A Reasoning Framework for Autonomous Urban Driving

Dave Ferguson*, Christopher Baker**, Maxim Likhachev*** and John Dolan**

*Intel Research Pittsburgh, **Carnegie Mellon University, ***University of Pennsylvania

 

Abstract

Urban driving is a demanding task for autonomous vehicles as it requires the development and integration of several challenging capabilities, including high-level route planning, interaction with other vehicles, complex maneuvers, and ultra-reliability. In this paper, we present a reasoning framework for an autonomous vehicle navigating through urban environments. Our approach combines route-level planning, context-sensitive local decision making, and sophisticated motion planning to produce safe, intelligent actions for the vehicle. We provide examples from an implementation on an autonomous passenger vehicle that has driven over 3000 autonomous kilometers and competed in, and won, the Urban Challenge.

 

Keywords: autonomous navigation, planning, reasoning