Autonomous Vehicle Motion Planning for Severity-Based Safe Stops
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing autonomous vehicle systems face challenges in safely and efficiently modifying their planned paths in response to changing vehicle and environmental states, particularly when encountering obstacles or needing to stop promptly.
Innovation Solution
A computer-implemented method that receives state data from an autonomous vehicle and its environment, determines vehicle stoppage conditions, selects a severity level for these conditions from a plurality of levels, and generates a motion plan that complies with the associated constraints, including information on locations and time intervals for the vehicle to traverse before stopping.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the autonomous vehicle rapidly changes its path in response to environmental changes, then operational safety is improved, but path planning complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The path planning is divided into multiple severity levels (first severity level for immediate stops, second severity level for non-immediate stops). This segmentation allows the system to handle different safety scenarios with appropriate complexity, improving operational safety without uniformly increasing path planning complexity for all situations.
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically adjusts the path planning approach based on the selected severity level. When a first severity level is selected, the system generates a motion plan for immediate stopping; when a second severity level is selected, it generates a motion plan for non-immediate stopping. This dynamic adaptation resolves the contradiction by matching planning complexity to the actual safety requirements.
2Adaptability or versatility
If the autonomous vehicle selects from multiple severity levels with different constraints, then adaptability to different stopping scenarios is improved, but control system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-establishes multiple severity levels with their associated constraints before operation. By having these severity levels and constraints predefined, the control system can quickly adapt to different stopping scenarios without complex real-time decision-making, thus improving adaptability while keeping the control system relatively simple.
3Manufacturing precision
If the autonomous vehicle generates a motion plan with multiple time intervals and locations, then stopping precision is improved, but computational requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The motion plan specifies different time intervals and location requirements based on the severity level and local conditions. By applying different precision requirements locally (immediate stop vs. non-immediate stop, different locations), the system achieves high stopping precision where needed without uniformly increasing computational requirements for all scenarios.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems, methods, tangible non-transitory computer-readable media, and devices for operating an autonomous vehicle are provided. For example, the disclosed technology can include receiving state data that includes information associated with states of an autonomous vehicle and an environment external to the autonomous vehicle. Responsive to the state data satisfying vehicle stoppage criteria, vehicle stoppage conditions can be determined to have occurred. A severity level of the vehicle stoppage conditions can be selected from a plurality of available severity levels respectively associated with a plurality of different sets of constraints. A motion plan can be generated based on the state data. The motion plan can include information associated with locations for the autonomous vehicle to traverse at time intervals corresponding to the locations. Further, the locations can include a current location of the autonomous vehicle and a destination location at which the autonomous vehicle stops traveling.