Safety Evaluation of Motion Plans Using Trajectory Predictors as Forward Reachable Set Estimators

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Chakraborty, Kaustav, Feng, Zeyuan, Veer, Sushant, Sharma, Apoorva, Ding, Wenhao, Topan, Sever, Ivanovic, Boris, Pavone, Marco, Bansal, Somil
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Chakraborty, Kaustav
Feng, Zeyuan
Veer, Sushant
Sharma, Apoorva
Ding, Wenhao
Topan, Sever
Ivanovic, Boris
Pavone, Marco
Bansal, Somil
author_facet Chakraborty, Kaustav
Feng, Zeyuan
Veer, Sushant
Sharma, Apoorva
Ding, Wenhao
Topan, Sever
Ivanovic, Boris
Pavone, Marco
Bansal, Somil
contents The advent of end-to-end autonomy stacks - often lacking interpretable intermediate modules - has placed an increased burden on ensuring that the final output, i.e., the motion plan, is safe in order to validate the safety of the entire stack. This requires a safety monitor that is both complete (able to detect all unsafe plans) and sound (does not flag safe plans). In this work, we propose a principled safety monitor that leverages modern multi-modal trajectory predictors to approximate forward reachable sets (FRS) of surrounding agents. By formulating a convex program, we efficiently extract these data-driven FRSs directly from the predicted state distributions, conditioned on scene context such as lane topology and agent history. To ensure completeness, we leverage conformal prediction to calibrate the FRS and guarantee coverage of ground-truth trajectories with high probability. To preserve soundness in out-of-distribution (OOD) scenarios or under predictor failure, we introduce a Bayesian filter that dynamically adjusts the FRS conservativeness based on the predictor's observed performance. We then assess the safety of the ego vehicle's motion plan by checking for intersections with these calibrated FRSs, ensuring the plan remains collision-free under plausible future behaviors of others. Extensive experiments on the nuScenes dataset show our approach significantly improves soundness while maintaining completeness, offering a practical and reliable safety monitor for learned autonomy stacks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_22389
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Safety Evaluation of Motion Plans Using Trajectory Predictors as Forward Reachable Set Estimators
Chakraborty, Kaustav
Feng, Zeyuan
Veer, Sushant
Sharma, Apoorva
Ding, Wenhao
Topan, Sever
Ivanovic, Boris
Pavone, Marco
Bansal, Somil
Robotics
Systems and Control
The advent of end-to-end autonomy stacks - often lacking interpretable intermediate modules - has placed an increased burden on ensuring that the final output, i.e., the motion plan, is safe in order to validate the safety of the entire stack. This requires a safety monitor that is both complete (able to detect all unsafe plans) and sound (does not flag safe plans). In this work, we propose a principled safety monitor that leverages modern multi-modal trajectory predictors to approximate forward reachable sets (FRS) of surrounding agents. By formulating a convex program, we efficiently extract these data-driven FRSs directly from the predicted state distributions, conditioned on scene context such as lane topology and agent history. To ensure completeness, we leverage conformal prediction to calibrate the FRS and guarantee coverage of ground-truth trajectories with high probability. To preserve soundness in out-of-distribution (OOD) scenarios or under predictor failure, we introduce a Bayesian filter that dynamically adjusts the FRS conservativeness based on the predictor's observed performance. We then assess the safety of the ego vehicle's motion plan by checking for intersections with these calibrated FRSs, ensuring the plan remains collision-free under plausible future behaviors of others. Extensive experiments on the nuScenes dataset show our approach significantly improves soundness while maintaining completeness, offering a practical and reliable safety monitor for learned autonomy stacks.
title Safety Evaluation of Motion Plans Using Trajectory Predictors as Forward Reachable Set Estimators
topic Robotics
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22389