A hierarchical behavior prediction framework at signalized intersections

TL;DR

This paper introduces a hierarchical behavior prediction framework for vehicles at signalized intersections, combining intention and trajectory prediction to improve autonomous driving safety in urban traffic scenarios.

Contribution

It proposes a novel two-phase hierarchical framework utilizing Bayesian networks and inverse reinforcement learning for improved behavior prediction at intersections.

Findings

Bayesian network achieves 91.1% intention prediction accuracy.

Trajectory prediction error is only 0.85 meters on average.

Prediction accuracy improves as yellow light duration increases.

Abstract

Road user behavior prediction is one of the most critical components in trajectory planning for autonomous driving, especially in urban scenarios involving traffic signals. In this paper, a hierarchical framework is proposed to predict vehicle behaviors at a signalized intersection, using the traffic signal information of the intersection. The framework is composed of two phases: a discrete intention prediction phase and a continuous trajectory prediction phase. In the discrete intention prediction phase, a Bayesian network is adopted to predict the vehicle's high-level intention, after that, maximum entropy inverse reinforcement learning is utilized to learn the human driving model offline; during the online trajectory prediction phase, a driver characteristic is designed and updated to capture the different driving preferences between human drivers. We applied the proposed framework to one of the most challenging scenarios in autonomous driving: the yellow light running scenario. Numerical experiment results are presented in the later part of the paper which show the viability of the method. The accuracy of the Bayesian network for discrete intention prediction is 91.1%, and the prediction results are getting more and more accurate as the yellow time elapses. The average Euclidean distance error in continuous trajectory prediction is only 0.85 m in the yellow light running scenario.