Goal-based Neural Physics Vehicle Trajectory Prediction Model

TL;DR

This paper introduces GNP, a goal-based neural physics model for vehicle trajectory prediction that improves long-term accuracy and interpretability by combining goal prediction with physics-based trajectory modeling.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel two-stage neural physics framework that enhances long-term vehicle trajectory prediction with interpretability and state-of-the-art accuracy.

Findings

GNP achieves state-of-the-art long-term prediction accuracy.

The model effectively visualizes multi-modal trajectory predictions.

Ablation studies confirm the effectiveness of key components.

Abstract

Vehicle trajectory prediction plays a vital role in intelligent transportation systems and autonomous driving, as it significantly affects vehicle behavior planning and control, thereby influencing traffic safety and efficiency. Numerous studies have been conducted to predict short-term vehicle trajectories in the immediate future. However, long-term trajectory prediction remains a major challenge due to accumulated errors and uncertainties. Additionally, balancing accuracy with interpretability in the prediction is another challenging issue in predicting vehicle trajectory. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a Goal-based Neural Physics Vehicle Trajectory Prediction Model (GNP). The GNP model simplifies vehicle trajectory prediction into a two-stage process: determining the vehicle's goal and then choosing the appropriate trajectory to reach this goal. The GNP model contains two sub-modules to achieve this process. The first sub-module employs a multi-head attention mechanism to accurately predict goals. The second sub-module integrates a deep learning model with a physics-based social force model to progressively predict the complete trajectory using the generated goals. The GNP demonstrates state-of-the-art long-term prediction accuracy compared to four baseline models. We provide interpretable visualization results to highlight the multi-modality and inherent nature of our neural physics framework. Additionally, ablation studies are performed to validate the effectiveness of our key designs.