Safety Metric Aware Trajectory Repairing for Automated Driving

TL;DR

This paper presents a trajectory repairing framework for autonomous vehicles that maintains safety and feasibility by selectively modifying trajectories, reducing unnecessary replanning during emergency situations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel trajectory repairing method that balances safety and plan preservation, employing a binary search algorithm for efficient evasive maneuver generation.

Findings

Guarantees safety and feasibility of repaired trajectories

Provides an anytime capability for evasive maneuver planning

Reduces unnecessary trajectory replanning in emergencies

Abstract

Recent analyses highlight challenges in autonomous vehicle technologies, particularly failures in decision-making under dynamic or emergency conditions. Traditional automated driving systems recalculate the entire trajectory in a changing environment. Instead, a novel approach retains valid trajectory segments, minimizing the need for complete replanning and reducing changes to the original plan. This work introduces a trajectory repairing framework that calculates a feasible evasive trajectory while computing the Feasible Time-to-React (F-TTR), balancing the maintenance of the original plan with safety assurance. The framework employs a binary search algorithm to iteratively create repaired trajectories, guaranteeing both the safety and feasibility of the trajectory repairing result. In contrast to earlier approaches that separated the calculation of safety metrics from trajectory repairing, which resulted in unsuccessful plans for evasive maneuvers, our work has the anytime capability to provide both a Feasible Time-to-React and an evasive trajectory for further execution.