A Hybrid Deep Reinforcement Learning and Optimal Control Architecture for Autonomous Highway Driving

Nicola Albarella (), Dario Giuseppe Lui, Alberto Petrillo () and Stefania Santini
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Nicola Albarella: Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (DIETI), University of Naples Federico II, 80125 Naples, Italy
Dario Giuseppe Lui: Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (DIETI), University of Naples Federico II, 80125 Naples, Italy
Alberto Petrillo: Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (DIETI), University of Naples Federico II, 80125 Naples, Italy
Stefania Santini: Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (DIETI), University of Naples Federico II, 80125 Naples, Italy

Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 8, 1-19

Abstract: Autonomous vehicles in highway driving scenarios are expected to become a reality in the next few years. Decision-making and motion planning algorithms, which allow autonomous vehicles to predict and tackle unpredictable road traffic situations, play a crucial role. Indeed, finding the optimal driving decision in all the different driving scenarios is a challenging task due to the large and complex variability of highway traffic scenarios. In this context, the aim of this work is to design an effective hybrid two-layer path planning architecture that, by exploiting the powerful tools offered by the emerging Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) in combination with model-based approaches, lets the autonomous vehicles properly behave in different highway traffic conditions and, accordingly, to determine the lateral and longitudinal control commands. Specifically, the DRL-based high-level planner is responsible for training the vehicle to choose tactical behaviors according to the surrounding environment, while the low-level control converts these choices into the lateral and longitudinal vehicle control actions to be imposed through an optimization problem based on Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) approach, thus enforcing continuous constraints. The effectiveness of the proposed hierarchical architecture is hence evaluated via an integrated vehicular platform that combines the MATLAB environment with the SUMO (Simulation of Urban MObility) traffic simulator. The exhaustive simulation analysis, carried out on different non-trivial highway traffic scenarios, confirms the capability of the proposed strategy in driving the autonomous vehicles in different traffic scenarios.

Keywords: autonomous vehicles; autonomous highway driving; hierarchical control architecture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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