy which is monitored throughout the coverage process. This is followed by an advance trajectory that takes the vehicle to a near by unexplored waypoint to restart the coverage process, instead of taking it back to the previous left over point of the retreat trajectory; thus reducing the overall coverage time. The proposed $epsilon^*$+ algorithm is an extension of the $epsilon^*$ algorithm, which utilizes an Exploratory Turing Machine (ETM) as a supervisor to navigate the vehicle with back and forth trajectory for complete coverage. The performance of the $epsilon^*$+ algorithm is validated on complex scenarios using Player/Stage which is a high-fidelity robotic simulator.
The Institute of Measurement, Control and Microtechnology at Ulm University investigates advanced driver assistance systems for decades and concentrates in large parts on autonomous driving. It is well known that motion planning is a key technology for autonomous driving. It is first and foremost responsible for the safety of the vehicle passengers as well as of all surrounding traffic participants. However, a further task consists in providing a smooth and comfortable driving behavior. In Ulm, we have the grateful opportunity to test our algorithms under real conditions in public traffic and diversified scenarios. In this paper, we would like to give the readers an insight of our work, about the vehicle, the test track, as well as of the related problems, challenges and solutions. Therefore, we will describe the motion planning system and explain the implemented functionalities. Furthermore, we will show how our vehicle moves through public road traffic and how it deals with challenging scenarios like e.g. driving through roundabouts and intersections.
This paper presents a search-based partial motion planner to generate dynamically feasible trajectories for car-like robots in highly dynamic environments. The planner searches for smooth, safe, and near-time-optimal trajectories by exploring a state graph built on motion primitives, which are generated by discretizing the time dimension and the control space. To enable fast online planning, we first propose an efficient path searching algorithm based on the aggregation and pruning of motion primitives. We then propose a fast collision checking algorithm that takes into account the motions of moving obstacles. The algorithm linearizes relative motions between the robot and obstacles and then checks collisions by comparing a point-line distance. Benefiting from the fast searching and collision checking algorithms, the planner can effectively and safely explore the state-time space to generate near-time-optimal solutions. The results through extensive experiments show that the proposed method can generate feasible trajectories within milliseconds while maintaining a higher success rate than up-to-date methods, which significantly demonstrates its advantages.
Automated driving in urban scenarios requires efficient planning algorithms able to handle complex situations in real-time. A popular approach is to use graph-based planning methods in order to obtain a rough trajectory which is subsequently optimized. A key aspect is the generation of trajectories implementing comfortable and safe behavior already during graph-search while keeping computation times low. To capture this aspect, on the one hand, a branching strategy is presented in this work that leads to better performance in terms of quality of resulting trajectories and runtime. On the other hand, admissible heuristics are shown which guide the graph-search efficiently, where the solution remains optimal.
Online state-time trajectory planning in highly dynamic environments remains an unsolved problem due to the unpredictable motions of moving obstacles and the curse of dimensionality from the state-time space. Existing state-time planners are typically implemented based on randomized sampling approaches or path searching on discretized state graph. The smoothness, path clearance, and planning efficiency of these planners are usually not satisfying. In this work, we propose a gradient-based planner over the state-time space for online trajectory generation in highly dynamic environments. To enable the gradient-based optimization, we propose a Timed-ESDT that supports distance and gradient queries with state-time keys. Based on the Timed-ESDT, we also define a smooth prior and an obstacle likelihood function that is compatible with the state-time space. The trajectory planning is then formulated to a MAP problem and solved by an efficient numerical optimizer. Moreover, to improve the optimality of the planner, we also define a state-time graph and then conduct path searching on it to find a better initialization for the optimizer. By integrating the graph searching, the planning quality is significantly improved. Experiment results on simulated and benchmark datasets show that our planner can outperform the state-of-the-art methods, demonstrating its significant advantages over the traditional ones.