IANN-MPPI: Interaction-Aware Neural Network-Enhanced Model Predictive Path Integral Approach for Autonomous Driving

TL;DR

This paper introduces IANN-MPPI, a novel interaction-aware control method for autonomous vehicles that predicts agent reactions to improve dense traffic navigation, especially merging, by integrating neural networks with MPPI and a spline-based prior.

Contribution

The paper presents a new interaction-aware neural network-enhanced MPPI control method with a spline-based prior for efficient lane-changing in dense traffic scenarios.

Findings

IANN-MPPI effectively predicts agent reactions in dense traffic.

The spline-based prior improves lane-changing efficiency.

The method demonstrates successful merging in complex scenarios.

Abstract

Motion planning for autonomous vehicles (AVs) in dense traffic is challenging, often leading to overly conservative behavior and unmet planning objectives. This challenge stems from the AVs' limited ability to anticipate and respond to the interactive behavior of surrounding agents. Traditional decoupled prediction and planning pipelines rely on non-interactive predictions that overlook the fact that agents often adapt their behavior in response to the AV's actions. To address this, we propose Interaction-Aware Neural Network-Enhanced Model Predictive Path Integral (IANN-MPPI) control, which enables interactive trajectory planning by predicting how surrounding agents may react to each control sequence sampled by MPPI. To improve performance in structured lane environments, we introduce a spline-based prior for the MPPI sampling distribution, enabling efficient lane-changing behavior. We evaluate IANN-MPPI in a dense traffic merging scenario, demonstrating its ability to perform efficient merging maneuvers. Our project website is available at https://sites.google.com/berkeley.edu/iann-mppi