MORPH-U: Multi-Objective Resilient Motion Planning for V2X-Enabled Autonomous Driving in High-Uncertainty Environments via Simulation

TL;DR

MORPH-U is a resilient motion planning system for autonomous vehicles that integrates V2X communication with sensor data, enabling robust replanning and safety in uncertain, high-ambiguity environments.

Contribution

It introduces a multi-objective, Pareto-based approach for balancing safety, accuracy, and comfort, along with a Byzantine-inspired gate to prevent unsafe replanning from false triggers.

Findings

V2X-augmented LDM improves safety in dynamic scenarios.

Pareto-frontier analysis enables controllable trade-offs.

The Byzantine-inspired gate prevents unsafe replanning under false triggers.

Abstract

V2X can warn an autonomous vehicle about hazards beyond line-of-sight, but it also brings uncertainty: messages may be delayed, dropped, or even forged. Meanwhile, map knowledge may change during a trip, forcing the vehicle to replan under tight real-time budgets. This paper studies how to make motion planning and low-level control robust to such uncertain, event-driven updates. We present MORPH-U, a CARLA-based closed-loop stack that fuses LiDAR/radar/camera with V2X (CAM/DENM) into a Local Dynamic Map (LDM) and triggers Hybrid-A* replanning when validated hazards or map changes affect the planned route. We expose the planning/control trade-offs via a multi-objective formulation over tracking error, safety margin (minimum TTC), responsiveness, and smoothness, and select operating points using Pareto-frontier analysis. To avoid unsafe replanning from faulty V2X triggers, MORPH-U adds a lightweight Byzantine-inspired acceptance gate that combines a quorum rule with an on-board sensor veto. Experiments in dynamic CARLA scenarios show that V2X-augmented LDM improves downstream safety, Pareto tuning provides controllable accuracy-comfort trade-offs, and the gate prevents replanning under saturated false-DENM injection ($p_{\text{attack}}=1.0$).