Uncertainty-Aware Safety-Critical Decision and Control for Autonomous Vehicles at Unsignalized Intersections

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Yu, Ran, Li, Zhuoren, Xiong, Lu, Han, Wei, Leng, Bo
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Yu, Ran
Li, Zhuoren
Xiong, Lu
Han, Wei
Leng, Bo
author_facet Yu, Ran
Li, Zhuoren
Xiong, Lu
Han, Wei
Leng, Bo
contents Reinforcement learning (RL) has demonstrated potential in autonomous driving (AD) decision tasks. However, applying RL to urban AD, particularly in intersection scenarios, still faces significant challenges. The lack of safety constraints makes RL vulnerable to risks. Additionally, cognitive limitations and environmental randomness can lead to unreliable decisions in safety-critical scenarios. Therefore, it is essential to quantify confidence in RL decisions to improve safety. This paper proposes an Uncertainty-aware Safety-Critical Decision and Control (USDC) framework, which generates a risk-averse policy by constructing a risk-aware ensemble distributional RL, while estimating uncertainty to quantify the policy's reliability. Subsequently, a high-order control barrier function (HOCBF) is employed as a safety filter to minimize intervention policy while dynamically enhancing constraints based on uncertainty. The ensemble critics evaluate both HOCBF and RL policies, embedding uncertainty to achieve dynamic switching between safe and flexible strategies, thereby balancing safety and efficiency. Simulation tests on unsignalized intersections in multiple tasks indicate that USDC can improve safety while maintaining traffic efficiency compared to baselines.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_19939
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Uncertainty-Aware Safety-Critical Decision and Control for Autonomous Vehicles at Unsignalized Intersections
Yu, Ran
Li, Zhuoren
Xiong, Lu
Han, Wei
Leng, Bo
Robotics
Reinforcement learning (RL) has demonstrated potential in autonomous driving (AD) decision tasks. However, applying RL to urban AD, particularly in intersection scenarios, still faces significant challenges. The lack of safety constraints makes RL vulnerable to risks. Additionally, cognitive limitations and environmental randomness can lead to unreliable decisions in safety-critical scenarios. Therefore, it is essential to quantify confidence in RL decisions to improve safety. This paper proposes an Uncertainty-aware Safety-Critical Decision and Control (USDC) framework, which generates a risk-averse policy by constructing a risk-aware ensemble distributional RL, while estimating uncertainty to quantify the policy's reliability. Subsequently, a high-order control barrier function (HOCBF) is employed as a safety filter to minimize intervention policy while dynamically enhancing constraints based on uncertainty. The ensemble critics evaluate both HOCBF and RL policies, embedding uncertainty to achieve dynamic switching between safe and flexible strategies, thereby balancing safety and efficiency. Simulation tests on unsignalized intersections in multiple tasks indicate that USDC can improve safety while maintaining traffic efficiency compared to baselines.
title Uncertainty-Aware Safety-Critical Decision and Control for Autonomous Vehicles at Unsignalized Intersections
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.19939