Enhancing Planning for Autonomous Driving via an Iterative Optimization Framework Incorporating Safety-Critical Trajectory Generation

Ensuring the safety of autonomous vehicles (AVs) in complex and high-risk traffic scenarios remains a critical unresolved challenge. Current AV planning methods exhibit limitations in generating robust driving trajectories that effectively avoid collisions, highlighting the urgent need for improved...

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Main Authors: Zhen Liu, Hang Gao, Yeting Lin, Xun Gong
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2024-10-01
Series:Remote Sensing
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/16/19/3721
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author Zhen Liu
Hang Gao
Yeting Lin
Xun Gong
author_facet Zhen Liu
Hang Gao
Yeting Lin
Xun Gong
author_sort Zhen Liu
collection DOAJ
description Ensuring the safety of autonomous vehicles (AVs) in complex and high-risk traffic scenarios remains a critical unresolved challenge. Current AV planning methods exhibit limitations in generating robust driving trajectories that effectively avoid collisions, highlighting the urgent need for improved planning strategies to address these issues. This paper introduces a novel iterative optimization framework that incorporates safety-critical trajectory generation to enhance AV planning. The use of the HighD dataset, which is collected using the wide-area remote sensing capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), is fundamental to the framework. Remote sensing enables large-scale real-time observation of traffic conditions, providing precise data on vehicle dynamics, road structures, and surrounding environments. To generate safety-critical trajectories, the decoder within the conditional variational auto-encoder (CVAE) is innovatively designed through a data-mechanism integration method, ensuring that these trajectories strictly adhere to vehicle kinematic constraints. Furthermore, two parallel CVAEs (Dual-CVAE) are trained collaboratively by a shared objective function to implicitly model the multi-vehicle interactions. Inspired by the concept of “learning to collide”, adversarial optimization is integrated into the Dual-CVAE (Adv. Dual-CVAE), facilitating efficient generation from normal to safety-critical trajectories. Building upon this, these generated trajectories are then incorporated into an iterative optimization framework, significantly enhancing the AV’s planning ability to avoid collisions. This framework decomposes the optimization process into stages, initially addressing normal trajectories and progressively tackling more safety-critical and collision trajectories. Finally, comparative case studies of enhancing AV planning are conducted and the simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method can efficiently enhance AV planning by generating safety-critical trajectories.
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spelling doaj-art-145bce814e2e4feeaac266917b422df42025-08-20T01:47:37ZengMDPI AGRemote Sensing2072-42922024-10-011619372110.3390/rs16193721Enhancing Planning for Autonomous Driving via an Iterative Optimization Framework Incorporating Safety-Critical Trajectory GenerationZhen Liu0Hang Gao1Yeting Lin2Xun Gong3School of Artificial Intelligence, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, ChinaSchool of Artificial Intelligence, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, ChinaSAIC Motor R&D Innovation Headquarters, Shanghai 200030, ChinaSchool of Artificial Intelligence, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, ChinaEnsuring the safety of autonomous vehicles (AVs) in complex and high-risk traffic scenarios remains a critical unresolved challenge. Current AV planning methods exhibit limitations in generating robust driving trajectories that effectively avoid collisions, highlighting the urgent need for improved planning strategies to address these issues. This paper introduces a novel iterative optimization framework that incorporates safety-critical trajectory generation to enhance AV planning. The use of the HighD dataset, which is collected using the wide-area remote sensing capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), is fundamental to the framework. Remote sensing enables large-scale real-time observation of traffic conditions, providing precise data on vehicle dynamics, road structures, and surrounding environments. To generate safety-critical trajectories, the decoder within the conditional variational auto-encoder (CVAE) is innovatively designed through a data-mechanism integration method, ensuring that these trajectories strictly adhere to vehicle kinematic constraints. Furthermore, two parallel CVAEs (Dual-CVAE) are trained collaboratively by a shared objective function to implicitly model the multi-vehicle interactions. Inspired by the concept of “learning to collide”, adversarial optimization is integrated into the Dual-CVAE (Adv. Dual-CVAE), facilitating efficient generation from normal to safety-critical trajectories. Building upon this, these generated trajectories are then incorporated into an iterative optimization framework, significantly enhancing the AV’s planning ability to avoid collisions. This framework decomposes the optimization process into stages, initially addressing normal trajectories and progressively tackling more safety-critical and collision trajectories. Finally, comparative case studies of enhancing AV planning are conducted and the simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method can efficiently enhance AV planning by generating safety-critical trajectories.https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/16/19/3721autonomous drivingremote sensingsafety-critical trajectory generationiterative optimization framework
spellingShingle Zhen Liu
Hang Gao
Yeting Lin
Xun Gong
Enhancing Planning for Autonomous Driving via an Iterative Optimization Framework Incorporating Safety-Critical Trajectory Generation
Remote Sensing
autonomous driving
remote sensing
safety-critical trajectory generation
iterative optimization framework
title Enhancing Planning for Autonomous Driving via an Iterative Optimization Framework Incorporating Safety-Critical Trajectory Generation
title_full Enhancing Planning for Autonomous Driving via an Iterative Optimization Framework Incorporating Safety-Critical Trajectory Generation
title_fullStr Enhancing Planning for Autonomous Driving via an Iterative Optimization Framework Incorporating Safety-Critical Trajectory Generation
title_full_unstemmed Enhancing Planning for Autonomous Driving via an Iterative Optimization Framework Incorporating Safety-Critical Trajectory Generation
title_short Enhancing Planning for Autonomous Driving via an Iterative Optimization Framework Incorporating Safety-Critical Trajectory Generation
title_sort enhancing planning for autonomous driving via an iterative optimization framework incorporating safety critical trajectory generation
topic autonomous driving
remote sensing
safety-critical trajectory generation
iterative optimization framework
url https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/16/19/3721
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AT yetinglin enhancingplanningforautonomousdrivingviaaniterativeoptimizationframeworkincorporatingsafetycriticaltrajectorygeneration
AT xungong enhancingplanningforautonomousdrivingviaaniterativeoptimizationframeworkincorporatingsafetycriticaltrajectorygeneration